Archive for May, 2011

Literary Mileage
My Mom and May

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

5/20/11

Santa Fe sunset

My mother, Margaret Piper Jones, died in December, 1993. I always think a lot about her in May because of Mother’s Day and her birthday on the 20th. In her early years, before my sister and I came along, she was a writer. But along the way, she gave that up so completely that I didn’t know this about her until after she died. How ironic that I started my writing career long after she was gone. I often think about what else she may have given up, along with the writing. And I wonder how her life might have been different if she’d been born when I was. And, if she had kept on writing.
One subject that always brought a sparkle to her eye was taking a trip. Even quick weekend trips would excite her. She loved planning the two-week camping vacations we took to somewhere on the East Coast each summer. Here’s something I wrote on her birthday four years ago:

Sunday, 5/20/07 4:00 p.m.

New Mexico storm moving in

Mom’s birthday. I hope she enjoys the fact that I am acting out her traveling fantasies. Right now I’m sitting on the commodious deck of a house in the hills above Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am inhaling fresh pinion and pine while I watch the aspen leaves quiver in a soft breeze. There is a gorgeous thunderstorm over the ridge directly in front of me. Whoa…a flash of lightning! Now the thunder. Santa Fe lies in a sunny patch—in the valley below. There are close mountains, far mountains, and a wide open plateau stretching south toward Albuquerque and the Sandia Mountains in a blue haze beyond.
Birds are singing about the storm. I can hear the wind but can’t feel it yet. A hummingbird perches on the tip of a dead aspen limb. The sky is something to behold with fast-moving isolated thunderheads, yet with sunlight playing in the distance and brilliantly lighting the clouds over my right shoulder. Still, I hear the wind behind me….and the rumble of more thunder.
All of my senses are intoxicated. I fill my lungs with this clean air; it settles a mantle of relaxation across my shoulders where I need it.
Thank you, mom. Love ya! Judy

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