my mother

BABY SAND DOLLARS

/ janpriddyoregon / 1 Comment

Coming back from my run on this morning, I saw a crow standing well out on the shore in about an inch of water. I gave the bird a bad time about that. “What are you doing out there? That’s not your place. You don’t belong there.” The crow was indifferent to my chiding, but I went on a bit more. “Get in here!” Then the crow turned her head and I saw her red beak and realized she was a black oystercatcher. I had to apologize.

I arranged my finds on the railing of what we call “The Cat Deck” though we no longer have a cat. Most of what I found this morning plus four spices of limpet, scallops of two kinds, a round button of rust (iron, rusted clear through), “Ugly clams,” and the back shells and one head shell of chitons that we call “butterflies.”

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MY FIFTIES

/ janpriddyoregon / 9 Comments

An article in The Guardian details Fanny Johnstone’s experience caring for her father in the last year and a half of his life. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world’: 10 things I learned when my father had dementia.”

Illustration: Ula Šveikauskaitė at Synergy/The Guardian; used here without permission. This is a not-for profit site.

It is a healthy and generous story, rich with laughter and grief and kindness and family support. I wish my experience had been like hers, but it wasn’t.

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