A Sweet Visit

      Last Thursday Tom and I drove to Seaford, Delaware to visit my Mom, who will be 96 years old in June.
     We hadn’t seen her since last July,

    …at which time she was in a rehab center recovering from a broken bone.

     And so not having seen my mother in 8 months we were shocked at how much she'd changed:

I swear she looked – and seemed – about 10  years younger than last time we saw her! 

      After spending a couple of months healing in rehab, my mother,  defying all odds and the general consensus that at 95 years old it was time for her to move into an assisted living facility, insisted on returning to her home and picking up with her life from where she left off. 
          And she’s done just that, with the tag-team in-home help    

of her old pal Fran (see post from 5/28/2014),

...and another wonderful lady-helper, who not only chauffeur my mom around to her continued daily activities,   

…but continue to keep her lovely home spotlessly clean, 

…and her three cats happy. 

        My mom’s helpers take her to Mass every morning and afterwards to daily breakfast at McDonalds with her Church Posse.   After Mass and breakfast there are shopping trips, doctors’ appointments, an occasional lunch of dinner date,  visits from friends and neighbors, who often bring food,

     …and every Wednesday night my mother hosts her church group meeting in her spacious dining room.

     Which begs the question:  does my mother’s drinking-water supply line make a funny jog along the way and veer off to some secret local fountain of youth? 

     Anyway, when we arrived at my mother’s house late Thursday evening she had a nice little snack waiting for us, 

…which we only nibbled at, having stopped for dinner at our favorite spot along the way, a Greek restaurant on I-97 just south of Baltimore called Hella’s….

…where seafood lovers such as Tom can find the supposedly best crab cakes on the planet,

…though not being myself of the seafood-loving persuasion, I opted for the gyro,

…which I must admit I found decidedly so-so, and not nearly of the same caliber as can be found at my favorite local Greek restaurant,  the King Gyros in Whitehall.

                                                                                                             Now, that's a gyro!

           So anyway, though Tom’ and my interest in the nice healthy snack my mom had prepared did not exceed a nibble’s worth,

…the same cannot be said of my interest in the big walloping batch of St. Patrick’s Day goodies that people had stopped by with during the day,

...my mother’s famous super-sweet tooth having apparently attained renown of mythical proportions among the local population.
     Thus I partook of the holiday sweets as well as my mother’s standard stash,

…hoping that maybe her sweet tooth, which I have sans doute inherited, is the real secret of her seeming eternal youth.