Portraits Of My Mother And Other Subjects, Part 1

6/11/2019

     The above is a picture of my mother, who will be 99 years old in a couple of weeks.
     On Thursday, May 23, Tom and I drove ten hours from Columbus, Ohio to Seaford, Delaware to visit her.
      It had been five months since I'd seen my mother, and in recent years every time we plan a visit I always wonder how my mother will look when I see her again after not having seen her for a few months.
        This time as soon as we arrived I thought she looked so pretty that I immediately made her sit in her kitchen for a few portraits:

     She was a good sport about it, though she made her usual joke that I should watch that her old mug didn't break my lens.
    She was dressed for going out that evening, as the plan had been that when we arrived we'd all go out for dinner with my brother and his wife.
      However, shortly after we arrived a thunderstorm flashed down from the sky, complete with torrential rains and high winds,

...so we opted rather to have my brother and his wife bring over some fried chicken, upon which we feasted in my mother's dining room.

The next morning, Friday morning, the weather having cleared, Tom and I joined my mother in her daily routine of attending morning mass at her beautiful little parish church, Our Lady of Lourdes,

...after which we went to my mom's favorite breakfast eatery, Pizza King,

...or P.K.'s as it's known among the locals,

...where my mom goes for breakfast after mass so often with her church friends that no sooner had we sat down than the server hurried over to our table with the pot of decaf, my mother's breakfast beverage of choice, to fill my mom's cup.
When we were ready to order the friendly server asked my mom, "your regular, Hon?", my mom's regular being the "one-one-one," which is one egg, one slice of bacon and one pancake for $3.99.
Tom and I, however, felt we needed to look over the menu, of which I commenced snapping a few shots.

     I noticed my mother was chuckling and I asked her what was funny.
   "I was just wondering if you take pictures of the toilets when you use the bathrooms."
     I informed her that as a matter of fact I have been known to snap a shot of a toilet if I came a cross a particularly distinctive one,

...such as this Toto Washlet I encountered in a mall bathroom in Honolulu.

(See post from 5/9/2019, "A Nice Surprise At The Royal Hawaiian Center").

After breakfast we returned home and I then set about taking pictures of my mother's house,

...which for me somehow never loses it's charm.

The table used for my mother's church group, which meets at her house every week.

The front yard,

...and back yard.

Next, camera in hand, I headed off my mother's three cats,

Hidey,

...who likes to hide,

...Blacky,

...and Funny Face.

I also met a neighborhood cat,

...who sometimes stops by for a bite.

I got the idea of making a blueberry pie, so my mom and I drove over to Walmart to buy the berries and, of course, some ice cream.

This time when I raised my camera for a shot my mother saluted me,

...even though she's the former U.S. Army officer.
Here are some pictures of her taken during World War II, during which she was an Army nurse,

...this one at the Army hospital in Puerto Rico where she was stationed during the war.

After we returned home with the berries I made the pie.

Later in the afternoon we watched a couple of re-runs of my mom's favorite show, M.A.S.H,

...which, frankly, I had never seen, not being much of a TV person back in the era of M.A.S.H. or even now,

...still, I thought this show was pretty witty and I can understand why it was so popular, something I can't understand regarding many of the TV shows past and present that I've briefly perused.
When dinnertime rolled around we headed over to another of my mom's favorite local restaurants,