May 2014 – Marsha Ingrao

Happy Mother’s Day One and All

I am not a mother, a “real” mother, but like everyone else, I had a mother. And she loved me. And I loved her.

family pic age 7

Many people have just the opposite situation. We all form relationships in which we have mother/child like contacts, and without these wonderful people in our lives, we would be lonely and/or unguided.

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I was fortunate to have many generations of mothers on Mom’s side of the family. You can see the resemblance between all of us. I’m the grumpy looking one.

Marsha

I admired my mother, and listened to her guidance. We shared secrets, dreams, ideas, friends, careers and interests. We traveled to Stonehenge and other places in England, the highlight trip of our lives.

Peggy and Marsha

I rarely let more than a few days go by when I was a young adult in which I didn’t call her. As she aged and moved closer to me, we saw each other daily, and those were precious years.

Peggy's 80th 013rc

Weekly Photo Challenge: On the Move

Transportation shapes our lives, allowing us to go on the move. Going to a location by ship, rail, air or road transports us long distances from home in relative comfort. Manny and I taxi from the airport to our hotel.

On the Move via Taxi

In Boston, Massachusetts I did not rent a car, but I moved along via the T (metro) to the city, and meandered on foot along the red brick road indicating the Freedom Trail.

Boston Underground T

Throngs of sightseers and Boston natives moved along with me on the Freedom Trail, some on bicycles, a few motor in vehicles, but the bulk of them moved on foot.

Freedom Trail 2

Loud music and a crowd gathered in a square outside Faneuil Hall, the “Cradle of Liberty,” stopped many people on the move as they took time to listen, watch and participate in a street performance.

On the Move FT3 We take the ability to move wherever we wish for granted. Across the street from the Freedom trail towered four plexiglass columns, seeming out of place among all the 18th century brick buildings that marked the beginning of the freedom experiment in the New World.

On the Move FT4

I detoured off the red line, still on the move to explore the incongruous structures. A blast of warm air hit me as I moved into the first one as though I opened the glass door on my fireplace.

On the Move HC2

Mesmerized I read the quote and then gazed through number after number printed on the tower wall. Trapped in the mid-twentieth century symbolic chimneys of Auschwitz, I fixed my eyes on the Freedom Trail of the eighteenth century, and twenty-first century people on the move across the street.

Auschwitz chimney

Only in the total absence of freedom does one recognize the true value “On the Move”.

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Reviews and Recommendations

A few weeks ago I read Breathing on Her Own published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas written by Rebecca Waters, a friend in a Facebook writers support group. This book struck a chord with me because one of my friends in Visalia has gone through much of the same trauma.

Breathing on Her Own

Breathing on Her Own doesn’t sound like a lightweight romance, and it isn’t. Waters walks us through the difficult healing process of a mother whose married adult daughter is paralyzed after a car accident. WARNING: Do not have unprotected sex if you think that parenting ends when your child leaves home at the end of… high school… college… when they get married…

Molly Tipton, an active church-goer and Christian, battles God as she goes through the healing process after the car wreck. Her daughter had been drinking, and the weather was bad. Who got the blame for the accident? God, of course. It was HIS bad weather that made the road slick. Well, maybe it was the “girlfriend” with Laney, she had always been a bad influence, but she died instantly, so it was hard to keep blaming her.

After the weeks Laney lingered in the hospital, Molly struggled through numerous changes and tribulations. That first night in the hospital watching her daughter struggle to breathe on her own, Molly never suspected that the caring officer, Officer Steadman, would later charge Laney with the manslaughter of one of her closest friends. Molly and her husband, Travis, shared responsibilities for Laney’s children as the road to recovery wound around Obstacle Mountain. When Laney left the hospital still unable to walk, Molly and her husband had hard financial decisions to make that threatened their retirement plans as they tried to help her daughter’s family cope with living with a disability.

Accidents are only a second away from any of us. As she reached out to help , Molly discovered that her own life needed overhauling.

I recommend this book. It’s an easy read, but then it’s not!

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A few days ago I told you that I switched to iPage. The switching procedure takes ended up being more complicated than I thought it would to switch, but I wanted to save $200 or so. The service was great. Eva called me, and answered my call. However, I returned to WordPress because I had to transfer my own data to the hosting site. Because my paid membership expired, I couldn’t do that and take my pictures. I discovered that WP has a less expensive product to host the website, and give more room for storing my pictures. I jumped on that train, and I’m back in business at WP. For my simple purposes the $99 program is enough. Just thought I’d share.

Travel Theme: Close Up

A year ago I took my first and only photography lesson with Mike’s Camera Shop and learned how to use F-stops. Reading an article about F-stops the other day reminded me that I forget to spin knobs and click buttons before I shoot pictures. So often my close up pictures aren’t excellent. During our class we got really close.

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Sometimes I got a little closer to the little hairs on the stem than I did to the blossom.

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“It’s all in the composition,” says Leanne Cole. That was before my first, and only lesson with her. Life keeps getting in the way. I have Australia – lessons with Leanne on my bucket list, though.

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