A quote: “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.” ~~ George Burns

I’ll start with a story …

***************************

When Mom fell off the ladder … twice … while trying to clean out the rain gutters and put herself in the hospital, she realized maybe the family home was just too much for a 79-year-old widow to handle. I rehearsed all sorts of arguments to make about selling the homestead and her moving in with me and Jeannie.

“No, dear, I’ve already checked out a nice retirement place ten minutes away from you. I’ll visit, but I’ll have an apartment to call my own.”

Now was cleaning out a home mom and dad had bought as newlyweds, raised three kids and accumulated 57 years of memories in. And stuff. Holy moly. Stuff. Mom always kept a neat home. Yet from big house to small apartment was daunting. Pictures, furniture, china from her mother … It took me and my brothers 3 months of weekends to wade through. We sat Mom on her favorite chair and she’d give a thumbs up or down to stuff going by.

“No! Those stay with me!” Mom yelled as I walked by with a pair of beaten and scuffed up cowboy boots I had found in the back of her closet.

“These?”

She took them from me, cradling them on her lap. She looked up at me, eyes glistening with unspilled tears, “They were your dad’s.”

“I don’t remember him wearing them.”

“Oh, he did. When we first met. Honky-tonk called Palomino’s. Tall drink of water, he was. Broad shoulders, tight jeans and those boots. Near took my breath. Polite, asked me to dance … and the night flew by as we two-stepped and waltzed … Next morning, he was in the kitchen in his socking feet, his boots on the floor at the foot of the bed,” Mom blushed, “And you were born 9 months later. We retired those boots to the closet and did our dancing at home in socking feet.”

Mom smiled up at me, “They are to come with me, wherever I end up. Promise?”

I crossed my heart.

***************************

Now, it’s your turn.
.
.
.
.
.
. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license