Mother's Day Mom #2

Every time I visit my Mom I'm awed at her good fortune. She moved to her city in the early 90's without knowing anyone but a Scottish country dance acquaintance and lived very simply, creating connections until she found herself the perfect job (Assistant to the wife of the successive university Presidents, a place to use her organizing, social, and directing skills). 

About ten years on, a little house fell in her lap, friends provided the down payment, and she put down roots. Roots deeper than the potatoes she plants every year, maybe as deep as the rose bush that was here when she moved in and now is her bower. 

Her front and back yards have gone through metamorphoses: NEVER a lawn, but many designs of wood chips, flowers, vegetables, new flowers, strawberries and marionberries, brick-outlined veggie plots, potatoes along the front sidewalk or in the back corner, and is just beginning to be hard to keep up with.

This neighborhood of Karen, Carol, Karen, Karen, Katie and now Emily (and their partners) has keys to each other's houses, watches over each other's driveways, picks each other's strawberries, and confers on which trees to plant along the sidewalks.

Her neighbors adore her. They (and passersby) stop to pick up overflowing books, plants, advice, and laughter. They come over to ask about gardening and help with her handyman jobs.

She can ride her (new e-!) bike the mile to peruse the farmer's market and shelve books at the library, walk to sit at the community park concerts and prep at the free meals, drive 45 minutes to the crashing coast. 

Who gets this kind of life?

It's pretty perfect.