The overlooked

I've just come back from a visit with my sweet mom.
As she's getting older, her health is changing and the experience of this has me thinking of how much I love her and want to spend as much time with her as I can. In between the times that I visit, I want to think about the rooms she moves through during her day.

I decided to take pictures of some of the discarded areas and areas that aren't designed to have their pictures taken. I think they carry as much information about my mom as the obvious places that hold what's pretty.

This is a very little mirror my mother has hung with a push pin in her spare bathroom.

Yes, it is sweetly, this small.

The little boxes, paperwork and books below the microwave, they have been there for years, I don't know if my mother remembers why they were once important or if they still are. They have become part of the scenery of a home, like so many things can. The kitchen utensils that hang here, they aren't used, they're part of the "artful" presentation set up with the margarita glasses that are there just for color.

Behind a garden chair on the back porch, a can of wood finish and other forgotten containers from projects past. They sit in the dried flower petals of the bouginvillea bush from the side of the house, that have blown to rest here.

Before my mother lived here it was my grandfather's home. This shed is a remaining piece from that time. For me, it represents what the memory of someone can become after they leave, no longer refreshing your memory with new images. It seems sad but there is such a beauty in the falling apart of memory and the forgetting that follows. It's what so many poems are written about and cried over.

This is my favorite. My mom has just left and should be back shortly.