Stories: a series

Stories; a series I think I'd like to to start here, because it's simply fun for me; and this is number one.

OK. So, my mother was born in 1899 on a remote ranch outside Bismarck, North Dakota, and that, then, was remote indeed.

No point here in trying to summarize her life since then, but just after her 100th birthday, she fell badly, and as a result could no longer drive nor live alone, so finally moved into a shared care house near me in Bolinas, where I could visit her every day, and at least weekly take her out in her detested wheelchair to a now gone and much lamented local restaurant called "The Blue Heron", where there was a nice little table at the end of the porch that I could wheel her into.

We were having dinner, she was then 102, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, lively as could be, but in the middle of dinner suddenly stopped; looked very seriously at me; and said, "you know, dear, we haven't heard anything from Grandma or Uncle George for years! What do you think the problem could be?".

Give me credit, I didn't flinch, talking to my 102 year old mother about why she hadn't heard recently from her grandmother.

I said, "Well, Mom, I never knew Uncle George. As I understand it, he died before the ranch was sold, which was when it went bankrupt in 1918; and Grandma Knudtson died I think in 1906, but maybe years before, when the ice broke on the Missouri, flooding the ranch, and she went up onto the roof to escape, but then an enormous ice block knocked the roof off and she floated down the Missouri and died".

My mother looked startled for a moment, then smiled her wonderfully pearly smile, and said, "Well, then: that explains it!"

I don't even know how long I laughed, and she didn't mind at all that I did; & what was so good about our relation, was that laughter at what we said to each other was a pleasure for both of us.