Pears--Part 1

Mom calls it reverse day care: I drop her off at her house in the morning on my way to work. When I’m done, any time between 5 and 6 pm, I pick her up, we have dinner, I read to her or we watch tv and she goes to bed in her new bedroom here at the “compound.”

I picked Mom up from her house tonight. She had canned 9 quarts of vegetable soup today. I had shuffled a bunch of papers around and been to the hairdresser.

Mom waited in the car while I picked up a few things from the grocery store. In the produce section, I spotted a box of canning pears marked down to only $7.99 and put them in my cart. Partway across the store I had second thoughts and turned my cart around them to put them back, did I really want to bother with canning pears right now?

But these pears were not about me. I knew that Mom would love to have some pears to go with the peaches we did earlier this summer. She enjoys a small serving of home-canned fruit for dessert.

I hauled everything into the house. The evening was dark and dreary with a cold rain falling. Nothing even resembling dinner was evident—the couch looked so inviting. It was already almost 6:30.

“Should I start peeling the pears now?” Mom asked.