splashes of life

I like seeing what people put on their subs.
One lady asked for meatballs, extra sauce, pickles, and black olives. Imagine those flavors all shooting around in your mouth with each bite; kind of makes my mouth do funny things just thinking about it. She must have either a) a dull life that allows creativity to be expressed only during lunch hour or b) such an interesting daily existence that it has infected even her food choices. Subway is a center for sociological observations. They really should charge extra.

Alzheimer's: the test of love.
She was hunched over on top of her porch steps when we walked up. She looked up from the two empty white buckets in her hand and asked my mother how tall she was. She refused my help down the stairs, and also any mention of us holding her buckets. We walked out to the patch to pick our blueberries as she wandered around the vast yard muttering to herself. Later, her husband arrived and took her inside to eat breakfast. "Here, lets eat outside on the porch. That sound good to you?" His voice was soft and his actions embodied gentle love. Even though the responses to his questions were nonsensical babbles about her cup or buckets, you could tell his heart still beat to the rhythm of their past.

Hey, caterpillar.
I sat down at the dining room table to eat my lunch of fresh green beans, a vegetable crammed turkey sandwich, chips, and salsa. Right before we bowed our heads to bless the food, I saw a caterpillar on the center of the table. He was quite small, very fluffy, and had these little poky things sticking up from his body. When we started eating, I wanted to share, so I gave him some of my potato chip. He turned away with disgust. Anita commented that I may have shoved it at the wrong end, since it was hard to tell which was the head and which was the tail. Haha, Anita. He didn't like the hydrangea leaf, either. But, when Mother set down lettuce, he enjoyed the thought of that for a while...then crawled past. He begin walking towards my plate, so I set it aside and he kept going to the edge of the table. Oh, no! I was concerned he would crawl right off and fall into my lap, possibly injuring one of his little legs! Anita interrupted my thoughts: "Carolita, what concerns me about this picture is you have that motherly look on your face right now." She was so right. Deep down, I do love animals of all shapes and sizes and diet-choices (so long as they don't eat humans like myself). I guess what's in my heart shows on my face more than I thought. God bless the caterpillars. And the sparrows that eat them.