Sunday, June 12, 2011

Montana Tough

Eleanor and I went grocery shopping.  I was afraid it would be a bit of an ordeal for her, but she claimed she felt like it was a treat.  They have wheelchairs with baskets on the front, so we tooled around the store with one of those things Ph.D.  I should have taken a picture of her little head peeking over the precariously balanced sweet potatoes and half-n-half.  I also should have waited until we got all the groceries put away so I could get a better picture of that wonderful orange counter top!

Before shopping, we went out to lunch and I suggested a few places to gauge her interest.  I mentioned a little old-fashioned soda fountain we went to last summer when I was here and she said, "That place that messed up your order?"  She was right!  I had forgotten that.  The wrong kind of hot dog, or something. How had she remembered a little detail like that?  So we went somewhere else.  Didn't matter.  We just like to go out to lunch. 

As we were driving, she told me about the three times her back had been broken.  She says she thinks she was born with shoulders placed too forward and as a child they whacked her across the back and told her to stand straight.  That didn't help at all, she said. Now, she sees a physical therapist who helps her not to stoop so much.  Gives her exercises to straighten her shoulders. I snapped the first photo as she was getting ready to pose and the next one when she was ready for the camera.  She how hard she works to lift her shoulders?  Never too late.

Eleanor has lived a hard-scrabble life, many of those 90 plus years here in Montana, and she entertains me with so many endearing stories that I have a hard time walking away from her when I need to get back to work.  When I walked into her house after not having seen her for over a year, I was greeted with a big grin and a light in her blind eyes that rivaled the repeating rainbow that appeared that afternoon--right in the very place it showed up on a sunny rainy day the same time last year!  This is my last Montana Summer, as far as I know. 

1 comment:

The Provence Family said...

Sweet lady and beautiful pictures. Can't wait for the Alaskan updates to come.