corning glory

if i had a digital camera i would post a picture on today's blog. the picture would be of morning glory vines with blooms of deep purple and lighter lavendar twining up dry golden cornstalks on the edge of a cornfield. tim and i take a semi-back road to get to the airport in the morning. it takes us down a gravel road, through a gate, then back around a prairie road that runs along the south and west sides of a cornfield on the airport's property. it's on the south side that we see the flowers in the corn.

i've always liked morning glories ever since i started playing "trees and flowers" years ago. their deep purple hue with lighter centers shooting out like a sunrise and their simple phonograph-shape appealed to me. i was so excited to actually see them for real when we visited my Barber grandparents in Denver one summer. they were climbing up a trellis on the front of their house, and i was like "wow, those are morning glories! they really exist!" (and i was, of course, proud of myself for being able to identify them.) maybe i didn't get out much, but it didn't seem like we had many of the "flowers" flowers in our area (though i know now that prairie roses, at least--from the D family--we have in abundance).

ever since that summer, morning glories remind me of grandma and grandpa barber. we usually only saw them once a year, in the summer, when mom and grandma would meet in the middle (usually deadwood, sd) to pass off us kids and dad would come to colorado to spend a week or so with us. we had good times going to movies and playing scrabble into the night and seeing our cousins. a few years later grandma and grandpa moved out of that house to a trailer house, then grandpa's parkinson's and alzheimers got bad, then somehow we didn't make it out there much anymore. finally one february when most of us were in high school, grandpa died and we went out to denver one more time. after that grandma got very lonely, until dad called in the middle of the night when angela and i were in college to tell us that she was gone too. we didn't even go out for her funeral.

it makes me sad to think of how we let them slip away. the connection was fragile anyway because of the circumstances and distance and it was just too easy not to keep in touch, but in growing older there are always things to regret. i guess we'll always have those morning glory days to remember.