Mom hasn't had many chances to travel - our family vacations were month-long blocks of time spent in Holcombe, Wisconsin, where Dad and my brothers fished every day. I always had fun; between books checked out from the Rock Falls library and the full set of Nancy Drew mysteries on the shelf in the game room of the Silver Bridge Resort, life was pretty good. Plus, Mom helped Lou, the resort's owner, clean up cabins and fix food for the bar's patrons. I remember making bread-and-butter pickles and turtle soup, and the horror of realizing that Renegade, the awesome white duck who inhabited the resort one summer, was gone as Lou told me to enjoy my supper.
Like any kid, I figured if I was having fun, so was everyone else. But as an adult, I see the reality of those "awesome vacations" - Mom did exactly the same thing she did on vacation as she did at home, but in a tiny two-door cabin (one door to enter; one to the bathroom; the main "bedroom" was separated from the larger sleeping room by a curtain). She didn't have her friends around, she was away from her church and there were no fun activities around for her. (Except, apparently, helping to kill turtles and ducks and can pickles.)
My father worked at Northwestern Steel and Wire, a steel mill that flourished in Sterling - Rock Falls for many years. He made a good living, enough to support all of us kids and mom, ho stayed at home. He was forced to retire around the time I graduated from high school. Before long, Mom decided it was time for her to go to work and got a job at a bakery in Rock Falls. Dad stayed home and watched war movies (he was a very proud Koren War veteran) on television.
We Winges weren't a very demonstrative (or talkative, for that matter) family, so I don't know if Mom and Dad had ever planned to travel and have fun together after his retirement. For whatever reason, they didn't.
Fast forward years and years and years, through which Dad never really expressed any interest in doing anything other than watching TV and depending on Mom to take care of him. She did, giving up trips to quilt shops with friends and carefully budgeting her time away from the house for Red Hat meetings and grandkids' birthday parties - Dad didn't like to be left alone. She eventually gave up going to church each Sunday. Dad developed intestinal problems and complained of being in near-constant pain. He was hospitalized for blockages a few times a year.
When Dad went to the hospital in the early fall of 2010, my brothers and I began the process of getting Dad into a nursing home for the round-the-clock care he needed. As luck would have it, the Veterans' Administration would take care of him at no cost at a nursing center in Freeport, Illinois, not far from Rock Falls and the city where I live. Dad didn't like the idea much, but said he would go into the nursing home for a while. He moved into the nursing home in early October.
He didn't like it, of course, but his doctor said he wasn't in any shape to go home; he couldn't walk on his own and my mother, weighing in at about 90 pounds, couldn't help him. He was unhappy, but the nurses and aides at the nursing home took good care of him. His condition worsened pretty rapidly; he died Feb. 21, 2011.
Now Mom is alone, with no demands on her time (other than her two beloved dogs). She's a huge college basketball fan and sports fan in general; my brother Tim stops over at her house pretty much every day. My brother Mark (both Mark and Tim live in Rock Falls) stops by and brings her over to his house, where his big family gathers for barbecues and regular "Friday drinks." My brother Steve calls often from Seattle, and I call and visit as often as I can. Mom is struggling with arthritis, cataracts and heart disease, but I think she's doing OK. She just needs to keep doing stuff to keep her "out and about" and have fun.
So that's where Going with Mom begins. Mom and I are going to a Svendsen family reunion in August, and my awesome husband, Jeff, suggested that we ask her to go along with us on our family vacation to Panama City Beach, Florida. Mom liked the idea even more than I thought she would - she has never been to Florida - and that got Jeff and me thinking about all the cool places we'd like to take Mom to see.
So, that's my story. So far, our travels include Minnesota and Florida. Some of our other ideas include the Grand Canyon, New York City, and a Duke basketball game (her favorite team!). I decided to start this blog as kind of a catch-all: I will post photos from our travels and if anybody out there has any other ideas of cool places to visit, this is the place to share them.
Thanks for reading.
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