To say my mom and I had a complicated connection is an understatement. What I am grateful for, however, is that neither of us ever gave up on the other; and occasionally we set aside our differences, however briefly, to share a common interest. Like, for example, the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. I found these pictures she had saved from a rare combo family experience fifteen years ago that triggered a flood of emotions as I went back in my memories to a time when Pretty and I made one of many visits to Texas to see my mother (this one after we had been together four years),  a time when none of us knew my mom was three years away from living in a Memory Care Unit in Houston, a time when we all agreed visiting the Bush Library together would be fun.

small note: Mom never would drop the “h” in Pretty’s name

I had a higher than usual anxiety level planning the trip of nearly a hundred miles from Mom’s home in Richmond, Texas to the Bush Library in College Station. After all, my mother, my wife and I would be in the rental car I had picked up at the airport in Houston – close quarters for the day trip. I needed everything to go off without a hitch, but a hitch was waiting for me. The rental car had a flat tire just 40 miles up the road.

Pretty and Mom all smiles when we discovered the flat

Smiles turned to frowns while we waited for roadside assistance,

but eventually we were back on the road to College Station

Pretty and I love a presidential library – even one located in Aggieland

Mom quickly lost interest in the library

so we spent time wandering the grounds outside

my mother and me in black and white – as we often were

lunch break, anyone?

Although neither Pretty nor I would ever say the George Bush Presidential Library made our library favorites list, the road trip was a memory maker, as my mother would say.

The future belongs to those who refuse to put aside the past; you can quote me on that.

Stay tuned.