TheMorrisonFamilyBlog

 Today was the beginning of the ritual of bidding farewell to Summer. I don't want to admit it's nearly over and that on September 22, Fall will be hosting the weather and festivities of the season. I want to hold on to the warmth of the "get-togethers" of those moments when my days were filled with the robust laughter of active children, not yet ready to admit they were...bored! It is a therapeutic process. This changing of Hosts. Shower curtain liners coming down and reminding me of all the sand washed from heads. Walls are being wiped down, erasing the fascicle smears and streaks of a snack on the go, and missing is the target. Corners and crevices are being vacuumed, disrupting spiders' webs. Furniture is in rotation, a new home to embed carpet is being found, and the occasional M.I.A. toy is being found again. Summer in her glory is BBQs, which are now being scraped and cleaned as we prepare for heartier meals. She's sunsets in the chair on the porch that...

 Listen to your mother. I told him it would happen. I told both my boys. And, it happened. My oldest, smart enough to graduate high school , yet not wise enough to take his mother’s advice, broke his collarbone while in Colorado . Eerily ironic, my lesson came at the age of five weeks after turning 16. This same weekend, two decades ago, my cousin, days away from signing a professional motocross contract with Malcolm Smith, raced his home track. It was day two of the weekend race. His bike had acted up the day prior, and he’d spent the night awake on fine-tuning it, tweaking the engine to assure the day's victory. With the first lap behind him, my cousin’s bike’s engine seized as he headed up the face of a jump. My cousin rotated forward, up and over the orange bike’s handlebars. Rider and bike separate. He lands, the bike finds him and crashes onto his back, leaving him on the track, paralyzed. A dirt bike I told my child never to get on. Not this one. Not anyone. “ No dirt bikes...