"Visiting Everyone at Christmas Time"

My mom was ready to go last night.

Me: "So you feel good, do you want to give me an idea for the blog?"

Mom: "That sounds good, the blog....'the blog,' is that how you say it 'the blog?'"

Me: "Yup, that's right, 'the blog' or 'a blog.'

Mom: "Well since we are getting ready for the holidays, how about trying to get to see everyone around the holidays? We just got a card from Ann and she said she'd like to get together, and we haven't really seen her since just after Al died, and my friend who has MS worse than me right now, her husband has cancer."

My mom is the big Christmas card sender of the family. She sits in her wheelchair at the head of the table and painstakingly fills them out and as Christmas draws closer you can see the double doorway behind her slowly fill with cards she has received in return. They seriously run out of room by the end of the season.

As she has lost her ability to write with her right hand, she has learned to write with her left and eat with her left, and she has also cut back to signing her and my dad's name on the card, instead of their names and a note.

I'm pretty good at forging my mom's signature, I remember practicing it. I would write it at her request on my late to school notes and when using her credit card while shopping for her if she wasn't feeling well. Signing her name felt like pretending I was her. While I got pretty good at it, it's never quite the same as when she signs it. I will miss her handwriting when she can no longer write.

I did a few variations of this illustrations idea. They almost look like snowflakes. I imagined the dot in the middle as the visitor, an aerial view, and dots going out to where her loved ones lived.

I did one for me, my dot is at the bottom of the page (Texas) and I thought there wasn't anyone below me that I knew and would want to see and then I remembered that my friend Andres is in Uruguay. So his line runs off the page.