Some summers I visited with Ohma
the rolling mountains of West Virginia,
staying in her mother's white house
way up on a high green hill.

Ohma's mother, my great grandma,
had long passed away, but I felt her
watching in the rooms and hills
around her house, amused
at her curious seven-year-old
citified great grand daughter,
happy her daughter was there.

An old, still sturdy, three person swing
hung from the wide front porch roof
and an overgrown garden grew
on the steep hill behind the house.

Every morning Ohma and I
climbed up the hill, opened the creaking
half-hung wooden garden gate,
and picked a bountiful bucket
of beautiful delicious blueberries!
For breakfast we'd sit at the table,
with my invisible great grandma too,
in her bright kitchen with white lace curtains,
eating bowls of blueberries with milk and sugar!
My favorite breakfast to this day.
Then I'd run outside to swing on the porch,
watch the winding road below
and an occasional car pass by.
Ohma sometimes sat with me
on the swing.  She told me once
her favorite birthday present,
as a child my age,
was a pair of lovely, fine
high laced leather boots.

These memories I loved and kept,
even as things changed,
as my father's drinking
took hold of his throat,
eventually, suffocating him.
Ohma struggled and mourned
with why, just as I did,
as my mother and brothers did too.
Sometimes it felt like
we were all suffocating.

Ohma, if you can hear me,
I want to thank you
for taking me to the green
West Virginia mountains,
to my great grandma's white house,
for climbing the steep hill every morning,
picking blueberries with me,
and having beautiful breakfasts
of blueberries with milk and sugar,
with your mother, my great grandma too,
in the bright kitchen with lace curtains.
Thank you for swinging
with me on the porch.
This contentment I feel
as if it happened this morning.