<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Mom&amp;#039;s room is very pretty, although it is beginning to feel like jail to her. Not only is she housebound, she is bedbound, and life from a single bed is can be confining. She is loathe to complain about it and begins ticking off her blessings to counteract the discomfort caused by being cooped up. I feel like she&amp;#039;s veal, and I should be PETA, but as she counts her blessings, I do too. There is a bank of windows beside her bed, and a window across the room behind her dresser. Her bed is situated in a corner where she can see out one set of windows, but not out the other. The trees in her yard are still leafy and green, but beginning to change color. In a few months they will be dark and bare, but we&amp;#039;ll think about that when it comes. I looked out the dresser window this morning and saw a bird nest still in the tree. Mom said she hadn&amp;#039;t seen the nest, but thought it was the home of finches. How do you know? I asked her. You can&amp;#039;t even see over here. But I can see here, she told me. Here where the limb extends. I&amp;#039;ve been watching those same finches all summer. I looked out both windows and saw two completely different vignettes of this same tree. The nest where the finches first began, the bough that they return to. Mom&amp;#039;s and my perspectives differed, but again, as on a family history chart, our branches forever connect.  D.G. Fulford is the author of Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years with Mom, written with her mother Phyllis Greene. She is also the co-founder of TheRememberingSite.org. You can find her at DGFulford.com.  Photo credit: Marcia Smilack "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a45465/limbs-branches-1664/>