Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

I'm having a terrific day. I slept in, and then made my favorite breakfast: freshly squeezed orange juice and a toasted bagel with cream cheese, chives, lox, red onion sliced paper thin, and capers, topped off with a cappuccino.

The flowers in the pic...this bouquet of 24 absolutely gorgeous multi-colored roses...was delivered for me with a card that said, "Thank you for giving us birth!"...a family, inside joke...with the names of all four of my children. Beautiful, huh? However, this was delivered Thursday, at work...when I wasn't at work, but was telecommuting from the comfort of my kitchen while the tile guy worked on the shower in the master bath.

I'd opened up a browser to check my personal email, as I always do, but I thought it odd and totally random when Kath instant messaged me on my g-mail account Thursday morning that her cellphone wasn't working. Kath never i-m's me! I said that I was sorry to hear that, and idly asked what had happened. Kath messaged back and included her work number, "In case you want to get in touch with me."

Whatever.

We exchanged a few more messages, and then Kath wrote, "Wait a minute! Shoot! You're at HOME?!?!?!?"

I replied, "Yes, you know I'm telecommuting this week, what's the big deal?"

My land line rang. I picked up, and heard Kath's voice: "Are you at least going in tomorrow (Friday)? Tell me you're going in tomorrow..."

"Nope, I'm not going in tomorrow; the tile guy isn't half done."

"Mom, you've gotta go in tomorrow!" Kath exclaimed.

I was incredulous, and more than a little indignant. "What difference could it possibly make to you whether I work from home or Fort Worth!" I asked, bristling.

"Well, because I had FLOWERS sent to you, at work, for Mother's Day," Kath said, "and I just got a message saying they'd delivered them..."

If you're reading this, you have no idea what a big deal this is. I work in Research & Development for a big corporation, and it would probably be easier to get on an airplane with an incendiary device than it is to get into the place where I work. To have anything delivered is MAJOR.

"Well, SHOOT!" I said, "Flowers at work...oh honey, I am SO sorry I'm not there..."

"At least your co-workers will get to enjoy them," Kath said hesitantly, trying to make the best of it...

"But they WON'T!" I wailed miserably. "Those flowers will not get anywhere near my co-workers. They'll be languishing at the reception desk..." which is as close as any delivery person ever gets to actual work stations.

Kath said, "Just my luck! The one year I get it together and manage to make arrangements ahead of time for Mother's Day, my efforts are going to result in your receiving a bouquet of dead flowers delivered to you at work, from me..."

"If the card says, 'Here's what I think of your mothering skills!' you're really in trouble," I said, chuckling. Kath and I are very much alike, and have regularly butted heads over the years. We both began to laugh.

The end result: I drove out Thursday night and picked up my gorgeous bouquet of flowers. On Friday, I received a package from Alex & Chris, which I opened this morning. It contained the entire Thin Man collection on DVD:





I LOVE those movies! The boys will check in with me later today, and I realize that I am one lucky woman to be having such a terrific Mother's Day. This got me to thinking of one of my favorite essays by one of my favorite writers, who also happened to be a mom, Erma Bombeck, and a mom to whom I could relate ("Never trust anyone with clean cookie sheets", she once said).

Here is her essay, entitled, "The Perfect Mom".

Everyone said Sharon was a terrific mother. Her neighbors said it. Sharon painted the inside of her garbage cans with enamel, grew her own vegetables, cut her own grass every week, made winter coats for the entire family from remnants, donated blood and baked Barbara Mandrell a doll cake for her birthday.

Her mother said it. Sharon drove her to the doctor’s when she had an appointment, color-coordinated the children’s clothes and put them in labeled drawers, laundered aluminum foil and used it again, planned family reunions, wrote her Congressman, cut everyone’s hair and knew her health insurance policy number by heart.

Her children’s teacher said it. She helped her children every night with their homework, delivered her son’s paper route when it rained, packed nutritious lunches with little raised faces on the sandwiches, was homeroom mother, belonged to five car pools and once blew up 234 balloons by herself for the seventh grade cotillion.

Her husband said it. Sharon washed the car when it rained, saved antifreeze from year to year, paid all the bills, arranged their social schedule, sprayed the garden for bugs, moved the hose during the summer, put the children on their backs at night to make sure they didn’t sleep on their faces, and once found a twelve-dollar error on a tax return filed by H & R Block.

Her best friend said it. Sharon build a bed out of scraps left over from the patio, crocheted a Santa Claus to cover the extra roll of toilet paper at Christmastime, washed fruit before her children ate it, learned to play the harpsichord, kept a Boston fern alive for a whole year, and when the group ate lunch out, Sharon always figured out who owed what.

Her minister said it. Sharon found time to read all the dirty books and campaign against them. She played guitar at evening services. She corresponded with a poor family in Guatemala…in SPANISH. She put together a cookbook to raise funds for a new coffee maker for the church. She collected door to door for all the health organizations.

Sharon was one of those women blessed with a knack for being organized. She planned a “theme party” for the dog’s birthday, made her children elaborate Halloween costumes out of old grocery bags and her knots came out just right on the shoelaces when they broke. She put a basketball hoop over the clothes hanger as an incentive for good habits, started seedlings in a toilet paper spindle, and insulated their house with empty egg cartons, which everyone else threw away. Sharon kept a schedule that would have brought any other women to her knees. Need twenty-five women to chaperone a party? Give the list to Sharon. Need a mother to convert the school library to the Dewey Decimal System? Call Sharon. Need someone to organize a block party, garage sale or a school festival? Get Sharon. Sharon was a SUPER MOM! Her gynecologist said it. Her butcher said it. Her tennis partner said it.

Her children…Her children never said it. They spent a lot of time with Rick’s mother, who was always home with them and who ate cookies out of a box and played poker with them.