I know it's a little past the day 'o celebration but I never intended Version 1.0 to be the last word in mothers day musings. Why is my Mom better than your mom you ask? And why is my Mom a proper noun and yours is just a piddly, little lower-case noun? Don't take offense to the proper noun part, it's because she's mine and this is my blog so she gets proper noun status. You can, however go right ahead and take offense to the "better than yours" because I'm not backing down from it.
I could fill a book with all of the memories I have of my mom but for the sake of your sanity and the bandwidth available to me on this blog I'll restrain myself to one that has inexplicably stuck over the years:
One Saturday morning when I was in high school I stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen where my mom was unloading groceries. She looked at me and said: I got raspberries at the store that are great, do you want some ice cream with raspberries for breakfast? This?! From the woman who fed me carob and kefir growing up? Yes, yes I did most certainly want raspberries with french vanilla ice cream for breakfast.
It's an odd memory to have stick with me for all these years; at first it stuck because it seemed so out of character for my Mom of all people to be offering me ice cream for breakfast. In retrospect though I think it sticks because it's so in character, I just didn't know it at the time.
I realize how insanely lucky I was growing up to never question my Mom's mom-ness. I never doubted that there would be breakfast (not to mention lunch and dinner), that I'd get picked up from school or that I'd get woken up every morning and there would be clean clothes to put on. I took entirely for granted all of these things that were a given in my life because of the time and energy she dedicated to making it so. While I am endlessly grateful for the Mom that she was while I was growing up, there are so many things that I've started to appreciate in my Mom who, as I've gotten older, become as much friend as she is Mom. Her loyalty to the people that she loves and the kindness that she values so highly. Her love of beauty and music, and the fearlessness with which she attacks new projects and hobbies. She has a penchant for ceramic bowls, art festivals and sitting in the sun. She can Snoopy like a pro, appreciates the odd glass of wine on a Saturday afternoon, gives some of the best hugs around and when I'm with her, I'm home.
How insanely I love my mom and how very much I admire her can be (insufficiently) summed up by a conversation that Wes and I had the other night while watching TV. Wes had commented that he hoped to be as good a dad someday as the character we'd been watching. I thought about it for a minute and realized that I am familiar with that sentiment, it's just that I hope someday to be as good a mom as my mom is.
Love you Mama, Happy (Belated) Mothers Day.
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