This Woman, My Child

 

Nine years ago that's what my May and I looked like. That was a Christmas day and the picture was taken at Lily's where we'd all met up for Christmas morning. 

Yesterday was the seventeenth anniversary of the beginning of this blog and one of the reasons I am so glad that Hank urged me to start it is that I have pictures like that and posts like THIS to look back on, to remember, to be my memory for me. It's a post that I wrote in 2008 about May and her birth day. May sometimes seems to get short shrift around here and she does. That's because she is almost always working, and if she isn't working, she's at home with her beloved, Michael, and their dear cat, Lupita, doing all the things that May hasn't had time to do and by that, I guess I mostly mean laundry, shopping, and resting. 
I don't think she does a lot of resting though. 

But I just reread that post and it is still the absolute truth and still describes May perfectly. It's funny- this morning I sent an e-mail to a friend and noted that "thirty-six years ago, I was in labor with May" which was an unintentional lie. It was forty-six years ago. 
Honest mistake and not made because I can't imagine being old enough to have a forty-six year old child but because I do not look at May and see a forty-six year old woman. She looks exactly the way she's always looked- strong and beautiful and light-filled. 

Mr. Moon and Jessie and I went to where she works today to see her and give her a few little things. There was a mother and her son there who appear to eat at Midtown Pies frequently. The little guy had just graduated either from Pre-K or Kindergarten, I'm not sure, but his mama told us that he says, "May is my best friend." 
Smart kid. Lucky kid. 

So we got to see her and I got to hug and kiss her and tell her how much I love her and it was sweet. Plus we also got pizza which was delicious. I forgot to take a picture! What is wrong with me? 
Well, I may be able to attribute my forgetfulness to the fact that I am indeed old enough to have a forty-six year old daughter. 

Tomorrow she and Michael are going to go to Bainbridge, Georgia for a few days where they will be staying in a beautiful, historic, shotgun house. A shotgun house is generally a small house which was built all in a line so that if you shot a gun from the front door, it would exit the back door. It does not look unlike a Tiny House but it is somewhat bigger.

It looks perfect to me as a place to spend a birthday weekend. Everything you need, nothing you don't. 

And...to add to the appropriateness of their choice, her daddy and I got married in Bainbridge, Georgia at the county courthouse in 1975. I believe I've told that story before but I may tell it again sometime. So that's interesting. 

After one last good hug from May, Mr. Moon and I drove to Costco where he had an appointment for an eye exam. He never did find the glasses he lost while chopping bamboo at Tom's. Jessie joined him there to help him pick out his frames. 
Here are the ones they (she) chose.

He says they look like safety glasses but I quite like them. He never would have listened to me but we all listen to Jessie, aka Mean Aunt Jessie. 
She is the boss of us and always has been. 

In other news, Levon had a little kindergarten graduation today. Yes, we have those too although this one was small and short and guests were sensibly limited to two per child. Jessie and Vergil attended and Jessie said that after the ceremony and performance, little girls were lined up to hug Levon. The teacher told his parents, "Levon is quite the lady's man."
I am not surprised. He got THAT from his Boppy. 

Happy birthday to my daughter, my May, who announced her presence with light before she was even conceived. I guess we could say that she was a light in her mama's eyes. 
And will be always. 

Love...Ms. Moon