Sweet, Cooling Rain. Perfect For Mother's Day

 Here we have a most unique Mother's Day gift. For those of you not versed in Lego, that is someone enjoying breakfast in bed because all mothers want breakfast in bed for Mother's Day. Right? 
No. No they do not. But the myth is strong. 

No one around here got Mother's Day breakfast in bed as far as I know. Vergil made a lovely breakfast of strawberry shortcake for Jessie's Mother's Day breakfast. 

It was almost perfect although someone forgot the whipped cream. 
Oh well. Jessie said that potato chips and bacon were also involved and that pushed it towards perfection in my opinion. 

I hear that Lauren kept the kids from waking Lily until 10:45! This is a miracle. A Mother's Day miracle. By that time she'd already gone to the store and made a delicious breakfast. 
Lauren rocks. 

Sonny Boy the Cat joined in too. I'm sure he's wondering where his plate is. 

And me? I really, really, REALLY did not want to do anything fancy for Mother's Day but I'd asked Rachel and Hank out for brunch because I made a big breakfast every Sunday anyway and I would have loved to see them. 
However. 
It looked like a huge storm was about to hit us and also, I was really weeping too hard to talk to anyone. 
Not a particularly celebratory atmosphere. 

There is a raincheck. And yes, it did rain. 

Mother's Day has always been hard for me. But we may ask ourselves- is there any holiday with which I do not have a hard time? 
Halloween possibly because I mostly ignore it. 

I do not need to discuss it because it is all just one more bit of evidence attesting to my craziness but today was a pretty darn good Mother's Day for me. Pictures came in from my daughter-mothers and all my children wrote me the most beautiful things. Mr. Moon was very sweet and there was a note beside the coffee pot and he cleaned up after breakfast although he generally does clean up after Sunday breakfast. He made the bed which is very traditionally my job, and I found two steaks in the refrigerator which I assume he's going to cook for our supper. And...

A pot of the the most incredible hydrangea. That color knocks me out. 

So all of that has been very good and I had a most interesting text conversation with Lily wherein we talked about how astounded I was at the way I loved my babies the second they were born. I was not expecting that. She said that because she'd seen me love all of my children, she knew that's what would happen when she had her own. 

And that, of course, made me feel so good. 
I told her that each child was the teacher in how they needed to be loved, which is something I truly believe. One size does not fit all. 

And then there was this.

And right there, Lily nailed it. She put into those few words the things I've been struggling with my whole life. I knew that all of those factors were pieces of the puzzle but Lily arranged them so that I could really and truly see the whole picture. I've been too close to all that happened to see it in real perspective. 

My children are wise and I love them so much. 

When we got a break in the rain, I went out to pick beans. And boy, were there beans to pick!

And a few peppers. 

The magnolia tree beside the garden is blooming. I got a picture of one of the flowers. 

Too far up to pick, even for Mr. Moon, but beautiful right there where it is in its natal branches. 

So that's been my Mother's Day, a day which I think all mothers, if they are honest, would admit that they have mixed emotions about. And every year I so very much want to tell ALL of the nurturers that they, too, should be celebrated, and that I, for one, do that. They may be aunts, uncles, sisters, teachers, next-door neighbors, best friends' mothers, dads who are raising their children with their husbands, the good foster mothers, and single foster fathers, and even the mothers in literature that somehow reached out through the pages to give many of us a sense of what mothers can be from Marmee in Little Women to Ory Baxter in The Yearling.

August and I were having a discussion on the porch swing yesterday. It arose from the age-old question- which came first, the chicken or the egg?  
This led to another conundrum- which came first, the mother or the daughter? Of course, the daughter comes from the mother, but the mother comes from someone who is or was a daughter. I told August that sometimes I like to think of the endlessly long line of women, holding their babies, going all the way back to the mother of us all. 

He's a very smart boy with a very good brain, already capable of complex thoughts. I'm pretty sure he got it. Probably far better than I do.

Love...Ms. Moon