How To Have The Perfect Mother's Day

1. Raise your babies. Don't despair over the hard years. Well, okay, despair, but keep hope in your heart and just love, love, love them.
2. Receive your grandchildren.
3. On Mother's Day, wake up with your grandson in bed with you. Give him a bottle and fall back to sleep with him and your husband. Sleep deeply and well, that boy between you.
4. Wake up to his smiles on the most gloriously cool and sunny day you can imagine.
5. Have adventures.
6. Wait for the children to arrive.
7. Be grateful, joyful, and astonished at your good fortune.

Owen and Pop-Pop being serious.

And goofy.

Sharing French toast with Pearl.


Learning about tomatoes.

They'll be ripe soon.

Grandmother and Owen.

Jessie with beautiful fruits, vegetables, cheese and...a blue bottle of gin.

And it's only one p.m.
I am not sure my heart can hold it.

Love...Ms. Moon

They Made Me A Mother And Then They Made Me Sushi

It was a good day.

Mamas

I got up at one a.m. and had hay fever so I took a Benedryl and it's ten o'clock in the morning and I can't seem to wake up. I mean, I feel like I'm stuffed with rocks or something. That heavy and dull.
I woke up at nine when Lily called. Her blood pressure, which she has been monitoring for several weeks because it was up at her last midwife appointment, had gone down to 120 over 50 instead of the 130 over 70 it has been hanging around. "Is something wrong?" she asked.
And I, still medicated from the antihistamine, couldn't think of any reason it would be, unless she was internally hemorrhaging and I doubted she was.
"You're fine," I said, and then I went back to bed.
Happy Mother's Day and really, what could be better than being asked, first thing, for advice from your pregnant daughter?
Yes! I am still needed as a mommy!
And you are too. Even if you never had a baby, even if your babies are grown up, EVEN IF YOU ARE A MAN! Because nurturing is something we can all do and we all do it. You can nurture tomato plants or a kitten or a chicken or your soul or even your car. I think men like to nurture cars. But it all comes from the same place. Taking care.
Mr. Moon wanted to make me an egg sandwich for breakfast for Mother's Day. This is the highlight of his cookery skills and even though I'd eaten a peanut butter sandwich when I took the Benedryl and was not hungry AT ALL, I told him he could make me a sandwich and it was delicious, with hot sauce on the eggs and bacon, my favorite food.


He'd gotten me some flowers and a card and brought them all out on the big cutting board because he couldn't find a serving tray. We sat on the back porch and ate our breakfast and then we went and got the chicks out of the coop and we cuddled each one and stroked their heads and told them what pretty birds they are and guess what? They are!
And now Lily is here and the rest of the kids are coming and yes, my mother too. We're going to make and eat sushi with brown rice and HoneyLuna even offered to bring a real sushi chef whom she works with and with whom she is having a little mutual crushette and I said, Sure! Why not? but she said, no, she wasn't really going to bring him. I think that would have been awesome. Maybe his mother is in Japan or maybe she's in Miami or maybe he lives with her, I don't know, but it would have been fun to have a sushi chef in my kitchen.
Miss Maybelle may not be a PROFESSIONAL sushi chef, but she's a damn fine one anyway and she'll be the one to direct the sushi making and we'll have a good time and a good lunch.
I think this will be my mother's first time ever to eat sushi.
I can smell the jasmine, my beautiful pregnant daughter is in the kitchen with her daddy and I am about to end this and tidy up because it's a bit messy around here. Even without kids around, a house does manage to untidy itself.
I think the Benedryl is wearing off, finally, and I'm able to type more than two words without making a mistake and maybe I should go put on something pretty for Mother's Day. A different tank top, at least.
I'm feeling fine, and this afternoon after everyone leaves, I might get to weed some. And maybe have a martini with Mr. Moon. And I need to call the older children's stepmother to thank her for being such a good othermother to my babies and all-in-all, I'm grateful.
Happy Mother's Day, y'all.
Happy Mother's Day.

I'm Turning Into Billy

So it's the day after Mother's Day and I, of course, am consumed by guilt for many reasons, some of them being having an actual basis in reality, but none of them having to do with the fact that I ate bacon this weekend because I didn't but maybe I should have.
Have you seen this website?
Wow. Really, who wouldn't love a salad served in a bowl made of bacon? Why didn't I think of that? is what I say.

I did eat some pork though. Actually, come to think of it, I believe I may have eaten pork three times this weekend, which is an awful lot for someone who claims to eat mostly plants. It was a pork-filled weekend, as so many of them here in the Deep South are. Friday night I helped out at the Monticello Opera House, taking tickets for a dinner theater and they generously served me a meal and it had pork in it. Indeed it did. I think it was in the form of a paella, although it just seemed like yellow rice with various meat products on it to me. It was delicious, though. And then on Saturday night, we went to Roland's welcome home party and there was every sort of grilled pork imaginable. I only ate a small piece that someone gave me off his very own fingers but it was mighty good.

The party was good too, although overwhelming for me, the country-mouse-who-never-sticks-her-twitchy-little-nose-out-of-the-doorway. Roland looked and seemed terrific and I was glad to have gone just to see what a real Marine looks like. Hot, I think is the word I am searching for here and if that's inappropriate, so be it. He gave a little speech to the many, many people who were there, thanking them for our gatherings and the sending of good energy his way while he was in Iraq. He claims that it must have worked because every one in his company came home whole and uninjured. I don't know if I believe that's the reason, but I'm grateful they all did.

So back to the pork.

On Sunday I cooked waffles and venison sausage for me and the man but that venison sausage is made of both venison and pork and I know it. I ate it anyway and it was damn good.
The Mother's Day feast of sushi and strawberry shortcake had no pork in it but it was great anyway. I suggested we make bacon and tomato sushi but I pretended I was kidding after I said it.

It was more than lovely to have the kids here on a Sunday afternoon, hanging out and cooking rice and rollin' our own sushi. We did the garden tour and then we went over and checked out the goats and chickens next door. The kids were suitably impressed by the garden and who doesn't love a baby goat when it's all curled up in a food bowl? So that was fun. They also admired the hole we've dug in the backyard where we're putting the pond. The man worked hard all weekend on that project and I can't imagine how nice it's going to be when it's done with the sound of water trickling through the bamboo spouts he's making. From our own bamboo, of course. And it will give me the excuse to plant more ferns which always makes me happy.

The kids gave me some great gifts for Mother's Day, although I wish they hadn't. Receiving gifts always makes me feel...undeserving? Something weird. But I'll put that salad spinner (which I actually asked for) to good use with garden greens and I'll eat the chocolate and I love the flowers and the cards and what they wrote in them made me cry. They gave me money to get a massage and a gift certificate to get my hair cut and I'll certainly put those to good use too.
So it was a lovely Mother's Day and couldn't have been more perfect if we'd had bacon-wrapped ham instead of sushi and OH! I almost forgot my favorite present:
THE MONKEY PEELER!

My kids know me so well.

Being a Mother Is One Thing; Being a Daughter Is Another

We're thinking about making a little fish pond with a fountain type thing in the backyard and I wanted to show my husband some I'd seen at Tallahassee Nurseries yesterday. So after breakfast we took off for town.
We went to the nursery and walked around and had a nice time, looking at flowers and trees and fountains with spouts made of bamboo. The wind was blowing, it wasn't too hot, and it's always a pleasure to walk around a nice nursery.
Then we went to a big box store to check out pond-making supplies and I started feeling weird there. Too many people and stuff for sale that I deem to be tacky and nasty and cheap which will end up in a land fill after people get tired of looking at it or it breaks, which it inevitably will.
I don't know. It all made me depressed.
Then to Publix to buy things for tomorrow's Mother's Day Sushi And Strawberry Shortcake feast and for tonight's Welcome Home Roland Party.
We stopped and had lunch and then we drove home through neighborhoods, looking for leaves for my husband to shred and mulch with, which seems to be his new favorite activity.
By the time we got home, I was ready to weep with the relief of being here. I opened up the front doors and let the breeze sweep through the hallway and put the groceries away and I'm still feeling sort of weird and anxious and I'm not exactly sure why but I think it may have something to do with Mother's Day, which is tomorrow.
Mother's Day is yet another big ol' American holiday that has come to represent a whole lot of shit that it was never meant to including flowers, jewelry, breakfast in bed served by impossibly cute children and impossibly handsome husbands and, oh yeah, all that emotional stuff tied into mothers.
I have no problem with the way my kids treat Mother's Day or me on it. I love getting together and doing some sort of food thing and maybe playing a couple of games. Sounds good to me.
But it's the part where I should be doing something with my own mother that makes my soul feel like it's covered in poison ivy.
My mother and I do not have a great relationship and I'm certainly not going to go into it here, but the fact is, well, I'm not a good daughter.
Just take my word on that one.
And I'm selfish to boot, which means that on Mother's Day, I want to be with my kids and I send my mom a stupidly expensive bouquet of flowers that are delivered and call that done.
Which would be fine if it really worked to make me feel I'd done my best but of course it doesn't.
Yoko Ono wrote a song that had the line in it, "It's that faint, faint sound of the childhood bell, ringing in my soul" and that line comes to me frequently because sometimes the sound of that childhood bell rings faintly and sometimes it tolls quite loudly for me.
BRONGGGGG! BRONGGGGG! BRONGGGGG!
And holidays seem to be especially good at creating the strong winds that swing it from where it's hanging, somewhere just right of my heart, somewhere just north of my belly, somewhere just inside my head.
I don't know that I'll ever resolve it, either. Don't know if I'll ever come to grips with everything that has so unfortunately happened between us. I probably could, if I spent tens of thousands of dollars in counseling but really I don't want to.
Just the thought of that makes me want to crawl into bed, turn on the fan and burrow under the covers, even on such a fine warm day as today.
Which of course I won't do. I'm not that fucked up about it. Not anymore. I used to be.
No. I think I'll go make some cobbler and a squash casserole for Roland's party instead. Make a cup of espresso to try and chase this depression and anxiety-fatigue away because right now I feel like I have a pond-sized well of tears sitting right behind my eyeballs, making me feel like I do on those days when the sky is gray and filled with huge clouds that are just not going to let down and rain to relieve the hot, humid air or the ground beneath them, panting with thirst.

It's no wonder I don't ever want to leave my house. It's beautiful here, it's calm. There are hardly ever voices raised in anger and there is no fear waiting behind doors, ready to jump out and grab me. Instead, there is light and there is a breeze that smells of confederate jasmine. There are birds at the feeder and a kind man outside, working in his garden who loves me and loves the kids.
Somehow, I've managed to create a sanctuary here and if I look at myself lovingly, I understand completely why I don't want to leave it.
I wish I could create a better relationship with my mother, too, but for some reason, I don't feel as if that's possible, or maybe that's just an excuse for not wanting to.
Either way, it's not happening today.
Not in time for Mother's Day.
Thank God for my kids. Thank God for them and thank God that I have been able to give them the sort of life that doesn't make them want to avoid me. I don't know how I managed but I know that somehow my mother must have had something to do with it and I am grateful beyond words for that.
I think I'll try and tell her that when I call her tomorrow.
It's a start.