Mother’s Day

I was in a Hallmark store yesterday, looking for a Mother’s Day card for my wife. There were thirty guys crammed into the six foot wide aisle and ten more waiting for space … not one woman … the Y-chromosome must come equipped with a procrastination gene. Judging by the cards on the shelf, there seem to be several categories of male card buyers, probably determined by Hallmark though years of focus groups. There’s the Bigger is Better Buyer who believes that the best way to honor Mom is to give her the largest card on the block … though as a standard-sized card buyer, I’m inclined to think they’re over-compensating. There are the Humorous Card Buyers who can’t stand to see their Mom or wife cry … or laugh at their attempts to be serious. There are the Garish Card Buyers who think that every Mom’s dream card is covered with pink and magenta roses, lace, bows, and enough glitter to adorn an Elton John jacket. Then there’s the largest group, the Guilty Buyers who once or twice a year realize that they haven’t expressed their appreciation often enough to the women in their lives. Guilty Buyers always choose cards that begin with I know I don’t tell you often enough but … and follow it with a poetic paean to Mom that would make the Virgin Mary blush. As in … I know I don’t tell you often enough but besides being my best friend, lover, soulmate, and angel … the most perfect wife in the universe … you have been a perfect mother to our fabulous children. You alone have made them the beautiful, intelligent and thoughtful people that they are. They are your gift to the world and I am grateful to have been by your side as you’ve worked your miracles. I’ll try to express my appreciation more often next year. Gack! Me? I like a card that’s sincere and tasteful … so I read a lot of cards before I find the one comes home with me for Mother’s Day.

Mom

The night my Mom passed away, I was staying with my Dad at their house in East Haven, CT.  After weeks in the hospital fighting for her life against the side effects of diabetes, her kidneys had failed, so we moved her to a Hospice.  The call came in the middle of the night and I rode with my Dad for the 20 minute drive to the facility.  On the way, he told me that he needed to see her, to say goodbye.  I told her that I wasn’t going to that I wasn’t ready to see her deceased and he understood.  He suggested I wait in the chapel while he went to her room.  When I entered the chapel, she was there on a gurney.  There are moments that sear themselves into your braincells and I can still close my eyes and see her lying there.   She was seventy years old and I was forty-six.  I am almost seventy now.

Mother’s Day 2013

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Mom’s Day 2012

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Music: I Want a Mom (That Will Last Forever) from Rugrats in Paris – The Movie by Elliot Evans and West End Kids with The Voice In A Million Choir (originally by Cyndi Lauper)

Sweetness and a Crazy Cat

As I said in Monday Smiles, on Saturday, I took a hike in the hills of the Weir Canyon Wilderness Park behind our house.   The local flora has little in common with the neighborhood I grew up in in East Haven, Connecticut, with one exception … our local trails and the paths I followed through the woods as a boy were both sweetened by the scent of Honeysuckle.  There are twenty species of Honeysuckle that are indigenous to the United States but a number of species are also sold in nurseries as landscaping plants that are attractive to hummingbirds.  Have you noticed how often a certain scent from the past can bring a flood of memories?  According to an article on Discovery fit and health, this is because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain’s limbic system which is closely associated with memory and emotion.   As kids, we used to drink a tiny drop of nectar from the Honeysuckle blossoms.  How would it taste to a sixty-six year old curmudgeon?   I found a slightly yellow blossom (remembering those were the sweetest), pinched the base of the flower to carefully pull out the stamen, and touched it to my tongue.   Yes, it was sweet, a little taste of a childhood long ago.   The practice is apparently more common than I thought.  Not only did my son tell me he did it when he was a kid, there is a website with step-by-step directions, here.

Moms’ Day

It’s Moms’ Day and in thinking about what to post, I realized that in this time of two income families and career women, my experience with four generations of mothers … grandmothers, mothers, wife and daughter … is very likely a thing of the past.   All four generations have been and are stay-at-home Moms.  In the case of my grandmothers and my Mom, that was simply the way things were done.   For Muri and I, it was a choice, one made easier by the fact that once the kids were in school, she worked for the school district so she could be there when they came home.  My daughter’s decision to stay at home with the kids is an uncommon one these days, one I appreciate as both a father and a grandfather.

Mother’s Day Cards

I was in a Hallmark store yesterday, looking for a Mother’s Day card for my wife.   There were thirty guys crammed into the six foot wide aisle and ten more waiting for space …  not one woman … the Y-chromosome must come equipped with a procrastination gene.    Judging by the cards on the shelf, there seem to be several categories of male card buyers, probably determined by Hallmark though years of focus groups. There’s the Bigger is Better Buyer who believes that the best way to honor Mom is to give her the largest card on the block … though as a standard-sized card buyer, I’m inclined to think they’re over-compensating.   There are the Humorous Card Buyers who can’t stand to see their Mom or wife cry … or laugh at their attempts to be serious.   There are the Garish Card Buyers who think that every Mom’s