This year, I did Mother’s Day wrong

I was settling in for a long-overdue nap when I got a text from a second team member calling out. I was unable to coax anyone into coming in for an OT shift so I got in the shower and went into the office myself. Then I got some news about the house in Memphis needing a major repair, for which I do not have the funds, so I contacted my mom to ask to borrow money.

So, in conclusion:

Next Mother’s Day, my goal is to not abandon my child to go to the office and to not call my mom and ask for money.

My first Mother’s Day

lilies2

The day itself was forever ago but here in Ihardlypostistan, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to write something about it.

I got lots of lovely calls and texts from family and friends, and Samantha was sweet enough to send those beautiful lilies you see up there. They came all closed up but within days were all BAM BAM BAM! with their colors, making Mr. Kitty go insane with plant lust.

My boys got me a sweet mug and mouse pad featuring their smiling faces so I could see them while at work.

Perfect, all the way around!

Mom + laptop = FACEBOOK ASPLOSION

It’s a rainy morning here in scenic Saltillo, Tenn. Bill Engvall’s funny-video show is on the TV and dad’s in the recliner snoring. Mom’s napping in bed.

Yesterday we gave my mom a laptop for Mother’s Day, which she was so excited and surprised about. She and Dad have had the same old Dell desktop since about 2001. They’ve done no operating system or RAM upgrades in the intervening years, so you can sort of imagine how the thing is running now. Mom’s chronic pain issues also make it hard for her sometimes to get upstairs and sit at the desk for long periods of time.

Soon as we got the laptop set up (I installed Chrome and Firefox for her to play with, as well as iTunes and OpenOffice and all her PopCap games I could find activation keys for), she was updating her Facebook page and surfing like a champ. Kudos to my sister for pushing for the laptop for Mother’s Day when I was pushing for Christmas.

Mom has been raving about my coffee grinder since the first time she used it, so I got her one of her own. She couldn’t believe the Mother’s Day bounty this year. She’ll be buzzin’ and laptoppin’ around the clock now. This will surely result in my being scolded about my language at a rate I am definitely unprepared for.

Day 130: Mom and Charlie

Day 130: Mom and Charlie

Mother’s Day this year entailed a giant box of fried chicken (fifty pieces!) and me sipping on sugary homemade margaritas and watching cable on a big-screen TV for nine hours. I gave my mom a couple of mom-and-daughter-themed books and she was so touched that, the next day, she went and got two huge pink peonies out of the flower bed and brought them in while serenading me with “You Are So Beautiful.” She’s the best.

Her dog, however, is a total crackhead.

[Project 365]

For Mom

The New Stranger
by Sharon Olds (from Blood, Tin, Straw)

They would peer in the carriage and ask was your father
Chinese, your lustrous, curly-lidded,
slightly tilted eyes, your elegant
forehead. You were a stranger to me—
I thought I would know you, but I had to get to know you—
I know your bowl brow, and serious
eyes, but sometimes you were alien to me
as a foetus, the large-brained head, the brain
forming its ancient folded flower
like a vegetable, you could not talk,
you looked at me as if from far
away, Mars, the newt, I did not
know you, I had never known a newborn, you
had to arrive into the arms of an amateur.
No one has known my ignorance so well, so
smelled my fear, there, with the fresh
abundant milk. And from no one have I learned
as I learned from you, you brought me forward
from brine and kelp and alkali
through mitosis, meiosis, zygote, delicate
blastocoele, with your eyes I swam up
from deep in your face, with your lips I opened,
with your tongue I formed your name, with the stub of your
hand I budded, with your baby-fat
I put on cells, with your brown, swirling
crown I crowned, with your life I came forth,
and a moment later, rose-blue, you opened
the new package of your breath. I looked
up, and saw you. Hard to tell,
in those first moments on the delivery table,
gore, and cord, and packet of gore,
who has hooked whom—you caught me
into the human. I learned to sit still while you
hauled that whale of milk tail-first down
out of me—split, fiery
flukes of your first sips—I learned to be
nuzzled as they might cuddle an autistic child. I learned to croon to you,
to cry and moan, and all this time
you were getting your first looks at the earth, it was
you, and I did not know you, I was not
there to greet you, I didn’t exist
until you smiled at me, and in your
brilliant loam-colored iris I saw,
tiny as an embryo,
your mother smile.