Tag: mother’s day

grief, motherhood

Decade (Without You)

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Dear Mom,

This Mother’s Day 2019 is my tenth one without you.

I miss you.

Since you died I have to be honest, Mother’s Day has not felt right to me.  Without you, I don’t know how to be on this day.  For thirty-four years I knew, and then for the last ten, I don’t.

It isn’t for lack of having awesome kids of my own.  How I wish you could know them as they are now.  I imagine the scope of sports stats you would discuss with Full Speed would know no bounds.  T.Puzzle would crack you up.  A lot.

I didn’t exactly follow your parenting paradigm, but my boys were paradigm busters. They were/are firecrackers.  I made it up as we went along.  I had to.  I didn’t have you to ask for advice.

I made mistakes.  A lot of mistakes.  So many mistakes.  What I didn’t account for was the natural resilience of both my boys.

There really isn’t much I can do to mess that up.  My best course of action is no action at all.  

I’d like to think that some of your best qualities are reflected in both of them.  Full Speed has your practical logic locked down.  He has an uncanny ability to throw reason at me when I am hooked into an emotional arc of uncertainty.  T.Puzzle’s quick wit often reminds me of you.

You always made me laugh.

I miss laughing with you.

If I could talk to you I’d like you to know that Mad Dog loves me for exactly who I am.  You and I suspected he did, but time and living a life together has proven this as fact.

I’d want you to know that the Cubs finally won the World Series.  My heart still aches that I couldn’t share that experience with you.

I was at game three and game five at Wrigley.

For real.

Not too shabby for a girl growing up in the cornfields of Illinois.

Sometimes I wonder who your current favorite player would be.  My guess changes from season to season.  I know you would love Javy but he’s a bit of a loose cannon.  Maybe Schwarber for his gritty comeback?  Maybe Zo with his MVP World Series run and his cool demeanor on the field and at the plate?

I wish I could talk baseball with you.

I wish I could tell you that I am a writer now.  I have always been but now I sometimes get published.  And sometimes the letters I configure on a page help others remember they are loved and moves them towards healing.

To me, that is grace.

To me, that is everything.

I would tell you that I love you.  That you shaped me into the woman that I am.  That because of you I love birds, baseball and the color blue.

I know that you sometimes couldn’t understand why I wore my heart on my sleeve but it’s okay, you are not alone in this.  Now that I am older I realize my emotionality isn’t a choice, it is a way of being.  It hurts me more to hide it, so I hide it less and less.

Either way, you’d love me.  Either way, you loved me.

I still carry your voice in my heart and your love in my soul.

In many ways, you never left me.

I wish I could take you to the mountains.  I wish I could sit next to you on a porch and listen to the birds calling each other home.  I wish I could take your hand in mine, look you in your clear blue eyes and tell you what is true.

I love you, Mom.

Always have, always will.

Happy Mother’s Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

children, humor, kids, motherhood

Mighty Popcorn Containers (This Means YOU)

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Dear Reader,

You are the frosting on my cupcake.

You are the popcorn container around my popcorn.

You put the sprinkles on my doughnut.

Ok, so maybe I had some serious writer’s block today.  And, maybe, just maybe, I stole these exact words from T.Puzzle’s Mother’s Day creation:

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Now, go forth and contain the popcorn of the world!

 

 

humor, kids, motherhood

Isn’t That Great?

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At this age T.Puzzle would  unabashedly express his undying adoration for me.  I miss those days.

As I watched T.Puzzle pummel his clothes into submission, there was little I could do to improve his laundry folding techniques.  Neatness was not the objective here.

I let it go.

This is the key to happiness in life and in motherhood.

In this house, especially in regards to T.Puzzle, it also helps to have thick skin.  You see T.Puzzle was born without a filter. While he is softening the crusty edges of his soul a bit as he grows older, he still needs direction when it comes to matters of the heart.  I decided to take it upon myself to share a little guidance when it comes to signing my upcoming Mother’s Day card.

“Keep in mind, try not to only highlight the things I do for you, but rather what about me as a person that you love.”

Immediately, a lightbulb went off and he shared his plans to sign his card to me this way:

“Thank you for giving birth to the greatest human alive.”

Wow.  I really am special.

Here’s to hoping all your ‘greatest humans alive’ honor you in the way you so deserve.

Happy Mother’s Day!

 

children, family, humor, motherhood, parenting

1, 2, 3 Strikes You’re Out

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I want to give you fair warning.  This post is going to be pretty emotional.  You are going to get a sense of how deeply connected T.Puzzle is to me, his overarching love of school and lastly, Full Speed’s brotherly commitment to look out for T.Puzzle.  It’s all there…enjoy.

In recent months we have been noticing a theme in T.Puzzle’s life.  And that theme is…video games.  He is rather obsessed and talks about gaming constantly.  Even when we have a round of ‘family questions’ at the dinner table, rather miraculously he can loop it back to video games.

Here are some examples:

If you could be anyone in the world for a day, who would you be?

“Someone allowed to play video games all day and night long.”

If you saw your friend steal something, would you turn them in?

“That depends on what it is.  If it’s a cool video game, probably not.  I’d want to play it with him.”

You get the idea.

A couple years back, T.Puzzle was given the task at school to make me a Mother’s Day card.  Here’s the final result, and get those tissues ready… the tears are going to fall…

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I told you it was emotional.  I’ll give you a minute while you collect yourself.

Better?  Good.

Since it’s clear that T.Puzzle loves video games above all else, what’s a mom to do with this sort of intel?  About two weeks ago I put T.Puzzle on an incentive program.  His manners and attitude still often leave much to be desired.  If he happens to forget his manners, roll his eyes at me or give me lip when asked to do a chore, he gets a strike.  If he gets three strikes in a seven day period, he loses gaming privileges for the weekend (the only time he is allowed to play them during the school year).  Naturally, it’s working pretty well.  Except for this past week, he was feeling particularly ornery with his brother and had already used two strikes.  We were on the edge of our seats…would he make it the final stretch without a strike?  He did ok on the last night, but he still had to make it through the morning (the seven day strike period runs Friday after school through Friday morning the following week).   As he trounced into the kitchen this morning I asked, “Do you think you can make it until you go to school without getting another strike?”

“Sure!  But I better leave now!  Gotta go.  Can’t wait to get there!”  This all coming from a kid who is currently appalled that he has perfect attendance.

Of course, this made me laugh.  He is self-aware enough to know that his inabilty to control impulses could land him in third strike territory.

We managed to get through breakfast and the rest of our morning without incident.

T.Puzzle was first out of the garage with his bike as usual.  I turned to Full Speed and said, “Can you believe he actually made it without a third strike?”

“Mom!  He didn’t say goodbye to you!  That’s an automatic strike!”

“Nice try, kid.”

“I’m serious, Mom!  He rode his bike DANGEROUSLY FAST down the driveway.  He’s gotta get a strike for that.”

“Full Speed, it just warms my heart how much you look out for your brother.”

Wonder if he loves him as much as video games?

children, family, gratitude, kids, motherhood, parenting

Change Your Mind, Not Yourself (Happy Mother’s Day)

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I recently was scrolling through a woman’s magazine on my iPad.  I quickly became discouraged as page after page advertised or extolled all the ways I needed to improve my external appearance.   It seems I have too many spots, wrinkles and imperfections to be considered truly beautiful by this magazine’s stringent and impossible standards.  I started to get really mad.  Mad at myself for all my flaws and mad at this magazine for pressuring me to be perfect.  Eventually I realized that I couldn’t really be mad at the magazine.  It is only perpetuating the insane ideals we as a whole have bought into.  What really, can any of us do about it?  We are helpless to the passage of time and the changes our faces and bodies will inevitably go through.  No amount of cream, lotion or potion will stop this.

Since I can’t change society or the external pressures we face, all I can do is change my mind about my own standard of beauty.  I started to think about the people in my life that were and are beautiful to me.  First and foremost, there was my Mom.  While she was living, she was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever had the honor of knowing.  She had the lightest blue eyes that always hinted at the wry humor hidden within them and she had this megawatt smile that could light up a room.  Hmmm,… she wasn’t a supermodel and she still did age through the years yet she was gorgeous to me.

My Beautiful Mom
My Beautiful Mom

On this Mother’s Day, I would like us all to entertain the possibility that maybe how we look on the outside has nothing to do with real beauty.  Let’s try to honor ourselves by how we love instead of how we look.

My wish for today is that when my boys look back at this time in our lives, they will recall a Mom who loved as much as she was loved and above all else, was perfectly beautiful just as she was.

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