Three Gifts

Portrait of my Mom taken in the Forties

Mother's Day is always fraught with anxious expectation for me.  My Mom and Dad used to go to Spectacle Lake in Eastern Washington during the week of Mother's Day.  This was after Mom's kids were grown and I think the idea was to not be home waiting for phone calls.  That's wise!  I found myself waiting at home for phone calls this past Sunday.  Not fun, I assure you.  I kept busy, gardening, helping to repair a little dent I put in my car, reading, watching 60 Minutes, cooking dinner.  But I was rewarded this year with three phone calls.  Here are the three gifts I got this Mother's Day:

1.  I took my Mom to lunch during the week and gave her a gift I've been working on, literally, for years.  Several years ago Mom gave me 35 chapters of a memoir she envisioned. She wrote the pages while she was working in a writer's group sponsored by her Tracyton Methodist Church.  Each was an assignment:  Write about Your Favorite Christmas Present, Your Mother, Your Father, etc.  Mom asked me to type up the pages on the computer and add pictures from her youth, her motherhood, her married life.  I had typed most of the pages before I retired and my first goal of retirement was to finish typing, choose and insert the pictures, copy in color at Kinkos, get the book bound and give it to Mom.  There was a certain urgency and anxiety in this as I had make a "picture book" by hand, honoring my Dad, to be given to him on his 80th birthday, but he got sick and didn't ever really "see" it.  I took it to him in the hospital but I don't think he realized what it was.  I ended up displaying it at his memorial service two weeks later.  I didn't want that kind of thing to happen to Mom's memoir.  The memoir finished nicely.  The cover is a watercolor that an artist neighbor painted of her when Mom was in her late 20s.  The book looks really nice.  So, okay.....I gave it to her at lunch.  She was flabbergasted, blown away, couldn't believe her eyes.  She had largely forgotten that she asked me to do this for her.  She is totally unaware of what can be done with a computer.  She could hardly wrap her mind around the finished product.  I had to keep telling her that she had written every word, that I had merely put it together.  Over and over she exclaimed what a wonderful gift it was.  It was the look on her face and the emotion in her voice that were my first Mother's Day gifts this year.

2.  The second gift was the three phone calls from my kids.

Carolyn, middle daughter who lives in San Diego, called first, mid-morning.  We talked about my grandson, Alex, 6 years old; Starbucks, where she works; dating, which she is doing again after breaking up with a boyfriend at Christmas.  I was looking for, as usual, evidence of happiness in her life, and I detected some.

Christopher, my son in Wisconsin, called next.  He was talking while driving his family and his Mom and Dad-in-law to Duluth for a week long vacation by Lake Superior.  I don't condone talking on a cell phone while driving, but I didn't quibble.  He was calling, that's what mattered. We talked about books I'd sent him for his 32nd birthday two weeks before; his basement remodeling; the cottage they would stay in at Duluth; my plans to visit again in December; his beloved, rare Acura car, which he vows never to sell.  ( I wish I knew what model it is so any guys who read this can know, but I'm afraid all I know is that it's yellow, it's small and he used to race it.)  I didn't have to look for signs of happiness, because he has always been pretty self-contained and I happen to know that right now things are good.

My eldest daughter called around 7:15, 10:15 her time, in Norfolk, VA.  We discussed so many things it's hard to remember them all.  We had talked recently so were pretty caught up but there are always lots of things to talk about with Erin.  She and I, who used to be not so easy with each other, are now Mom/Daughter friends and she is about to be a grandma for the first time, so we have even more in common now.  The conversation ranged from what we are currently reading, to my two grownup grandsons, to her charming-and-good-looking-husband, Kent's, birthday, to knitting (she does, I don't), to Star Trek. She gave me my third Mother's Day gift.

3.  Erin, the eldest, will be a grandma of triplets.  We've know this now for a couple of months. My grandson, Nick, and the young woman who will give birth to the triplets with him, Nicole, have already picked out names.  One of the names for one of the two girls was Madison something.  Nick or Nicole decided they didn't like that name and so they changed it to Gabrielle, but they were stuck for a middle name--Erin suggested my name--Gabrielle Christine.  So, unless they decide that's not what they want, I will be immortalized, at least for her lifetime, in this brand new little girl's name.

Those were my three gifts.  I don't think I've ever had this satisfying a Mother's Day.  I got caught up on all three of my delightful children, I made my own Mom really happy, and I get to be remembered in somebody's name.  I hope you had a satisfying Mother's Day.  I know some of you probably didn't, but there is still hope because we're still here.

While you're waiting let me leave you with this great quote:

"Our young haven't lost their history; it was taken from them...You've got a file on this century stored in your heads, that nobody else has.  There'll be nobody like you ever again.  Make the most of every molecule you've got, as long as you've got a second to go.  That is your assignment.  That is your charge."              David Bowers, Environmentalist