Mother's Day 2018
I have to say, Mother's Day this year wasn't too bad. I was in touch with a number of mothers (and one father, actually), and it seemed like everyone was having a pretty decent day/weekend, as the case may be.
For my own mother, I got up later than she did and handed her her card, rather than leaving it on the kitchen table like we'd normally do. She was...not as enamored with the card as I was (and this was despite my going, but you *like* toast!). I'm sure she's hoping for one of those flowery, overly-descriptive cards. Yeah, but we don't have that kind of relationship, and I can't give my mother a card that's a lie. Sorry. However, I then went and made pancakes, and she approved of that, so there you go. Bonus, the master bathroom's now done, so she spent much of Sunday moving out of my bathroom and into hers--and even cleaning my vanity in the process, since she's messy. Seriously. Every other day there'd be a glop of toothpaste or something in the sink. Is it that hard to rinse it out? Sheesh. But I did help as well. Mom and her plethora of towels needed to be dealt with, so I set about rolling them to place them on her new towel rack. She has several different colors and I had to arrange them pleasingly. I passed. So, not super exciting, but what she wanted and needed, so there you go.
I called grandma as well, and she'd gotten the card I'd sent her and thought it was lovely. That was a generic card, but it had purple flowers on the front so there you go. Mom had taken her out Friday night so they at least spent some time together. Alas, the reasoning wasn't great--grandma had been in a fender-bender recently and had to take her car in for body work. On Friday, they picked up her car, then went out to dinner. But they spent some time together several times last week, since mom helped in dropping off the car as well, and they were even texting my uncle at dinner. His family is on a trip to New York and they joked that he spent dinner with them too. He asked if they'd gotten him dessert, and they said yes--and ate it for him. Silly. But they had a good time.
The other thing we mentioned to grandma is to keep open the last weekend in May and the first weekend in June. My godmother, who is mom's cousin and grandma's niece, connected with us recently via the Ancestry DNA test. I'd written her right away but only heard back this past weekend. At a family memorial service about a year and a half ago, they'd mentioned getting together for lunch or something, but it never happened; my godmother brought it up again. So, we proposed those dates to her and we're waiting to hear back. I wasn't able to go to that service as it was the date of my Christmas concert back in 2016.
Continuing the contact explosion, I emailed some of my cousins and aunts on my dad's side; they started responding to each subsequent message, and by now I've heard from almost all of them, which is nice. The trend was nothing fancy, but still enjoyable, and they got to spend time with their kids or even grandkids.
Then, in the evening, I texted Laura to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. We haven't talked since Easter. It took a while to hear back, so in the meantime I called Mr. M from camp, as he'd called last week while I was at band and we hadn't connected yet. That ended up being an hour-long phone call, which was nice, but of course that's when Laura replied, so I felt bad ignoring her for the most part as she had interesting news to share but I kinda was involved in the verbal conversation. Mr. M was telling me how things were going at school, and it's concert season for him, and there's upheaval at his larger school...AGAIN...and he'd done an internal solo contest during regular lesson time. He purposely wore a tie that day, since he doesn't wear one normally; that's how the kids knew to treat that day differently. He and Mr. C have been talking up camp, but it's not looking good. Only 35 applications are in. They're not even cashing the checks until they see if camp's a go. People have through the end of the month, so just over two weeks, to get them in. They're just tired of fighting things. I can totally see that. And, given that we went into last year thinking it would be the last year, well, if that's how it goes, so be it. He also told me about his son, who's a Navy lifer. He got a promotion, I think to Admiral...and they're moving from Virginia to New Jersey. Their location before that? Hawaii. They just keep getting colder and colder. It's so funny, because I've known his son for many years due to camp, and I never, ever would have expected all that from him. I'm really impressed. It's a far cry from the goofy percussionist who was a counselor with me at one point.
Finally, when that was finished, I set about texting Laura, and we had a marathon session talking about work and stuff. She even sent me a couple pictures of her daughter, and I was astonished at how much older she looked just since Easter. My goodness! It was nice to talk to her, even if autocorrect thwarted what she was trying to say at one point (trying to type "rear" but it kept changing to "read"--look, phones, we don't work in bookstores anymore). Like my godmother, she and I have been trying to get together for a while and it just hasn't been happening, but we'll make it work at some point. It was just nice to hear from her--and everybody, really. Sometimes a hermit needs some human contact. Some hermits just get a month's worth into one day. ;)
For my own mother, I got up later than she did and handed her her card, rather than leaving it on the kitchen table like we'd normally do. She was...not as enamored with the card as I was (and this was despite my going, but you *like* toast!). I'm sure she's hoping for one of those flowery, overly-descriptive cards. Yeah, but we don't have that kind of relationship, and I can't give my mother a card that's a lie. Sorry. However, I then went and made pancakes, and she approved of that, so there you go. Bonus, the master bathroom's now done, so she spent much of Sunday moving out of my bathroom and into hers--and even cleaning my vanity in the process, since she's messy. Seriously. Every other day there'd be a glop of toothpaste or something in the sink. Is it that hard to rinse it out? Sheesh. But I did help as well. Mom and her plethora of towels needed to be dealt with, so I set about rolling them to place them on her new towel rack. She has several different colors and I had to arrange them pleasingly. I passed. So, not super exciting, but what she wanted and needed, so there you go.
I called grandma as well, and she'd gotten the card I'd sent her and thought it was lovely. That was a generic card, but it had purple flowers on the front so there you go. Mom had taken her out Friday night so they at least spent some time together. Alas, the reasoning wasn't great--grandma had been in a fender-bender recently and had to take her car in for body work. On Friday, they picked up her car, then went out to dinner. But they spent some time together several times last week, since mom helped in dropping off the car as well, and they were even texting my uncle at dinner. His family is on a trip to New York and they joked that he spent dinner with them too. He asked if they'd gotten him dessert, and they said yes--and ate it for him. Silly. But they had a good time.
The other thing we mentioned to grandma is to keep open the last weekend in May and the first weekend in June. My godmother, who is mom's cousin and grandma's niece, connected with us recently via the Ancestry DNA test. I'd written her right away but only heard back this past weekend. At a family memorial service about a year and a half ago, they'd mentioned getting together for lunch or something, but it never happened; my godmother brought it up again. So, we proposed those dates to her and we're waiting to hear back. I wasn't able to go to that service as it was the date of my Christmas concert back in 2016.
Continuing the contact explosion, I emailed some of my cousins and aunts on my dad's side; they started responding to each subsequent message, and by now I've heard from almost all of them, which is nice. The trend was nothing fancy, but still enjoyable, and they got to spend time with their kids or even grandkids.
Then, in the evening, I texted Laura to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. We haven't talked since Easter. It took a while to hear back, so in the meantime I called Mr. M from camp, as he'd called last week while I was at band and we hadn't connected yet. That ended up being an hour-long phone call, which was nice, but of course that's when Laura replied, so I felt bad ignoring her for the most part as she had interesting news to share but I kinda was involved in the verbal conversation. Mr. M was telling me how things were going at school, and it's concert season for him, and there's upheaval at his larger school...AGAIN...and he'd done an internal solo contest during regular lesson time. He purposely wore a tie that day, since he doesn't wear one normally; that's how the kids knew to treat that day differently. He and Mr. C have been talking up camp, but it's not looking good. Only 35 applications are in. They're not even cashing the checks until they see if camp's a go. People have through the end of the month, so just over two weeks, to get them in. They're just tired of fighting things. I can totally see that. And, given that we went into last year thinking it would be the last year, well, if that's how it goes, so be it. He also told me about his son, who's a Navy lifer. He got a promotion, I think to Admiral...and they're moving from Virginia to New Jersey. Their location before that? Hawaii. They just keep getting colder and colder. It's so funny, because I've known his son for many years due to camp, and I never, ever would have expected all that from him. I'm really impressed. It's a far cry from the goofy percussionist who was a counselor with me at one point.
Finally, when that was finished, I set about texting Laura, and we had a marathon session talking about work and stuff. She even sent me a couple pictures of her daughter, and I was astonished at how much older she looked just since Easter. My goodness! It was nice to talk to her, even if autocorrect thwarted what she was trying to say at one point (trying to type "rear" but it kept changing to "read"--look, phones, we don't work in bookstores anymore). Like my godmother, she and I have been trying to get together for a while and it just hasn't been happening, but we'll make it work at some point. It was just nice to hear from her--and everybody, really. Sometimes a hermit needs some human contact. Some hermits just get a month's worth into one day. ;)