Sunday, May 12, 2024
Mother!
It's commencement weekend for my mother, so she isn't able to be with us for Mother's Day. She arrives for the summer later this week, though, and I'm sure we will celebrate her thoroughly then. Not that she has ever really particularly wanted that. We are blessed that she is pretty chill about being feted, not just on this particular day but on her birthday and at Christmas as well. I guess I'm sort of similar -- I've started to see my birthday more as a source of pressure than anything else.
Anyway, my mom is great on a number of levels. She has dedicated several decades of her life to teaching young people, many of whom are not nearly as telegenic as the Dead Poet's Society crew. And speaking of dead poets, she introduced me to Eliot and Pound and also Dickinson, with an appropriate eye roll. She also took several years off in the prime of her career to stay home with me, which I was too young to really remember, but generally have fond feelings about. Also, she never really imposed any bedtimes or forced me to eat things I didn't like, with one notable exception that resulted in me vomiting into a jello cup at the Ground Round of Bloomington, IL. And I think we were all victims in that scenario.
Fear not, though, we were able to celebrate mothers and motherhood generally with a buffet brunch hosted by my sister for her mother-in-law. It was a beautiful day and good company and I ingested an unacceptable amount of hollandaise sauce. So consider yet another occasion observed.
