Reprise of the Derby and Mother’s Day

 

Two of my girls

Jordan and Christian were among the hosts for a Run for the Roses Party Saturday, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society where they are both active. In the picture above, Jordan is shown with another of my daughters, though they aren’t sisters. The girl (she’ll like that) on the left is Sue Springfield. She calls me her Fort Worth mom, and I call her my Canadian daughter. The temptation is always there to call her my adopted daughter, but as the mother of four adopted children, I think that muddies the waters.

Maybe fifteen years ago, maybe more, Sue divorced, and she and her two young children moved next door to me. We became fast friends and spent many an evening sipping wine on my front porch and solving the problems of the world. Sue’s kids finished at the elementary school across the street, she was unhappy with the condition of her rental home, and she bought a house about ten minutes away which, over the years, she has transformed from ordinary to extraordinary. And then she met Teddy Springfield, a doctor and business manager from California. They married, and instead of whisking her away to California, Teddy moved here. And through all this, Sue and I have remained friends. One of my happiest happy hours is when Teddy and Sue come to sit on the patio.

So this picture reminds me again what a lucky mom I am. And since I spent Mother’s Day home alone, due to an unforeseen set of circumstances, I needed that reminder. The Burtons met with Christian’s family at Joe T. Garcia’s. At first, I cancelled some plans I had made and planned to go with them. But the more we talked about accessibility, the less enthusiastic I became. Finally I decided to stay home, and Jamie said he and Mel would come over from Frisco. But yesterday morning, he called suffering from one of the dizzy spells he periodically gets and has since he was in elementary school.

So I stayed home, and the day was like any other. When the Burtons came home, they were exhausted (post-Derby, I’m sure) and wanted nothing more than to sleep. During the day Jordan flitted in and out a couple of times, and Jacob came to blow the tree droppings off the patio, but that was my human companionship. I talked to each of the other three, had a sweet message from Sue, and spent the day at my desk.  Cooked myself a good dinner—crab cake, carrots cooked in olive oil and brown sugar (I love cooked carrots but no one else here will eat them), and guacamole Jordan brought home from Joe T.s. I was really fine alone, except for a couple of minutes of self-pity—which only proved that I’m all too human.

In posting about Mother’s Day yesterday, I forgot to acknowledge four women who I think of each year—the biological mothers of my children. I worry and wonder if they still feel a hole in their lives, have they moved on? I cannot believe that my babies don’t linger in a small corner of their hearts, and I’d like to reach out to them and tell them how healthy, happy, and successful those babies are. The social climate was a lot different fifty years ago (yes, three of them have passed the fifty-year mark), and I am grateful that these young women carried their babies to term. It’s particularly poignant right now.

A day brightener: yesterday I saw a male and female cardinal right outside my desk window. For several years now, this pair has made their home in our yard. They are, like me, homebodies and not given to wandering, so we see them frequently. Beuse of the old belief that the sight of a cardinal means someone from the other side is thinking of you, I always think this couple means my folks are watching over us.

So that was my Mother’s Day, a bittersweet one, now consigned to the past, while life goes on. Today I worked on recipes for my new novel, talked with someone about a small free lance project, and made plans for a new project. And just now I realized I was watching the news on BBC instead of NBC—an interesting change! Wondered why none of the newscasters looked familiar.