One of my favourite days of the year is Mother's Day. Because I had kid's late, the whole being-a-mother thing still seems kind of miraculous and surprising to me. I love the pure pleasure of breakfast-in-bed, kid-made gifts, a holiday-for-a-day in the Spring. Today Ben woke up (he'd come into our bed in the middle of the night--one of the down sides of parenthood!) and grinned and hugged me, saying "Happy Mother's Day!" remembering right away even in his sleepy state. Less than an hour later, however, he threw all the presents he'd made me in the garbage because he was so unhappy about Joel taking him and Michal zip-lining. And so these moments don't always last! (And when they got home from ziplining, Ben was bursting with excitement because he hadn't been afraid after all and he shyly asked me to come into his room and then said that he wanted to take my presents out of the garbage and give them back to me.) In the morning we went to the Farmer's Market with Andre and kids. On the way home, Andre told us that the qualities he and Brenda both appreciated most in their mothers were kindness and compassion. He asked me about my mom and I was surprised by the sheer number of things that came to mind (her zest for life, her sense of humour, her enthusiasm for the creative projects we did as kids, her creativity in general, her appreciation of beauty, the zillions of little sayings she still repeats, and her compassion, and her kindness--the list went on).
And from the 5-favourite-things list: there were no reference to mothers, but Photini and George did identify something that seems apt for Mother's Day: "One parent taking one child for an outing - to a play, for a bike ride, anything." It's because Joel took the kids this afternoon that I can finally catch up a little here.
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