Happy Mother's Day 2012

 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day wishes to Julie, Pascale, Jeannette, Melanie and Melissa.  I send hugs and love, and gratitude for who you are, gratitude for all you do to make this earth a place where your children, my eleven grandchildren can grow and flourish.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mother. 

And for you a story…

On Mother’s Day, when I was ten (and for several years after that), I plagiarised a poem by Edgar A. Guest, as a gift for my mother.  The poem was called “She Mothered Five.”  Each year, I adjusted the words and the lines to make the verses appropriate for whatever was happening in our family of five children.  Guest’s sentimental verses about everyday life appealed to my ten year old sensibilities.  Mum mothered five of us for 25 years until my brother died in an accident; then there were four of us, four girls left.

When I was a teenager, I stopped stealing poems for my mother, switched to flowers or homemade offerings.  I remember going through an obnoxious stage where we called her “The Imperial Dragon”… yes, to her face.  She didn’t seem to mind.  Five adolescents required fire-breathing dragon-like parenting.  We all survived…sometimes toasted at the edges.

My Mother’s Day gifts and remembrances have evolved.  And they continue because it’s fun to remind my mother that I love her and that I am grateful for what she has taught me, for what she has given me.

Today I'm making her brunch and I’ll give her a bottle of Dubonnet; no doubt, she could have used that when we were teenagers.   I’m glad she’s my Mum and that she had the strength and the courage to mother the five of us.

I’ll tell her I love her… and, of course say "Happy Mother’s Day."

Photo is mine.