I had a really nice Mother's Day. Nothing extra-special, no big brunch, towering gifts, or enormous bouquets of flowers. Just a nice day chatting with all three daughters, face-timing with the little granddaughters, an egg sandwich breakfast and our first creemee of the season (mine was german chocolate.) And we were planning on barbecuing steak for dinner, except for the mice who had taken up residence in our grill all winter forced us to reconsider this decision, and we broiled them inside with plans to thoroughly clean the grill before we use it! OK, wait, that sounds like we broiled the mice indoors! No, no, we broiled the steaks inside :-)
But what Mother's Day did make me think about was how hard it can be not being close to the rest of our family on special days. One daughter was pretty much alone all day with her daughters, and it was a little sad thinking that if we did live closer we could have spent some of the day together. She's also just recently told us that she is pregnant again, and due mid-December, so she is still in those early, pretty rotten feeling months. We are super excited about adding TWO grandchildren this year, but we just don't see each other nearly often enough. And it would have been nice to see how the other daughter who is 5 months pregnant is doing also. Funny, when we actually did live down there it always seemed like it was such an effort to be together on holidays because we were trying to coordinate around the other family, and their plans and it would end up being a rushed gathering just to fill the requirement. So, the days are really just whatever we make of them, or what we don't make of them, and in all my history of Mother's Days, there aren't many that stick out in my memory.
There is one other thinking that has come my way recently, and that also involves the lack of time we have to share with our grandchildren. We had our girls early in our lives, and early in our married life. It has always been great for us. In some ways we grew up with them, meaning that we didn't "have it all together" when we started our family, no big paying jobs, no large nest-egg for their expenses or college tuition, but it worked out being young as we attended parents days and games and activities. And we are still young enough to enjoy having grandchildren. But.....we still have years before we can retire, and live that kind of "not planning everything around my days off" schedule, and now, I can see how that could be a big benefit. Imagine sitting at the breakfast table one morning, looking at each other, and saying "hey, we don't have anything much going on this week. Why don't we drive down to Maryland and surprise the kids?" And taking off, just like that? Someday................................
