To Mom, Because it's True

Mommy,

Happy YOU day! 

Thank you for loving your family and never deserting us—sometimes we got crazy but you STAYED!

Thank you for keeping our basic needs met and caring enough to get us vaccinated and to the dentist on a regular basis so we were pretty DANG healthy and had great teeth. (Thank you for laughing right now at my use of the word 'dang.')

Thank you for keeping us protected from the sun but not making us wear big floppy hats and gloves everywhere.

Thank you for reading to us and reading to yourself so we knew you really actually liked reading. And especially thank you for reading the CLASSICS to us, such as The Count of Monte Cristo, The Secret Garden, David Copperfield, and The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Thank you for letting us go off and play by ourselves and wander around in the woods and the fields so that we grew up with a love of nature and had great imaginations and could skin our knees.

Thank you for teaching us about hard work and responsibility by being a hard-working responsible adult.

Thank you for not putting money or a career above your family and for sacrificing your time by staying home with us when we were little; I KNOW you don't regret it. 

Thank you for teaching us about God's love by showing us UNCONDITIONAL love no matter what mistakes we made. 

Incidentally, thank you for choosing to marry a GREAT man who became our father to help raise us to be the AWESOME kids that we are.

Thank you for going around the house always singing. (Yes, even when it was 6 a.m. and you were the only one up and taking a shower and we were supposed to be up getting ready for school but it was 6 AM so why in the world would we be up but at least we didn't have to set an alarm.)

Thank you for encouraging us to follow our DREAMS and never telling us anything was impossible or stupid. (Like even when I wanted to be a jockey, an Olympic gymnast, an Olympic figure skater, and a dolphin trainer and we didn't have horses, I couldn't do the splits, we didn't live near a skating rink and I was afraid of water and couldn't swim.)

Thank you for teaching us the value of a good long walk to work out stress, blow off steam, have a talk with someone, or just to get out and get MOVING. 

Thank you for your spontaneous gifts—like SPURTLES—just because you have great joy in giving.

Thank you for your love of plants and flowers so that your home could be a stop on a Better Homes and Gardens tour, your office is a jungle, and I am never without plants even if mine die by some strange alien fungus infection—you always bring me another one that's healthy.

Thank you for laughing a lot. Lots of laughing. 

Thank you for reading my blog, for checking every day to see if I have written a new post, and for telling people about my blog. (BIG CHEESY GRIN.)

Thank you for always having an ABUNDANT supply of CHOCOLATE because not only do you share it—sometimes—but then I don't have to feel guilty for not buying you any for Mother's Day! (another BIG CHEESY GRIN.) 

I LOVE YOU MOM!

How to Spend a Day

Let the birds awaken you, even if the light beats them to it. Then stare at the greens and reds from the leafy trees outside your window and fall back into a dreamful slumber.

Stretch, then step lightly out of bed and stare—astonished—at the clock: 10:00 a.m. already. Wander downstairs and get a tall glass of water, greeting your husband as he reads in the corner (of course he has been up for awhile).

Read, then stretch again after a bit, then find some deliciousness called breakfast. Hear the warmth of the shower singing upstairs and go join in (if not the singing then just the shower).

Find your hat, sandals, sunglasses. Take your husband's hand and go out walking. Notice everything: the cloudless blue sky; the rock and flower gardens, the quail running down the street.

Merge onto the river path and dance sideways when your husband hears a snake rustle in the grass. Hear the red-winged blackbirds and an assortment of other birds whose names you wish you knew. Peek at the mother swan who continues to build her old nest into this year's level of comfort. No eggs yet. Watch her guy strut his stuff on the far side of the water, likely ready to battle the Canada geese who honk nearby.

Dodge some more snakes, that you never see but your husband doesn't miss, and come to the part of the trail that becomes a river. Decide to turn back, but then take an alternate exit where you see a wood duck family scurry over the water.

Back to the road, make your way home and prepare lunch. Let your husband come rescue you when nothing seems to come together quite as you would like. Hugs and corn bread make it all better.

Retreat downstairs to the warmth of a fire—never mind that summer is just on the horizon—and devour lunch. Then snuggle into your food coma and enjoy a classic movie.

End up back outside in the brightness and walk again, this time to Starbucks. Take your computer and read over a few blogs before settling back onto your own. Slurp down a chocolate smoothie—that could handle more chocolate, in your opinion—while thinking, talking, writing, and every little bit looking up radios online for your husband.

People watch; observe the setting sun. Breathe in. Breathe out. Take time just to be.

Completion

Some days when I don't believe I am a writer I skim through all my files of half-started, never finished essays, poems, and mind scraps and buff up my ego and say, Ah ha! Proof that I can write! Then, what do I do but put them all away again. Ignoring all the advice I gave to students that the most important first step is to get it all down on paper, I don't finish what I start because I'm waiting for inspiration or because I just don't think it's good enough to ever become anything.

Well if every writer did that we wouldn't have libraries, bookstores, movies, or plays made up of marvelous or even mediocre stories. All would be incomplete. Imagine:

"To be—or not"

(Shakespeare to self: "It's good. I really have something there. If only the muse would visit me again. Guess I'll go sharpen my pens while I wait for inspiration. Oh look, squirrel!")

"It was the best of times—"

(Dickens: "No, that's no good. I mean there's rather a nice ring to it, but no one will want to read such a cheery book.")

"Call me—"

(Melville: "I prefer not to continue this book until I come up with the exact perfect name for this character.")

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

(Austen: "There. That should satisfy this insipid writing idea for awhile. I'll just get back to my piano forte, drawing, and Latin studies.")

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking [five]."

(Orwell: "Five, seven, thirteen—the exact time isn't really important. In fact, this whole story just doesn't have much importance to it.")

"It was a dark and stormy night"

(Bulwer-Lytton, the original author of this famous first line: "No, too silly. No one will ever take this intro seriously." (Hmm, maybe he would have been right. . . . but then we never would have had Snoopy's classic take on this.)

(Thank you Snoopy for teaching writers—especially this writer—that important lesson. And thank you too, Charles Schulz!)