Special days have special posts. 

Today is Mother’s Day. It is the day I honor my mother and my memories of her. Every year I post basically this same entry with only a few little changes. 

I am amazed at how long ago I lost my mother. Sometimes it seems like a day while other times it feels like forever. I keep her close always, in my heart. 

My mother was amazing. She was generous, fun to be with and was the perfect martyr when she needed to be, a skill I think most mothers have. It was her tone of voice so filled with pain that caused our guilt to well to the surface. “I’ll do it myself,” she’d say. We’d scurry to do whatever she wanted. She was tricky, that woman.

My sisters and I laugh often about the curses she inflicted on us: the love of everything Christmas and never thinking you have enough presents for everyone, giving Easter baskets overflowing with candy and fun toys and surprising people with a gift just because.

My mother had a generosity of spirit. She was funny and smart and the belle of every ball. She always had music going in the kitchen as she worked so she could sing along. She played Frank and Tony and Johnny and from her I learned the old songs. My mother drew all the relatives to her, and her house was filled on holidays and weekends. My cousins visited often. She was their favorite aunty. My mother loved to play Big Boggle, and we’d sit for hours at the kitchen table and play so many games we’d lose track of the time. Christmas was always amazing, and she passed this love to all of us. We traveled together, she and I, and my mother was game for anything. I remember Italy and my mother and me after dinner at the hotel bar where she’d enjoy her cognac. She never had it any other time, but we’re on vacation she said and anything goes. I talked to her just about every day, as did my sisters. I loved it when she came to visit. We’d shop, have dinner out then play games at night. I always waited on her when she was here. I figured it was the least I could do.

My mother loved extreme weather shows, TV judges and crime. She never missed Judge Judy. She also liked quiz shows and she and I used to play Jeopardy together on the phone at night. She always had a crossword puzzle book with a pen inside on the table beside her chair, and I used to try to fill in some of the blanks. On the dining room table was often a jig saw puzzle, and we all stopped to add pieces on the way to the kitchen. My mother loved a good time.

She did get feisty, and I remember flying slippers aimed at my head when I was a kid and one time a dictionary, a big dictionary, was thrown which luckily missed me though the binding broke when it hit the wall. I pointed that out to her and that made her madder. She expertly used mother’s guilt on us, her poor victims. We sometimes drove her crazy, and she let us know, none too quietly. We never argued over politics. She kept her opinions close. We sometimes argued over other things, but the arguments never lasted long.

Even after all this time, I still think to reach for the phone to call my mother when I see something interesting or have a question I know only she can answer, but then in a split second I remember. When I woke up this morning, my first thought was of her, and how much she is missed. No one ever told me how hard it would be. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!!

The sky is cloudy, and the day feels damp. It is a blah day, a day for staying home cozy and warm. I did go out to pick up my Mother’s Day dinner, the only item on my to-do list. I am treating myself. Dinner tomorrow will be steamers, fish chowder, salad, cole slaw and the crowning glory, lobster. Did I mention cheese cake is dessert?

For Mother’s Day, I always gave my mother a gift certificate to the nursery. She had window boxes below the front windows and filled them every year. I remember the red flowers and the trailing ivy. My mother also had a small garden next to the house, below the kitchen windows. A statue of St. Francis held seeds for the small birds. We used to kid my mother because her bird feeders attracted pigeons and crows, city birds we told her. Her squirrels were tight rope walkers. They walked across the clothesline to get to the bird feeders hanging off the line. My mother threw out food for the crows. Her backyard was food central for crows, squirrels and pigeons. She got really excited when a different bird flew into the yard. She loved watching my birds with not a pigeon or a crow among them.

When I am traveling, my favorite part of the day is the morning. I love watching places wake up. Mornings smell different. Here this time of year mornings smell green. In Ghana mornings smell of charcoal smoke. In Europe I liked to walk before breakfast. I could smell the exhausts of all the trucks lined up on the street for delivery to the stores before they open. White exhaust smoke was in the air. If I happened on a bakery, I’d buy a croissant and munch as I walked. Back at the hotel it was breakfast time, coffee time.

My father hated European breakfasts except for Ireland and England. My mother loved them. She was a seagull. She always ate odd things together. She loved cucumber sandwiches and cold hot dogs. At our hotels, the different cold cuts and breads put out for breakfast were perfect for her and me. My father said it was lunch. He wanted eggs. He didn’t get them except for hard-boiled. That always disappointed him.