Mother’s Day

When you begin Mother’s Day week with court, it’s always a little different than previous celebrations.  You finally realize the father of your children is not the one to trust with your or their lives and it shifts the cards and candies to the backburner.

But, Tuesday and Wednesday come and make things fill up your week so that you forget the grin of the opposing lawyer as he states bankruptcy is being declared that very day, the lonely walk back from court through China Town, and the fact that you’ll be late picking your kids up from school again.  Wednesday even brings an opportunity to attend a stunt meeting that truly inspires and maybe restores your view of putrid mankind.  You know, you love mankind, but there are moments when you can’t handle the smell.  You hand out your resume, the one with the tri swimming, aerial yoga certification, arm wrestling competition, you know, whatever it was that landed you a commercial that could qualify for a stunt.  And, you hope a coordinator will put you in the next MI, or Bourne, yeah, the guy from Bourne was very sweet even if he said I had to choose one or the other.  But, you actually talk to people who have been all over the world and have done amazing things and yet have smaller egos than the incredibly inflated book tables at so called shepherd conferences.  So, you laugh to your more informed self.  They shake your hand and thank you for coming.  Strange, actually nice people who love their business and want others to join them.

Thursday comes and as a true gift from God, you actually get to be a roving substitute for the day and hit three of the classes your kids are in.  As a mom, that has to be the biggest blessing, seeing them in action, teaching them along with all their friends.  Can’t say I didn’t try to embarrass my sixth grader as I went from desk to desk telling them all to put their names on their paper.  When I couldn’t find the name of his potential chick, I just had to resort to pointing at each table to see if he would nod.  He just turned really red but then, he’s a redhead so that’s not too hard.  Friday brings an extended stay at two dentists to try to treat a fouled root canal on your sweet first grader.  Arriving at 10:30, they tell you they can’t treat until 3. Even though the drive was incredible with the great rocks and clouds that filled the 118 over to Simi Valley, you can’t hang out there or make two trips with your mega van.  Knowing you have an appt. for your also semi-sweet third grader at 3:30, you beg them to honor the time.  They send you to another office closer to home.  You rush over there to have to wait two hours and have them tell you they don’t think he can be treated, he’s too uncooperative.  Guess he wasn’t, not when they tried to push the tray in his mouth without any kid talk and just mean faces.  They say we’ll have to see a specialist since it’s infected.  Oh well. So, you rush home but miss picking the kids up in the rain again and manage to get your third grader to her appointment.

Friday begins and it’s a relief.

Saturday brings a mother’s day brunch so you go and the kids refuse even though you signed them up.  But, as you sit there, you wait a half hour at the back table and wish you didn’t feel so guilty, you could be making Saturday pancakes for everyone.  You check out the seat gift, awesome sprays and soaps from True Botanicals.  It will be worth it, even if the violins won’t stop playing and you like them but you just wish they’d stop playing.  Then, a really nice lady sits down next to you.  So pent up with her experience, she blurts it all out…her husband, a local no good politician that has cheated on her for years, finally got out of the house, leaving her with four children, scum a le scum.  I’m amazed at the gall of these husbands who can destroy families and still maintain their innocence in public.  Yikes for their souls.  Then, a lady comes and pulls the chair out to my left, banging my leg, and sits down.  She offers her name and an ice cold hand.  I tell her mine and she then looks away.  Another lady comes up and tells us we have to move, it’s the speakers table.  We get up and I lean over to the new lady to say we have to move.  She murmurs something.  I say, I think they want us to move.  She looks back and says she’s a speaker.  Oh, oops.  I get up but by then all the chairs are filled and after moving left and then right, not being able to go backwards, finding purses on all the chairs, feeling the sack coming, bolted through the door and lost my botanicals.  Oh well, I did get to make pancakes at home and was greeted by the warmest, fuzziest haired, five year old with a big hug.  Maybe that’s all a mom needs, not a song and a banner that says, ‘You are enough,’ but a big hug. A knock came that night at nine, while I was screaming for them to unplug the carpet cleaner we rented from the upstairs so I wouldn’t fall over backwards on the middle ones.  The kids came running saying someone was at the door.  I went and was surprised some moms from my kid’s classes put together a basket and brought some food for us.  It was amazing how generous they were.  Four boxes of cereal (which has a shelf life of 2.3 days in the pantry lately) and paper towels, so much,  and a huge thing of tea tree hand soap that put out the ‘you shouldn’t have left, you needed that hand soap’ guilt fire I carried since walking out of the morning mom’s thing.  They were so kind.  One even ran and got baby Tylenol for us.  I shut the door and the kids came out, seeing everything and said, ‘What?’  I said, I know and broke down, saying “Why were they so nice?”  The kids hugged again and we experienced human kindness and it was amazing.

Oh, then Mother’s Day came.  My twin brother even sent a tea pot with a magic flower blossoming thing that will be great to try with the kids.  Your vow to never touch tea again since the Big British Exile had occurred, may be rescinded.  And, the day was filled with peace and my kids smiling, fighting too throughout the day as they do, but smiling. And, that is enough.