My daughters stood on the dock at Ashfield Lake, tossing handfuls of sand at a cheese puff in an attempt to sink it. As one does. A fish nabbed the puff, so they started all over again with a second puff. This went on for quite some time. It was a beautiful, peaceful day at the lake. May 1: not nearly warm enough for swimming, but a nice day to try to sink a cheese puff.
Splash. Eliza fell in the water.
I missed the moment and turned around to see her clambering back onto the dock, her long cotton dress dripping with chilled pond water. She burst into tears, but this was a moment of triumph for me as a parent. All those swim lessons and the countless hours spent in water have paid off. She can keep her wits about her in a water emergency!
What she can’t do is make a rational choice to take the soggy dress off and put on a dry change of clothes I have in my car. She didn’t care for the color of leggings I had stashed, so that was a hard no for her. It took quite a lot of convincing to get her to take the dress off and eventually replace it with a questionably clean dress from her overnight bag at Nana’s house once we got back there.
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Yesterday was Mother’s Day, a day I actually really enjoy because I feel seen in my house. The girls brought me breakfast in bed and the most incredible handmade cards of all time.
Eliza also picked me a bouquet of flowers and made this vase out of construction paper:
We took my mother to brunch at a favorite restaurant, the Gill Tavern, and ate outside in the sun.
May!
Not to idealize. When you have young kids, Mother’s Day isn’t really about you. By the end of the day, Phoebe had a fever and was crying from headache pain. Not to be outdone, Eliza suddenly had poison ivy (Every. Damned. Year.) and I had pulled a tick out of my stomach. There is nothing like a deer tick to remind you, as a mom, that if you ever think you can relax for one second, there’s always going to be another creature there demanding to literally feed suck the life blood out of you.
In honor of Mother’s Day, but late, because I’m a mom, one of the best articles I have read recently: Epiphany in the Baby-Food Aisle by Jessi Klein.
We are on the Hero’s Journey, and it is not for the faint of heart.
And I mean this, by the way, whether you are a mother, not a mother, not a mother yet, once a mother, or any other incarnation of being a woman.
PS Walmart keeps asking me to review my purchase. What is there to say about COVID rapid tests? They arrived. But, zero stars just on principle that I even have to buy these.
