family – Page 26 – Lemon Drop Pie

In honor of Mother’s Day, Rabia from The Liebers and Lisa from The Golden Spoons gave us a lovely prompt for this week’s Tuesday Ten: Ten Things I Love About My Mom.

My mom was very close to all her kids; I have two sisters and a brother. When she died when she was only 67, we were all devastated. I don’t think we’ll ever stop missing her. But we are all so lucky that we had such a good relationship with our mom. She was the best!

Here’s just ten things I loved about my mom. I’m sure I could write more!

10. We read the same books. We both loved reading the Inspector Lynley books by Elizabeth George, we read from A to T in the Kinsey Milhone series, and Nevada Barr kept us on our toes. I was always putting the newest book on hold at the library and had to wait to read it, but Mom would be too impatient and she would just go out and buy the book! The next time I saw her, she would give it to me to read.

9. I helped Mom look for a house when she and my dad decided to move out of the parsonage. After they bought a house, we would walk around the neighborhood and compare the various house model in their suburban development. I do the same thing now, in my own neighborhood.

8. When I was a teenager, I would come home from school and Mom would just listen to me talk and talk and talk while she was making dinner. She taught me that sometimes, I just need to listen to my own daughters.

7. She loved to garden. One of my earliest memories of her is watering her flower garden after she put me and my sister to bed. She always said the evening was the best time to water so that the sun wouldn’t burn the wet plants. When I was in the hospital having Emmy, she and Lily planted flowers in our front yard as a surprise for me.

6. Mom took care of me whenever I was sick; even as an adult, I stayed with my parents when I had mono and then when I had breast cancer. Mom always knew how to take care of me. She saw me through several surgeries and sat with me through chemotherapy. She helped me buy a wig, which then I never wore. But she didn’t care. Later, when she had radiation treatments on her skull, she decided not to wear a wig, either.

5. She believed in using lots of butter on toast and lots of sugar on berries.

4. Mom had a beautiful singing voice. She sang at weddings and funerals, at Christmas and on Easter. As little girls, my sister and I went to voice lessons with her. As an adult, I gave her moral support at some auditions. She sang in several choirs and even was in the chorus for an opera. I loved to hear her sing.

3. When us kids thought something was funny, she didn’t always laugh out loud. I’d ask her why she wasn’t laughing, and she would say she was laughing on the inside. But every once in a while, she got the giggles, and then we all wouldn’t be able to stop laughing!

2. Mom was so excited to become a grandmother. She simply adored them and spent as much time with them as she could, even though she lived 350 miles away.

1. My mom was my mom when I was growing up; she was strict about my manners and made me clean the house on Saturday mornings; she pinched me when I talked in church and put me in time-outs when I fought with my sister. When I grew up, however, my mom became my best friend.

What do you love about your mom?

A couple of weeks ago, Ed asked me a responsible husband question. What do I want for Mother’s Day?

I really needed to think about this. Ed’s usual M.O. is “secretly” taking the girls to Carson Pirie Scott on Saturday morning. They usually come back with some “beautiful” jewelry that the girls have picked out. (Their taste is slowly improving as they get older.)

I thought about telling him I didn’t want anything, but that wouldn’t quite be true. What I really want is to spend Mother’s Day without any obligations. Of course, in our lives, this isn’t possible. Our church choir always sings on Mother’s Day and I usually have to teach Sunday School. Somehow, during a rare insightful moment, I arranged for my partner to teach this Sunday so I only have to sing with the choir.

Ed is a very good son, which makes him a very good husband and father. But he likes to spend time with his family on Sundays. Another obligation.

A couple of years ago, I got out of all our obligations on Mother’s Day. Lily was running a fever all weekend long, and she sometimes throws up when she has a fever. She spent most of the weekend on the couch in our living room with a throw-up bowl next to her. Ed tried to cheer her up and started dancing. He tripped on the bowl and sprained his ankle so badly that I called his sister to take him to Immediate Care. That Mother’s Day, we canceled all our plans and when Lily started feeling better, we ended up at Steak ‘n Shake. I certainly don’t want another Mother’s Day like that one!

I supposed I need to give up the idea of having no obligations. I get breakfast in bed (remind me to go buy bagels and cream cheese on Saturday) and I have two beautiful daughters who wake me up early to give me breakfast in bed. I have a loving husband who responsibly takes care of his obligations.

So I’ll tell you what I told Ed.

Back when I was in college, I bought a demin jacket. At the time, I thought it was amazing. However, it was the early 90’s and this jacket was very fashionable. The denim was acid-washed and the jacket was baggy. It did not hold up to the test of time. Pretty soon, my jacket was not fashionable and I began to wish that I had an ordinary, regular fit denim jacket.

Now that denim jackets seem to be coming back into style, I want an ordinary, regular fit denim jacket.

That shouldn’t be too hard to find on the Saturday morning before Mother’s Day, should it?

What do you really want to get for Mother’s Day? Or, if you could give your mother anything for Mother’s day, what would it be? Link up your post below, and don’t forget to visit my co-host Gretchen at Second Blooming!

Category: family

What I Really Want for Mother’s Day {Spin Cycle}

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