Sunday Afternoon Tea

Happy Mother's Day!

I love Mother's Day. It is the only day I don't feel guilty not doing the laundry. That.... is a good feeling. What am I doing today? Well, the budget doesn't allow for eating out this year. Getting the flowers for the deck and a garden planted is more important.

So, I found thin chicken breast cutlets half price at the grocery store (one doesn't have to pound them flat!) and they will be sauteed in butter, lemon juice, and capers from the pantry (hey, it's a Holiday). I'm trying the asparagus casserole recipe from my Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen cookbook. Then there is the Key Lime Pie. Yum...

I love being a Mom more than anything else in the whole wide world. Well, I like being a Grammie, too, but truth be told... I don't get to see those cuties very often. (Soon... very soon.) So, my maternal memories are pretty much as a Mom.

I still smile when I think of the day Stephanie was born, over nine pounds of cuddly baby. She was truly one of the most beautiful babies I'd ever seen. No... really... even the nurses all talked about how cute she was. She was born with a full head of dark-ish red hair (which eventually turned as black as mine used to be) and the first time I saw her, she was four hours old and had a ribbon in her hair. As I was still groggy from the C-section, she and her father had already bonded before she met her mom. He was never the same and she was Daddy's girl from the get-go.

I loved placing her in the stroller and introducing her to my favorite places... the park near Mamaw's house, feeding the duckies, the china displays at the department store.... those important places one should learn about early.

She was still in the crib when she held her first book. She cut her teeth on books... literally. There's a reason those cardboard books don't last long. I remember her favorite literature at the time... I Am A Bunny.

I always told her that raising a daughter is also raising your own best friend. How lovely it was to see her grow and become a wife and mom. It has been a grand journey.

As for her brother... well, he was a surprise. A big surprise. Albeit a welcome surprise... twelve years later. He was born cranky. He didn't sleep through the night for eighteen months. He was hyperactive and drove his mom crazy those first few years.

We tried school... that didn't work. We homeschooled... that did. Without my boy I wouldn't have known the fun (and hard work) that came with educating a child at home... and in the car... and at the co-op... and at the library... and at the park... and at the beach on Lake Michigan... and at the museums... and at church... well, you get the idea.

If I hadn't had my boy, I wouldn't have known what it was like to spend hours and hours walking on trails in the woods and stopping to look at science projects like dead bugs. I wouldn't have spent two years teaching about World War II and having to go on... hardly even touching on the war in the Pacific. Or, his fascination with swords after studying the Middle Ages for what seemed like years and waiting a few nights a week in the hallway of an ancient school, on a hard bench with a book, watching his fencing class through the glass window. What has surprised me about having a boy? I didn't know I was "growing up" a different kind of best friend.

I have often wondered what Hannah thought as she left little her little boy with Eli, knowing she would only see him once a year. My imagination is filled with images of a Mom hand sewing little outfits, the size growing a little each year. I just know she talked to Jehovah about her boy as she made each stitch. I am also certain a lot of prayer went into each piece of clothing. As Samuel dressed each morning, how he must have thought of the mother who prayed for him.

Did you ever wonder what she taught him those few years he was under her roof? Whatever she said... "took". Just as Daniel's mother, and Joseph's mother, and thousands upon thousands of godly moms after them... mother's whispers into little ears. Faith, hope, trust, obedience, courage, love... introducing small minds to an infinite Father who would be present when they were not.

So, I'm doing a little cooking and some reading... but no dishes... and no laundry. That is a good day by any standards.