Just Mom and Me
I usually reserve this space for writing about my kids, but today I'm going to write about me being a kid--my mom's kid, in particular.
You see, Dad's gone on his annual fishing trip to Canada, which leaves Mom gloriously alone for a week. My use of the word 'gloriously' should communicate that she loves it...not the absence of my father, but the solitude of living alone that she never really had moving from her childhood home to her marital one at 21.
I almost felt guilty asking her to share her alone time with me, given how rare it is. But I did, offering to take her out to dinner. She suggested we stay in instead, eating take-out Chinese on her new patio.
I'm so glad she had that idea, because it was fantastic to sit beside the new fieldstone fountain looking out at the old yard that I knew and loved so well. Mom had a vase of cut flowers on the table, got out some funky triangular plates, and poured us each a glass of wine. We ate, periodically checking the jars of pickles she had been canning when I arrived to see if they'd sealed. (When I walked in the back door, the smell of garlic, dill, and brine took me back about a quarter-century in an instant.)
After we'd finished our meal, we toured the gardens...beds that have multiplied exponentially in the time the four of us girls have been out of the house. We talked about which plants were thriving and which were failing, and what ones might be divided and shared this fall or next spring. Then we stopped and picked heaping handfuls of raspberries, carried them back to the table, and ate them with our fortune cookies, both of which held messages about adventure.
What an adventure motherhood and daughterhood are! Some of our efforts thrive, some fail, but like the perennials in my mom's garden, there's always plenty to share.
You see, Dad's gone on his annual fishing trip to Canada, which leaves Mom gloriously alone for a week. My use of the word 'gloriously' should communicate that she loves it...not the absence of my father, but the solitude of living alone that she never really had moving from her childhood home to her marital one at 21.
I almost felt guilty asking her to share her alone time with me, given how rare it is. But I did, offering to take her out to dinner. She suggested we stay in instead, eating take-out Chinese on her new patio.
I'm so glad she had that idea, because it was fantastic to sit beside the new fieldstone fountain looking out at the old yard that I knew and loved so well. Mom had a vase of cut flowers on the table, got out some funky triangular plates, and poured us each a glass of wine. We ate, periodically checking the jars of pickles she had been canning when I arrived to see if they'd sealed. (When I walked in the back door, the smell of garlic, dill, and brine took me back about a quarter-century in an instant.)
After we'd finished our meal, we toured the gardens...beds that have multiplied exponentially in the time the four of us girls have been out of the house. We talked about which plants were thriving and which were failing, and what ones might be divided and shared this fall or next spring. Then we stopped and picked heaping handfuls of raspberries, carried them back to the table, and ate them with our fortune cookies, both of which held messages about adventure.
What an adventure motherhood and daughterhood are! Some of our efforts thrive, some fail, but like the perennials in my mom's garden, there's always plenty to share.
posted by Lisa Strandberg at 10:48 AM
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