>Happy Mother’s Day

I’m about to hit the road to visit my mother in Jackson (Mississippi). I’m taking a Mother’s Day card and some peanut M & M’s. That’s it. I took her some new clothes recently, and she no longer reads, so it’s hard to find gifts that she will enjoy, especially as her Alzheimer’s progresses. She mainly enjoy sitting on the patio at Lakeland Nursing Home and watching the birds and talking about the flowers, so that’s what we’ll do today. And maybe I’ll take her a handful of wild flowers. She was an artist at arranging flowers for most of her life. (That’s me with Mom, circa 1954.)

I just found this post from two years ago, “Guilt-Free Mother’s Day,” which you might enjoy if you didn’t see it. 

How fun it is to imagine my daughter celebrating her first Mother’s Day on Sunday, when Gabrielle Sophia will be almost 3 weeks old. I thought of her yesterday when I read this quote:

“Making the decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” – Elizabeth Stone

This is true whether your child is “home hatched,” as my friend, Nancy Mardis says, or adopted, like my three children. Holding Gabby every day during the first two weeks of her life felt a lot like holding Beth when she first arrived from South Korea… except that she was almost three. But like Stone says, there goes your heart….