Mother’s Day 2021
Another Mother’s Day has come and gone and we are still socially distanced from our loved ones the length of approximately 74,000 lemon cakes, if we iced both sides of the highway and candied all of the overpasses in fruit rinds.
I told my kids (and Greg) what I always tell them—”I don’t need any gifts,” before clearly and concisely rifling off a grocery list of consumer goods that would brighten an otherwise HomeSense-less, Covid-Mother’s-Day.
I said to Ellie, “If Dad asks what I want for Mother’s Day, tell him I don’t want anything except to go for a family walk and to replace the lilac tree that died in our garden three years ago. “
She said, “I told Dad you wanted the tree and he said, ‘she’s already given me a list a mile long.’” Okay, so we’re on the same page.
The day started as planned. We were at the wooded trail before 9am so as to avoid the hiking frenzy that would be a full, three-legged-racing, family-stampede by noon.
We headed home and enjoyed a coffee outside, the kids felt obligated to sit with me and engage in conversation about mothers……and lilacs…..and hiking, until I realized this visit had been forced on them when they really wanted to be looking at hilarious Tik-Toks about why Mother’s Day is just the worst. It seemed like the right time for Ellie to launch the game of Jeopardy she had created. We discussed whether we could chrome-cast it or use our phones to chime in to answer questions like we did when the early settlers celebrated Mother’s Day, but ultimately, we agreed to just yell, BEEP! And she would choose a random, family member to answer.
She had secretly enlisted the help of my mother to come up with some of the questions.
I won’t blather on about categories or Daily Doubles, but here are the types of questions that warmed my heart and brought back all the feels:
- What did Mom’s hamster die from? Ah, memories. This is actually a trick question because I had two hamsters and they died from very different, albeit equally horrific reasons.
“Beep!” I yelled, “What is, he walked into a hole in the stone front porch at the front of my house growing up and never came back and Heather Parsons witnessed the entire thing?” Then I remembered the nights I was haunted by his ghost, scratching the floorboards beneath the bedrooms, looking for a way out of the wall. I convinced myself he had made friends with the bats living in there, of which I knew we had several. Maybe he’s learned to fly or he’s taught the bats not to scare us by flying around during my birthday parties. (That happened twice)
The correct answer was of course, “Dehydration.” Awesome, we’re sharing that with the kids. R.I.P. Hammy…..or, Whitey? I’m just sorry.
Another gem:
2. What are the two patches of her dry skin, Mom complains about the most?
“Beep!” (this time in unison) Everyone shouting versions of the same answer, “The back of her hand and the back of her head!” Super.
I then received the most beautifully, written card with colourful fonts and a large balloon filled with quotes. The kids explained that they asked friends for help to come up with ways to best describe me. Noted—my kids outsourced the job of paying me a compliment.
“Good Cook!” was the one that really stood out. Hmmm, that sounds mediocre (at best) to me. If you’re going to mention cooking at all, wouldn’t you have to say, “Best Cook!” or “Culinary Genius!” if you wanted it to actually boost the person on their special day? And that one came from an outside source.
Happy Mother’s Day! Next year, we’ll be together…..in a field of lilac trees, next to a HomeSense.
