On this Mother's Day

I can't remember the last time I spent Mother's Day with my mother. My two sisters and I live in entirely different places geographically from one another and none of us closer than 1500 miles to our mother. So though she may travel to see one of us on Mother's Day, if we invite her, even if she did this every year, I'd only see her once every third year. This year, she's at home in Florida with my dad. On Wednesday, they will both come here and visit with us. For Mother's Day, I sent her a card, I'll make her a cake to be ready when she arrives, and I'll call her this afternoon. Yesterday she and I spent two hours talking on the phone.

She and I are like most mother-daughter pairs in our demographic. We drive each other a little crazy. We've said things to each other that were really mean throughout my life. I went through years where I decided I just would never ever like her, understand her, or have any kind of meaningful relationship with her. But in the last couple years, I decided to revisit all that. She's a likeable person, even in the midst of things she does that drive me crazy. So despite the things that I could say negatively about our relationship or about her personally, I think I have to dwell on the positive.

Why? Because she's my mother.

The best stories I could tell you about my mother are the things she does in private when she's not "on" for the public. It's those moments behind the scenes, when the perfect hostess fudges details while saying things like, "oh, shit. Well, I'm sure they'll never be able to tell." I'm sure Martha Stewart has these moments too, but not when the cameras are rolling.

Yesterday we talked about how all Muslims are liars and agents of Satan, President Obama is not a Christian and has never done anything remotely reminiscent of what a Christian would do, that Rick Warren is a wolf in sheep's clothing because now he endorses gay marriage (he actually doesn't), and that most assuredly the United States will fall as the most powerful nation on earth and Armageddon will undoubtedly ensue. We also talked about a new book she's discovered, The Element, that she's giving to every one of her children, how she's wondering how my sister's kids will fair at Catholic school next year after being exclusively home-schooled for five years, and how she thinks babies shouldn't share a bed with their parents. Ever. And they definitely should move out of their parents' bedroom quickly as soon as they can pull themselves up because they might wake up and see things. And we talked about a cute blanket she wants to make for our new baby. She also asked me to explain how our baby will figure out that everything has two names and which name she should use (like, how does she figure out that the cat is "that cat" and "o gato" and that those are the same thing).

I like her because I can talk to her for two hours and she doesn't get bored or boring. I know I do things and say things that make her crazy. So I can put to the side the things she does and says that make me crazy.

Happy Mother's Day, all.