MOTHER’S DAY

The Missus - the mother of my children - still manages to tolerate me after all these years. Yay!
[Photo ©2012 Gary Feinberg Photography.]

Once again, it’s that day revered of florists, greeting card manufacturers, and restauranteurs - especially those proffering a Sunday Brunch.  Mother’s Day!

Sure, it has become commercial.  What holiday has not, aside from Shavuot, Tisha b’Av, and Maundy Thursday?  Everyone is scrambling to make a buck, and if we can do it by utilizing everyone’s love for his or her mother (why, everyone’s got one!), why the hell not?

But there really is something to it... because if you give it the tiniest amount of thought, we all owe an unrepayable debt to our mothers, who contributed half of their DNA and carried us under their hearts for (in theory) nine months, wiped our little bottoms, woke up at oh-dark-thirty to feed us, bandaged our cuts and scrapes, put up with our tantrums, helped us with our homework, and dragged us to the clothing store so we wouldn’t look like street waifs.

You were adopted, you say?  Then your mother didn’t just raise you because she pooched you out of her body - she did so by choice.  She picked you out.  Most impressive!

Mom and me, May 1984.

The love between mother and child is something that is unique to everyone, and everyone’s mother is the best mother in the world.  My own mom was, in her own way, a rara avis - a Rare Bird. In an era when Barbara Billingsley would wear pearls while she cooked dinner for Ward, Wally and The Beaver, my mother would spend several days of the week knocking the little white ball around the golf course.  Sure, she’d put dinner on the table - but she had her own life, one that included sports, gardening, and heavy amounts of reading.  (I owe my lifelong love of science fiction to her.)  I never realized how unusual all of this was until I had a lengthy talk with my former next-door neighbor early last year, in which said neighbor told me how much she admired my mother’s independence and free spirit, attributes that (apparently) set her apart from most of the other suburban neighborhood ladies.

Alas, this is my twenty-fifth year of observing Mother’s Day without my mom on the planet to enjoy it with me.  I have, as of this writing, outlived her - something I never expected or planned to do.  But, as they say, Excrement Takes Place.

Nevertheless, I am fortunate enough to have my wonderful macheteneste - SWMBO’s mommy - as well as Toni, the bride of Eli, hizzownself, representing the generation senior to mine.

And I have She Who Must Be Obeyed, a mommy herself these past thirty-four years.

I have been blessed with the love and companionship of a wonderful helpmate.  Even more important, she has given us two - count ’em! - two daughters that are still the very apple of their Daddy’s eye.

Happy Mother’s Day, my love - you and all the mothers who have brought love and beauty to my life!

Update: Our Mother’s Day observance - brunch at South City Kitchen in Vinings - was Hella Good.  I would have been perfectly happy having nothing but my first course, a plate of chicken livers with jowl bacon, benne seed, cilantro, and “Kentuckyaki.”  Best fried chicken livers I have ever put in my face, ever.  Everything else was just gilding the lily, even SWMBO’s slab of orange buttermilk chess pie with spiced blueberry compote.  When can we go back there?