Indulge me, it's Mother's Day.....

She is bright and talented. She is energetic and resourceful, at least once she stops worrying about everything. She is beautiful and strong.

She is my 27 year old daughter, the child I had when I was 35, after proclaiming for years that I never wanted children at all. My first husband and I both wished to be childless. He still is. But at age 30, a different beat began in my soul, starting as a soft wordless chant that became louder as the years passed, until my body fell into step and I knew it was time. There was no denying it.

I married again to follow that need. I know that now. I didn't want to admit then that my desire for a child was the reason for that second walk down the aisle. Today, women routinely forgo the walk while still fulfilling their need for children. I'm sometimes a rebel today, but not so much in the '80s. The marriage lasted four years. I got what I wanted.

So there I was, chasing a toddler around as I turned 40. And she ran as soon as she could walk. Everywhere. I took her to the mall often, not because I had any money to shop (I didn't), but she could run there without curbs or potholes to trip her up. I could follow along without losing sight of her, at least not often. She ran through T-Ball and soccer, basketball and softball. She ultimately ran on to college still chasing a ball tied to the strings of a scholarship. She fell often, jumped up and dusted herself off.....and ran some more. She wore me out.

It wasn't easy having a teenager in the house when I was in my 50s, one that entered puberty at the same time I hit menopause. Too bad we couldn't exchange hormones. I was destined to wait, though, to honor my earlier commitment to be childless when most women are happily pregnant in their 20s. My child needed me to be older for some reason.  And it has filled my spirit beyond belief.

Today I am careful to respect her natural need to be an adult with a life set by boundaries between us. Painful, yes....but necessary for her. It thrills me when my phone rings each day and she chats me up about her day, all the good and the bad and the mundane. She listens to my advice. I know she does. Sometimes she even follows it. And she knows that I am always here for her. As the teenagers I once taught put it, "I have her back." She knows she can rely on me for whatever she needs, as much as I can provide it, without question. And if I can't provide it, I offer ways she can get it herself.

It is Mother's Day today. I've often said that being a mother has been the most delightful, rewarding role in my life.

But that's a lie, I have to admit.

The truth is that being the mother of this child is why I was brought into existence myself. It's that simple and that exquisite.



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Big box = big pain

Last weekend, my mother and I were out Christmas shopping, hitting a number of stores in the morning before the roads became clogged with other shoppers. We ate lunch while the holiday music enticed us to spend more once we had full stomachs and our feet were rested a bit. One item eluded us, though. Something that jumps out in front of you whenever you're not looking for it, but now we couldn't seem to find one anywhere.

We ended up at the closest Big Box store. You know the one I mean. They have the best prices after all and there seems to be one in every quadrant of town. I have taken to avoiding this place at all costs, for a number of reasons. Too few employees, buggies of stock blocking the aisles. But the major reason is the sheer size of the place. First you have to walk the length of a football field in the parking lot to even get into the building. Then you're faced with a store the size of Oklahoma, not that I've ever been there, but I know it's big.

As we entered the front door (the one I'm convinced they have rigged with some fancy technological whirly gig to make you forget why you came there in the first place, so you buy lots more than you intended) of this particular SUPERSTORE version of the Big Box, I came to a dead halt. My mother ran into the back of me, in her fog of being 85 years old and probably out way too late by this time.

ACRES of stuff, as far as I could see. Farther, actually, since I couldn't even SEE the back wall of the place. Groceries to the right, off into the haze over there. Clothes in the middle, everything else to the right. And it was probably EVERYTHING ever made, from the looks of it.

A sheer exhaustion dropped down over me. I think the current vernacular would be OMG! I have the money today to buy just about anything I need, but the energy level of my younger days has deserted me. We stood there for a few minutes, trying to decide if it was worth it. Did we want that item enough to walk the distance it would require to find it?

Well, it turned out we did. So, off we went into the innards of the monster. However, I stopped the first employee I saw, the one who had her head ducked into a shelf of candles, hoping no one would notice her. I asked for the item. She stood up, gazed across the store diagonally and indicated I should follow her. Then she took off at a clip nearly impossible for me to match....me, the person who has conquered the Stairmaster at the gym. My poor mother was left shuffling in the dust, hanging on to the cart for support. But I didn't want to lose that woman who seemed to know where the item hid in the midst of millions of other items. Why don't they have a little trolley? A map, starting with YOU ARE HERE!  Maybe some of those headphones like they use in museums for walking tours. Something, anything.

After what seemed like 15 minutes, weaving around abandoned buggies, screaming kids, arguing couples, the foxhound employee stopped and pointed down the aisle in front of her. Then she was gone. Poof! Disappeared. I waited for my mother to catch up with me, and she didn't look too good by this time. Her face was pale and her breath was choppy.

Then we marched down that aisle, craning our heads right and left, up and down (yes, you have to look UP, too), until we reached the end. Puzzled, we reversed and did it again. Nothing.

It wasn't there after all. All gone. Empty space. SOLD OUT. OMG....

Is Peterson's 5 & 10 still open?



The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

Frank Noble