It was Mother’s Day this past weekend. I love Mother’s Day.
Here is a bulleted list as to why I love Mother’s Day:
- I have an awesome mom, my grandmothers were awesome grandmas, my sister and sister-in-law are awesome moms, and I happen to be friends with a lot of awesome moms. In fact, my very first text message of the day on Mother’s Day was in a mom group chat wishing each other love and happiness on Mother’s Day. My neighbor’s teenage son has a t-shirt that says, “I love hot moms,” and since all of the moms in my life are beautiful and great dressers and smell wonderful, I, too, love hot moms.
- I have an awesome husband who works very hard to make sure our sons grow up to be awesome human beings. My husband also had an awesome mom – who, like me, was the only woman in a household full of boys. For those reasons, Kyle puts a great deal of effort into Mother’s Day to show our children the proper way to honor the mother who loves and adores them even though they sometimes forget to raise the toilet seat and said mother has accidentally sat on their pee as a result.
- I love being a mom, and I especially love mom-ing my boys.
I woke up on Mother’s Day with Ten (who will be Eleven on Friday) shoving a paper bag filled with presents in my face.
“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!” Ten said. “Look at what I made you at school!”
Inside the bag was a poem authored by Ten, a packet of flower seeds, and a fill-in-the-blank worksheet in which Ten answered prompts like “I know my mom is very smart because…” (answer: “She is knowledgeable of everyone’s point of view.”) and “I know my mom loves me because…” (answer: “I am me and that’s that.”)
“This is an excellent way to wake up,” I said.
“And now we’re going to make you breakfast!” Ten said. “Dad and me!”
“Great!” I said, shifting to sit up.
“DO NOT GET UP,” Ten said, pushing me back down. “We are serving you breakfast in bed.”
“Can I have breakfast on the couch?” I asked.
“NO,” Ten said.
Kyle and Ten disappeared downstairs. A few minutes later, Ten returned, carrying a handwritten menu. The choices were an everything bagel and cream cheese, lox and capers, scrambled eggs, kiwi, pineapple, mushroom coffee, and water. Everything was free, although Kyle did note a 69% gratuity added to all bills.
“I would like the everything bagel and lox and kiwi and coffee, please,” I said, since those were my favorite breakfast items.
“What about the scrambled eggs?” Ten asked.
“No, thank you,” I said.
“I think you should have some scrambled eggs,” he said.
“I’ll pass for today,” I said. “That is already a lot of food. We can make scrambled eggs later.”
“Fine,” Ten said, slightly disappointed. “And you can come sit on the couch, if you want. But you can also stay in bed. You pick.”
I sat on the couch and ate my breakfast. It was delicious. While I ate, Ten put on his current favorite movie, Newsies, and watched with his head on my shoulder for fifteen minutes before wandering off. Fourteen came strolling downstairs a bit later, asked his dad a couple of questions, engaged in some whispering with the aforementioned dad, and then said,
“Oh, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.”
“What would you like to do today?” Kyle asked. “Would you like to go get flowers for the house?”
“I think it’s still too cold for flowers,” I said. “But I would like to go for a walk or a bike ride.”
“Okay!” Kyle said.
“Okay,” Fourteen said in the type of voice a teenager would use when his father had pre-warned him that we were doing absolutely whatever came out of my mouth.
“We can walk or bike to Starbucks, if you want,” I said.
“Okay!” Kyle said.
“Okay,” Fourteen said.
Early that afternoon, we went for a walk.
“Let’s bike,” Fourteen said. “It will be faster.”
“The point is not to be fast,” I said. “The point is to spend time together.”
Fourteen opened his mouth to say something, looked at his dad, and shut it.
“Okay,” Fourteen said.
We walked to Starbucks. The afternoon was warmer than expected and so we stopped several times to look at some geese and bunnies, and then chase some geese and bunnies, and then send Snaps to our friends of the geese and bunnies that were not interested in being chased any length of distance by two boys. We got coffee and cake pops, and then walked over to a restaurant called The Red Pepper to get tacos and tostadas because it turned out that the walking and chasing geese and cake popping made us hungrier than a couple of cake pops would sate.
On the walk back, I noticed that a few dandelions had started to spring up here and there.
“Ooh, dandelions,” I told my three boys. “I watched a video on how to make a dandelion balm that’s supposed to be good for your joints. Maybe I should pick a couple of these dandelions.”
“I’ll pick them for you!” Ten said. He hopped over the grass, snapping a few at the stems.
“Grab those for me, too, buddy, but leave some for the bees,” I said to Fourteen, pointing at a bunch in front of him. He picked them.
Without prompting, Kyle reached down and grabbed another fistful.
By the time we got home, each of the three had a little bouquet of dandelions.
“Are you having a good Mother’s Day?” Kyle asked as he pulled out a jar for the dandelion heads.
“Yes, I am,” I said, wiping the dirt off the countertops beneath the flowers. “I love Mother’s Day.”
The photo above is of my two babes on a Mother’s Day past.
This week on North Dakota Today, we talked about Jeannie Hornung, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as two Syttende Mai celebrations. (Valley News Live)
I get sent a lot of events for my TV segment (keep sending them!) and so I’ve started including some in a video series on TikTok. Here you be. (TikTok)
Hebron students pulled out their rakes and hoes to help the seniors in their community. (KFYR TV)
Baldwin’s Gabe Coleman is a chip off the ol’ block (or art palette). (KFYR TV)
Cowboy Joe’s art has been restored. (KFYR TV)
Hard brag: I was part of the volunteer team that designed and built out the interior of the Little Red Reading Bus…and now it’s 10 years old! (Grand Forks Herald)
This is a nice story of people helping people. (Facebook)
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