This morning I woke up?at 7:00 and had my coffee. I chatted with my husband about the day and about some big life events coming up. We do this daily.?
Then I taught a morning English class to a 10 year old girl in Saudi Arabia. Today our topic was clothing. I introduced vocabulary with pictures of fashion dolls wearing tie dye, yoga pants, raincoats, umbrellas, swimsuits, and wedding gowns. We talked about these words in the context of weather, and we discussed how different cultures have different traditional wedding gowns. She is adorable, and her grasp of English is excellent.
After class, I made a cookie recipe which?doesn’t require flour, eggs, sugar, oil, or a mixer. Very simple and very healthy. I shared the recipe on Facebook.
Around 11:00, I took a brisk 4 mile walk in my neighborhood. I’m recovering from the Indy Mini, which was last Saturday. I ran most of 13.1 very slowly. It was a great day.
After a protein smoothie for lunch, I went to Walmart and Lowes and chose some spring flowers. I’m so grateful we can go back out into the world for simple pleasure like this that we missed in 2020. The lines were long today, but the beautiful sun was out, and I was so grateful to be able to purchase gorgeous flowers again.
Once home, I took a couple of hours to pot my plants just the way I wanted them. I’m very proud that I actually kept some annuals alive all winter in my garage, and they’re blooming again, as well. When I finished my plants and watered them, it rained. Of course!
For dinner I made scrambled eggs on gluten free toast, adding Mrs. Dash seasoning and turmeric (anti-inflammatory) and avocado.?
I sat on the porch while it rained and journaled about Mother’s Day, my first Mother’s Day without my mom who passed last June:
“Oh, the influence of moms. I was scraping the remains of a cooked egg today and shivered with a vague disgust because I had flashed back to a story my mom told me when I was young about dried eggs stuck on someone’s sofa and how accidentally touching this grossed her out. (Those aren’t her words. She wouldn’t have used that vocabulary. I’m just being brief.) Somehow, that story took root. I’ve always had a fear of having old food stuck on my upholstery, and God forbid, someone else finding it! It was a simple little story that she didn’t make a big deal of, but I was “deep listening,” the kind of listening that inexplicably gets stored in our long term memories. Both useful and random memories (like the egg) come to me multiple times a day now. If asked, I could tell you her classmates’ names from the 1930s, who her first crushes were, the manner in which she grieved her own mother, and why she put nearly everything in the refrigerator. And she could remember all the details of my life better than I could. Sometimes that was good, sometimes not! It hasn’t been quite a year yet, and I miss her so much. I have my moments, but deep sadness is beginning to take a backseat to gratitude at this point. I’ve noticed that every day I’m thanking God more for little things that she taught me by example and by word.”
Last year I put together a scrapbook of decades of Mother’s Day cards from all of her kids because my dad saved them all. Literally, all of them. She stayed in bed, and I read card after card, the printed and handwritten notes. She seemed to enjoy?it. That’s a pretty good memory from my last Mother’s Day with my mom. I hope those words took root in her mind and heart that day. I’m so grateful. She was one of a kind, and she was mine.?