Despite the Cardinals losing and the fact I have a MAJOR chest cold, this has been a good Mothers' Day. All three of us went to Good Shepherd at the 11 service, and then to Bob Evans for brunch (if you consider Caleb's chicken strips and Cana's pot roast sandwich brunch food!). I have turned my cell phone off for the day, (even though I check it every half hour or so...). I received three gifts for Mothers' Day---two new rings and my new digital camera which is compatible with my laptop. (My first picture was of C and C..seen here) Now you won't have to keep suffering through my phone camera pictures! Philip is gone this week, so it will be a creative juggling act to keep up with kids, go to cabinet Wednesday through Friday, and then next week end, go to all three Cards-Royals games here in KC. But, enough about me!!!
Last night, I went to Hy-Vee to pick up a few things and decided that I would revive a tradition from my youth of wearing a corsage on Mothers' Day---red flowers if your mother is living, and white flowers if your mother is deceased. Despite my best searching efforts, there were no white corsages (other than carnations...and snob that I am, I REFUSE to wear mere carnations in honor of a woman such as Lucille Cox, my mother) so I bought a bouquet of white tulips that sit on our kitchen table instead. My mother was one of those good mothers we thanked God for this morning in worhsip--resourceful, always learning something new, always tolerant of letting me explore something new (be it palmistry or B'hai), got her drivers liscence at 52, and went to college and graduated cum laude the year before I graduated (not cum laude); and a woman who loved her Lord, loved her church, loved her husband, loved her children, loved her life. Her health had so deteriorated over the last few years of her life, that my own children did not know her in her vibrant, "energizer bunny" years. But they did know her when my sister was murdered in 1998; Mother's health had already gone far down by then; and they remember that she said we should not ask for the death penalty for my sister's killer, since that would mean we are no better than he was. And my kids remember how, just a week before she died in 2000, that she was getting so aggravated that there was a particular kind of music playing in her head---George Beverly Shea singing and singing and singing. She said; "I wish that he would just shut up!" and my kids remember the clothes she sewed them; the lap dulcimer she played (hanging on our living room wall); Cana remembers her because it was through her hands that I learned to crochet and knit, and it was through my hands that Cana, knitter-artist extrordinaire, learned to crochet and knit. And I remember sitting next to her in church at little Oak Grove Methodist, getting Juicy Fruit gum when I was a little girl, watching her make for me, out of a simple hanky, two babies in a cradle, and I thank her this day, that my two babies carry on her tradition, my father's tradition, of compassion, creativity, and hearing that different drummer playing in their own heads and hearts. Thanks, Mother...
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