How Was Your Mother's Day?

Mine began, as it always does, with breakfast in bed. The fact that I know my Mother's Day will begin with breakfast in bed in no way diminishes the pleasure of the thing.

As I munched on toast, I asked the girls if anyone would like a bite.

"You always ask us that," said Betsy.

"I do?"

"Yes. But it's your breakfast. You should eat it."

So I did. And then I wondered why it was that I always ask them if they'd like to share my meal. It's not because I'm so selfless that I unthinkingly share everything I have. No. It's because when the girls were younger, breakfast in bed was an enormous thing. They would pile onto a tray every good thing they could think of, including a big glass of milk, which I never drink in the morning. I couldn't eat and drink it all, so I shared. Over the years, under gentle guidance from Atticus, breakfast has evolved.

Yesterday, as I looked at my sweet girls gathered on my bed, and at my dainty breakfast -- a couple of perfectly scrambled eggs, a bit of toast, some coffee -- I wondered how it could be that I looked down, plowed steadily ahead through the verdant ground of motherhood, and looked up one day to find that we are in a different season, and that what has bloomed before me is sparkling and radiant.

A scrambled egg breakfast was followed by the usual scramble to get ready for Holy Mass. In the afternoon, joined by a couple of their best friends, we attended the girls' violin and piano recital, and for dinner I was treated to my favorite Chinese restaurant where I relished the bamboo-steamed shrimp and a glass of white wine. 

I washed not a single dish yesterday and I had to squash only one round of bickering (sparkling and radiant things have their occasional off moments). 

I had a perfectly lovely Mother's Day, topped off by two final notes: Billy Collins and Jeanne Birdsall are, at this moment, winging their way to my house, and, as I settled in on the couch last night in the darkened living room with Atticus, I glanced out the window to behold a perfect slice of moon in the night sky. 

I pronounce the following things to be objective goods: my husband, my daughters, morning coffee, Holy Mass, violins and pianos, friends, shrimp, that waiter at the restaurant (who's been waiting on us since before Anne-with-an-e was born), books of poetry and Penderwicks, and sparkling, radiant things. 

Photos courtesy of Stock.xchng