Confessions of a Daughterless Mother

I saw this quote a few weeks ago and have been ruminating on it ~ rolling it over in my mind and listening to its message ever since. “Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.  Such striving may seem admirable,  but it is the way of foolishness.  Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.  Show them the joy of tasting  tomatoes, apples and pears.  Show them how to cry  when pets and people die.  Show them the infinite pleasure  in the touch of a hand.  And make the ordinary come alive for them.  The extraordinary will take care of itself.”   ―   William Martin ,   The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents The extraordinary will take care of itself. I love that line. Preparing our children for greatness seems to be the mantra of our time. The best is what they deserve, they must work harder to be more successful, to earn more, to have a h...

Friday Cooper lost his wallet.  Again. Last week he lost it and someone was kind enough to make a few phone calls and track him down. It was in the middle of road and someone saw it and picked it up. No such luck this week. Sunday Aiden got his little thumb impaled by a fish hook well past the barb.  Daddy was a hero and got it out with a pair of needle nose pliers but not before As passed out and hit the dirt. His poor little face was a pale, sweaty mess. I hardly flinched. I'm not sure if that indicates a growing ability to differentiate true emergency or just a numbness to my sh17 show. Monday - still no wallet - I picked Cooper up for a doctor's visit (his last in his six month recovery from shoulder surgery!).  We drove the half hour to the office to discover the appointment was actually scheduled for ... Tuesday. Shit. It did give us time to cancel Cooper's ATM and credit cards and get duplicates to start recreating his still lost wallet. Tuesday - Jackson f...

Seventeen years ago I celebrated my first Mother's Day. The sun was out, though it was a little chilly, I wore my favorite purple sundress with a cute blue cardigan over it. We took baby Cooper for a ride up to Morrison Lake so Eric could show me where his family cottage that had been sold a few years before stood. We stopped and got ice cream and walked along the river in Portland. It was sweet and simple, I felt overwhelmingly lucky to be in the club, to be a momma. So in love with my little boy was I. Fast forward seventeen years and Mother's Day isn't nearly as simple and that sweetness that accompanies new found motherhood has dulled, the duty and responsibility of motherhood has taken away some of its shine.  The expectation of duplicating those early Mother's Day memories is impossible. When the boys were little, my expectation of Mother's Day were almost always met. My boys loved me, snuggled me, their faces lit up when I walked in a room. I didn...