"Mother's Day", the 8th day of the fifth month of the year of Emergence

I write this in tribute to one of the two women who have put up with my BS for most of their lives.  Both of them mothers and both pretty darn good at what they did.  The first is my own mother and the second is my ex who was a fantastic mother as well. 

My mother's hands were rarely still.  Here she was making a quilt and it kept her busy during those years after my father died.  I don't think that she ever stopped grieving.  If she wasn't doing something crafty, it was cooking or gardening.  In her former years is was Dad who did the gardening and in her latter years it was me.  In both instances she was always the project foreman and that was that.  Took me a few years to learn that.

If she wasn't actively supervising, she was holding a cup of coffee which seemed to be permanent.  Until she was eighty she was also a Chesterfield smoker.  How she put up with them is forever a question in my mind.  Even when I smoked in my youth, I could not stand those things.  No filter and strong as hell.  The woman lived on them and coffee.  She lived to 83 notwithstanding all of the addictions.  She did stop smoking cold turkey at 80, because the new doctor told her it would kill he.  From that day forward a carton of nine packs and a pack of ten cigaretts rested in a kitchen draw.  Never touched again.  She was a perfect example of the addadge that "Growing old ain't for sissies".  Tough lady, an I miss her. 

The other two best mothers on the planet aren't my mothers, but I love them as if they were.  My daughter and daughter in-law.  Actually two daughters.  Have a wonderful day you two and ex as well.