I didn't think I'd get it done today, but after church and a Mother's Day meal at Ruby Tuesday's (The Cooker looking too crowded) both Barb and Brian fell asleep, having stayed up too late the night before, giving me plenty of time to get it done.

That's an interesting role reversal. Since Jamie's death, I've been quicker and easier to fall asleep...which may have nothing to do with Jamie's death. My father would often take afternoon naps as he got older...

Yet this time it was Barb and Brian who slept, while Eric and I stayed awake.

Barb complained that most Mother's Day sermons focused on Mary at the foot of the cross, watching her son die. She has a point. It might be a sterling example of motherly love, but it's also a rather grisly one.

Especially for someone who has lived through watching their son die...

At least Father's Day sermons don't tend to dwell on something that grisly...

(Yeah, I know traditional Christian theology says it's something that has to happen to save all Creation, and should thus be joyous. Well, yeah, maybe in the abstract. But on a personal level...? Somehow, I don't think that was what Mary was feeling---maybe regretting the whole being chosen thing at that moment...)

Eric did very good, both at church and at the restaurant, but we left the last ten minutes of the sermon. We wandered into a conference room where he could finish coloring a page and drinking a Coke from the Coke machine, and there was a big pile of books there.

One was a paperback entitled TOXIC PARENTS. I flipped through it, applying a couple of pages to some situations I know of, even been involved in, but not, thank goodness, applying to my own parents. If anything, it made me feel grateful for what parents I had.

They never beat me. Heck, they never spanked me. They were always there when I asked them to be there...

Some of my biggest mistakes in my life is not wanting to ask them for something, for help they were more than willing to give, from my suicide attempt at thirteen to other matters.

Barb had to pick out the Mother's Day cards this year---and my mother received three; one for Mother, one for Mother-In-Law, and one for Grandmother. I would have sent one from Wisconsin, but I couldn't find anyplace close to the hotel that sold Mother's Day cards...

Yeah, I should have picked out the card before I left. I know, I know...

It's just as well. My taste in greeting cards tends for the cheap laugh and the snide remark. My mother isn't the sort to really take that sort of thing to heart...

Barb, by the way, gets along very well with my mother, and my mother loves her---despite Barb's occasional, and unjustified, insecurity about how my family feels about her.

As for Barb? I couldn't ask for a better mother for our kids---and Brian showed his appreciation by getting her a Mother's day gift she can really use.

Barb has as much a thing about movies as I have about books, so Brian got her a gift certificate at the theatre we saw Spider-Man at yesterday...

Happy Mother's Day, everyone.