As my daughter reminded me this morning, Mother’s Day is over.
Yeah, baby! I scored a banner!
Weather-wise, that had to be just about the most fabulous Mother’s Day weekend ever. Loved it. Sure, we’ve crashed back into rainy, chilly reality again, but it was a Monday anyway, right? We’d had a soccer practice and game planned for tonight, both canceled, so it was an unexpectedly relaxing evening.
The girls were excited with their gift-giving. So much so that there was an argument about whose gift would be opened last, because last means the best and the grand finale and all. So I asked them who wanted to give the precious gift of showing their ability to compromise and work well with her sister. On the face of it, neither of them was the answer. So I left the room to hover near Cute W, who was preparing banana-walnut pancakes for me with a side of fresh raspberries in the kitchen. When I returned, J offered up her gift. She had lost rock-paper-scissors. Or so M reported. At that point J disputed whether M had, in fact, presented paper, or if she’d skillfully shifted her scissors hand when she noticed J’s undeniable fist-rock. Whatever.
I opened gift after gift from J, many of which were completed at school. In fact, as I kept opening, M started to look a little irritated. Cute W laughed later that the look on her face was, “What the hell do they frickin’ do all day in first grade? Just make Mom presents!?!” The final gift, a painted pot, was supposed to be a big surprise, which I didn’t realize because an earlier item was a carefully-copied poem on a card about the pot that J had painted. Apparently I was supposed to be fooled into thinking that the referenced pot was the paper picture, when in fact I just assumed that it was a paper pot. J was a bit irritated. Possibly it was not the poem, but the fact that the bag felt like it held a pot and, frankly, we’ve had this first-grade teacher before. I managed to smooth it over.
M’s gift presentation was even funnier. They’d made a craft composed of a flower with six petals, each of which contained a hand-written sentiment. As I was opening the gift, M confessed that she’d come up with three truly sincere and heartfelt sentiments, and the other three were not entirely accurate. If she’d been a grown-up she would have just called them bullshit, but since she’s not allowed to use that word, she spoke delicately around the concept that three of her phrases were somewhat contrived and uninspired. In fact, they looked like the teacher had written possible examples on the board. One was especially funny, because it was something like, “I wish that you could be with me all the time.” And M had to hedge with this one, “I like to be with you, but I don’t really want to be with you all the time. I like that you give me time on my own.” Thus in explaining, she unwittingly offers me another actual heartfelt sentiment! Ha! What made it even funnier was that today I stumbled on the rough draft where the teacher had added “all the time” to her note, and I could just imagine M rolling her eyes and thinking, “Okay, that’s totally not true, but it’s not worth arguing with the teacher. Whatever.” In any case, I read the three BS ones, and saved the non-BS items as my grand finale. Absolutely worth it.
Hope you all had a lovely day.
