Mother’s Day
It was a strange Mother’s Day and birthday. North’s still at school and Beth’s in Wheeling with her mom, who has not been doing well. And then on Mother’s Day Noah and I were only awake and in the same place for a couple hours. I returned from a mostly unsuccessful trip to the farmers’ market around eleven-twenty. I’d failed to find strawberries, which they’ve had the past two weeks, and which were my main reason for going. I did buy a little basil plant and got a latte from Takoma Beverage Company, so the trip was not completely in vain.
At eleven-thirty we had a three-way video call with participants in Oberlin (North), Wheeling (Beth and her mom), and Takoma Park (Noah and me). Beth and I opened our Mother’s Day presents from the kids. I opened one of Beth’s for her because it had not arrived when she left. I got two jars of fancy nut butters and Beth got some dark chocolate bars and drinking chocolate.
Noah left for his games gathering shortly after one, and I went grocery shopping, first at the co-op and then at the grocery store. Because I don’t drive and a week’s shopping is a lot of food to carry on foot or on the bus, I came home between legs of the trip to drop off my purchases (and to grab a quick, late lunch of apple slices with my new honey-peanut butter and Babybel). I was tired when I got home from the final leg and I felt a little sick, like I might be having a blood sugar crash, but I checked and I wasn’t. I lay down for a while and eventually felt better.
Early in the day I’d been wondering what to eat for dinner. Sunday is normally a leftovers night for us, but I was tired of the leftovers we had (having eaten both the lentil soup and the white bean-cheddar-broccoli casserole multiple times for lunch during the week before) and I wanted a treat. So, when I was at the co-op, I looked for something that would pair well with one of those dishes and I brought home bake-at-home spanakopita and pistachio shortbread cookies to have with the last of the lentil soup. It made a nice meal. After dinner, I talked to my mom on the phone and then read a few chapters of Julia for book club.
It wasn’t a bad day, and I did get to touch base with my wife, kids, and mom, but it made me think how a day mostly to myself seemed the height of luxury when the kids were small and I was a stay-at-home mom, but now it’s not as precious.
Birthday
My birthday was the next day, and it was less solitary. We had another video call for me to open birthday presents in the morning, I had lunch with my friends Megan and Becky, and Noah was home all day and made me a birthday cake.
On the call, I opened more nut butters, gift cards to two different coffeehouses in Takoma Park, a book, and new bath towels. (I had recently decided my towel, which is older than Noah and is ripped in two places, needed to be retired.) It was a pretty good haul.
On my way to lunch with Megan and Becky, I stopped at Starbucks and picked up my free birthday drink, a half-sweet coconut latte. I am still (mostly) boycotting Starbucks, but a free drink is a free drink and puts no money in their coffers.
Megan and Becky are both friends who date back to North’s preschool days. Megan’s daughter Talia was in North’s class and Becky taught both of our kids in Kindermusik and music classes at the Purple School, so they know each other, but they hadn’t seen each other in years, and they both seemed excited about the gathering.
We ate at the covered tables on Laurel Avenue because it’s less than two weeks until I will see North so we’re in the masking-and-not-eating-inside-restaurants window. The day was damp and cool, but not too cold for outdoor dining. Also, the arrangement allowed us to order from different establishments. Megan got a salad from Takoma Beverage Company, and Becky and I got Thai from Kin-Da (which I later realized was exactly what she and I had done for my forty-ninth birthday). We covered a lot of ground but talked mainly about our kids (who range in age from Becky’s twenty-eight-year-old daughter Eleanor to Megan’s sixteen-year-old son Nate) and about our aging parents and in-laws.
I’d taken the day off work so in the afternoon I spent hours reading Julia and finished it. I highly recommend it and I also recommend re-reading 1984 beforehand if you do. The plot fits very intricately inside the plot of 1984 in a delightful way. While I was reading, Noah was making my birthday cake—chocolate with strawberry frosting. Beth had entrusted him with the recipe and some tips for making it.
Noah and I ordered Indian takeout for dinner, ate the delicious cake, and then we watched an episode of The Testaments. I was glad about this because we were not making as quick progress through this series as I thought we would with Beth out of town (we were only up to the second episode that night—but now we’ve watched four).
I started blogging in 2007, the year I turned forty, so I have now blogged about every birthday in my forties and fifties. Instead of a toddler and kindergartener, I now have two grown kids. My wife has retired and turns sixty in the fall. Time marches on. Thanks for sharing the journey with me, whether you’ve been reading for years, or just joined.