Mother's Day

I just wrote this and sent it to my kids, but it might be days or weeks before they read it, so maybe someone else will get to read it and think about their own response to Mother's Day.

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We don't celebrate Mother's Day, mostly because my mother turned up her nose at such a thing, but I think maybe mothers are supposed to take note of their children on this day, even if only fleetingly, as a sort of check-up.

Thalia is on the floor entertaining herself for a few minutes, in a good mood. I have a few seconds.

People always say: you must be so proud of your children. I mean, of course. But I always think that is a funny way to think about it. I am so pleased with the choices you have been able to make, the way that you all have become better versions of everything than Dad and I have become (as we would hope), and that you all seem to be responsible for your happiness and also the happiness of others. I feel very lucky to have such emotionally healthy children, that's for sure.

Alissa sent me a podcast which I finally finished listening to this morning, a Modern Love episode with Isabel Allende who exchanged letters with her mother EVERY day for decades. This is a lost art and I doubt any of us would have been able to pull it off, even for a year, but what stuck with me is that she said that when she stopped writing to her mother or her daughter every day, she stopped noticing things so much because she didn't need to report so often. This sticks with me because I think like that too, that reporting is part of the way I live. So I want to report to you that you three are by far the part of my life that makes me the proudest, feel the most accomplished, the most amazed.  That, in combination with being married to Dad for all these years -- another accomplishment that pleases me and makes me glad.

Thalia is starting to squeal so we need to go outside. I just wanted to say that you three are the best and everything you end up doing is an expression of how we helped you grow up, and that you are all doing a great job.

Oh, and of course it is true that being a grandmother is a gift that some people never get and I am eternally grateful to be a grandmother. Being a mother was all good and being a grandmother is like a chance to revisit all the best parts.

Smooches and hugs to three people who make Dad and me look really good.