Mother's Day

Like all families, we have many inside jokes. Lines of dialogue that have arisen out of conversations and occurrences that are oft repeated and sometimes published. Some have lore so strong people OUTSIDE the family are in on the joke.

This is the Mother's Day card Precious Oldest sent to me:



When Precious Oldest was in high school, after yet another argument about me not allowing her to do ANYTHING FUN AT ALL, I blurted out in frustration: “You know, it’s a good thing we’re more like best friends than mother and daughter!”. She laughed, I laughed and just like that the line became a running part of the family dialogue.

"We always were more like best friends than mother and daughter!"

Then there's this from Precious Youngest:


On a family vacation when Precious Youngest was a baby (in which all four of us shared a room)we discovered that she spent an hour or so in the middle of the night wide awake holding a party. There was no crying, no distress of any sort, just her WIDE AWAKE AND JABBERING TO HERSELF AT MIDNIGHT!

As a toddler, no longer contained in a crib, she took her personal parties on the road. I never knew what I would find in the morning. She would be sound asleep in bed having left in her wake a swath of destruction. My personal favorite (read: OMG what she do NOW!) was finding both the bathroom and the (back in bed and asleep) baby covered in Vaseline!

"Bridgey parties? What? Vaseline? My bad! "

Good God they make me laugh!

The Old Gray Mare

Poppy, who has changed her blog format to "beauty advice for women of a certain age”, wrote a post on going gray. I think she was spot on in her analysis, which is why I will continue to color my hair until the day I can no longer lift my arms high enough to reach the back of my head!

My mother, on the other hand, decided last spring at the age of 68 to stop coloring her hair. My parents knew by then they were moving to Our Town and my mother figured she would just make friends with people who didn’t know her when she DID dye her hair!

In consultation with her colorist (my mother and I have widely divergent views on what things are appropriate to spend wads of money on and which are not – but that is another post entirely) my mother decided to get a short cut after going several months without touching up her color.

After she moved to Our Town she started seeing my stylist and together they are working on growing her hair out a bit. I want you to take a look at this picture of my mother:



It is a candid shot taken a few weeks ago and I want you to note she is following many of Poppy’s suggestions.

• Great cut
• Great eye glasses
• Still fit and trim
• And you’ll have to take my word for this, still dresses well and has great accessories!

Mother will turn 69 in a few weeks. Something for me to aspire to, no?