This isn’t really about Mother’s Day, even though that’s what today is……

Maybe it will be by the time I’ve had my coffee and sat here in the quiet for a while, I don’t really know.

Maybe it’s really all about Mother’s Day.

I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have a mother to celebrate.

This is about a receiver hitch that I bought, started to install, cross-threaded one bolt during the gravel driveway “put together”, got nervous…. and paid someone a hundred bucks to do what I probably should have been able to do myself with the tools I had.

There was something awkward about laying on my back, pushing the hitch up with my knee, pushing the bumper bracket up with my elbow, trying to align everything and put the bolt in without cross-threading it, then torquing all 4 bolts so that I could move on to the part where I drilled the holes in the frame so I could finish the job by snaking the last 2 bolts, attached by special pieces of wire, through the frame and down the holes that I’d just drilled.

Getting the first four bolts in was the easy part of the job ….and when I cross-threaded (just a little….just enough to know that “something wasn’t right”), I gave up and let someone with a lift and some experience, do the job for me.

So….now we have a receiver hitch that will accept the bike rack that will allow us to take 5 bikes to the trails for family rides.

Whew.

Installation of the receiver hitch= one hundred dollars.

Carrying all the bikes and taking a ride with my family= priceless.

Right?

Sometimes, it’s worth a hundred dollars to get up out of the gravel.

So, it’s Mother’s Day and I titled this post “The Receiver”.

There must have been something subliminal going on….something deep in my skull….because when I looked at it again, it made more sense than just being about a hitch.

The receiver….the receiver….THE RECEIVER!!!!

The receiver!! That’s all about me!!

My own mother taught typing as a young woman.

She taught typing….and then spent the last 15 years of her life using a wheelchair….broken physically by something called syringomyelia.

This disease….a cyst within and surrounding the spinal cord….caused paralysis….quadriplegia.

That’s about as hard as it gets.

Broken physically….

She was broken physically….but, even though there were many things that she couldn’t do….she still figured out a way to give us so much.

There are so many different situations in the world….my mother’s was one of them.

My mother’s situation was hard…but it didn’t define her completely.

So, when I say that I’m the “receiver”…..it holds a lot truer than I realized when I started this post.

My mother is the reason for my being….with some help from my father.

(I could talk about him, too….but it isn’t his “day” yet…)

What a day this really is, then.

Who would deny the pleasure of being?

Who could deny the reason for being?

“Being” is a good thing….at least we have a shot at making it right.

Your Mama made you “be”.

Celebrate Yo’ Mama.

 

This song doesn’t have anything to do with Mothers, either….at least I don’t think it does….I can’t understand what he’s saying, singing so high…..

“re: stacks” Bon Iver