My mother was pretty sick the last 15 or so years of her life.

(That’s Mom in the center of the picture….the one in the wheelchair…the one with the huge smile….)

That was a hard thing for her to go through….quadriplegia (I never used that word like that before….but Google tells me it’s possible) and the issues that came with that condition were difficult.

She was a scrapper with a fine sense of humor….and we all made it through….but, on the weekend of her passing, we all recognized how much stress we’d been under all those years.

So…..having gotten that information out of the way….HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!

Maybe what I’m thinking is that the “disease”….the “condition”….didn’t define her.

It didn’t take her out of the “mother realm”.

She never stopped being our mother….even if we were taking care of most of her physical needs.

She could boss with the best….even though she couldn’t get out of bed on her own.

It’s a funny thing….becoming and staying a “mother”.

It starts out hard….and sometimes doesn’t get much easier.

That birth process is a hard thing.

I was there.

I saw it.

I remember that it was a hard thing for Jenny to go through.

(Dudes have it so easy…..”breathe!! breathe!”….)

Anyway….I think that maybe….from the perspective of the distance that maleness gives me….that hard part is given at the beginning of a life so that we can deal with the hard parts that come with the rest of our living.

Maybe that’s the gift of pain…it helps us see that maybe the other parts aren’t so bad?

We celebrate Mother’s Day with flowers….maybe some candy…eating out….but the celebration goes deep.

We wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for our mothers.

That’s heavy.

We wouldn’t exist.

Our mothers were the window that we jumped through to get to this world.

We just took a look with our little baby eyes and JUMPED RIGHT THROUGH THAT WINDOW.

At least that’s the way I remember it.

I was there.

Right, Jenny?

It’s Mother’s Day….and that’s a bigger deal than we give it credit for being.

Thank you for US, Mom.

Thank you for LIFE.

Thanks for EVERYTHING….