Mother's Day on May 14th

Today is a special day for my family. Of course it's Mother's Day, like it is for a lot of other families as well. For us May 14th is also my younger sister Erin's birthday. This year she would have been 46.

We spent the weekend down in Polk City, Iowa for a cousin's wedding. The wedding and the weather were both beautiful. The ceremony was held at a quiet and scenic golf course which was walking distance to our hotel. It was a big enough crowd for us to get to see a lot of people we wanted to see, but not so big of a crowd that it became an overwhelming event. All in all it was a very pleasant weekend. 

But Sunday, today, is Mother's Day. Usually we celebrate Mother's Day with all of us getting together for dinner, a few gifts, and probably a birthday cake to acknowledge Erin's absence. Even if Mother's Day doesn't fall exactly on her birthday, it's usually within a week. This year they landed on the same date though, and on a day when we were out of town.

I mentioned to my mom at the dance last night that it wasn't going to be much of a Mother's Day this year, with all of us spending most of the day driving home and resting up after the weekend. "That's okay," she said, and patted my cheek. "You can come out to the house sometime this summer and fix everything on my computer. That will be my Mother's Day." 

Of course I'll do that. I'll also take her to lunch that day, and maybe even take her to see a movie that afternoon since we always talk about doing that in the summer but never seem to get around to finding the time. I think this Mother's Day will be okay the way it is. There's no way Mother's Day will be happy for her when it intersects with the date of Erin's birthday, so I think it's best to let her have time to just remember and miss her, like we're all doing to some degree today. 

So instead of trading texts with Jenny to figure out which house we'll have dinner at and who would be buying what present, I'll just say Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Jenny and I love you, along with Sue and Jean and Dan and Mark and Chris and John and Danny, and any other number of our cousins we saw this weekend and all of the ones we didn't get to see. You've certainly had a secondary mothering role in all of their lives as well. 

We're all still here, and we miss her, too.