1. I went up to Quincy on Saturday to spend Mother's Day with my Mom. At 92, I don't know how many more days like this we will have. I vacuumed for her and helped her put her slat back in her bed and cleaned under the bed. On Sunday, she went to her church (the Methodist church across the street) and I went to St. Francis Solanus. It was perfect weather. We went to the Village Inn for lunch. Because there were only 2 of us we didn't have to wait long. Mom enjoyed her meal. I got on the road for home. I got home in time to be taken out to Applebees by my son for Mother's Day and given a planter of flowers. And if that was all there was to Mother's Day, it would have been perfect. The best ever. But, it wasn't.
2. In the mail that week I had received an invitation to my niece's wedding. Mom got her invite on Saturday while I was there. This is a contentious issue, this wedding, because the girl is excluding her parents. The girl in question called her grandma after I went home. Grandma got into it with her. Grandma hung up on her. Then Mom called me and I had to listen to how upset she was for a hour. I had issues as follows: 1) Mom is 92 with high blood pressure and didn't need to be upset and 2) I had already spent most of the weekend with Mom and I had some things I needed to take care of Sunday evening. If this were all happening to somebody else, I suspect I would think it was tragic and hilarious. I prayed a lot about what could possibly be God's plan in all of this. Some of that was revealed when I discovered that being hung up on by Grandma had caused the girl to call her parents. There may be a pathway to healing and forgiveness. I will keep praying. It is probably a better plan than giving the girl a piece of my mind.
3. On Sunday morning as I searched through the items I had thrown into the bag to go up to Quincy, I thought I had forgotten deodorant. I had a little word with St. Anthony and the lost item showed up right where I had looked for it. Then I went to put on the black sandals I brought. Yes, I had brought black sandals, just not a complete pair. I had mismatched sandals, tennis shoes, or brown flip flops. After briefly considering whether I might start a trend with mismatched sandals, I went with the flip flops. In Hawaii they are called slippers, so let's go with that, I wore slippers.
4. But, to add to the hilarity of the weekend. At about eleven pm on Saturday night I heard a siren very close. It was a fire truck at the senior apartments where my mom lives. I could imagine being part of an evacuation until midnight with the old people. I saw that Mom's light wasn't out yet, so I asked her about fire procedures. She said that they had an alarm and so we waited for it and waited for it. Eventually the fire truck left. It was nothing, or everything perhaps to the one having the emergency, but nothing for us. So we said a prayer and went to sleep.
5. I left Quincy right after lunch on Mother's Day so that I could get home to be taken out by my son for dinner. He got me a planter of flowers. They are getting bigger every year. He either loves me more or perhaps is trying to top himself. It is hard to be an only child I imagine, always the favorite, or always the least favorite. We let the dad in question join us even though he doesn't care for Applebees.
6. I started the school week with 772 overdues since all the books were due last Friday. That's a lot of overdues in a school with only 800 children. I spent the week collecting them. On Wednesday I had (or they had) 490 overdues at the end of the day.
7. When I arrived home on Mother's Day I saw that the first rose of the summer was blooming.
