Feliz Dia de Las Madres!

Happy Mother's Day, Mamas!  I hope you had a beautiful day! 

My day has been good.  I blackmailed Lone Star Pa and the Lone Star Baby into taking me to Luby's and the Botanical Gardens and got no work done at all.  Also, let it be known that they all owe me a game of Book Lover's Trivial Pursuit when the Lone Star Girl comes home for a bit. 

That said, these nice things are not really what Mother's Day is about.  Mother's Day is about using our moral authority as Life-Givers and Milk-Nurturers to bring Peace to this world.  We have a long way to go, mamas.  A long way, but we must struggle on for our children and all the children in the world.

I would like to honor my mother, Carol, for instilling the songs of Justice and Compassion in my heart.  I remember so many ways in which my mother showed me that we must help others and struggle for what is right.  My first memory of this is from when I was about three years old.  My mom and I lived in a pretty sketchy apartment and she worked hard to keep a roof over our heads, very hard, and was fortunate that my grandma was available to help with childcare while she worked.  I never went without, although I know things were very tight.  When we had leftovers, though, my mom did not put them in the fridge for us.  She wrapped them up and took them to an elderly woman in our apartment complex who had no one to care for her.  The lady's name was Leona; I will always remember.

My mother organized the nurses who worked with her in the county hospital to get the hospital to start a daycare center that was open 24-hours so that childcare was available for the nurses working all shifts.

My mother had us deliver meals on wheels with her on the holidays.

My mother looked around one day, after she had married my stepdad and become more economically privileged and had more children and decided it was not enough to keep all that for us.  She started taking in foster children when I was a teen.  Later, when she was not officially doing it anymore, she just took people in.  Just recently,  she took in another foster child for awhile. 

We all want our children to be kind and to help people, I think, but sometimes our actions show that we value other things more (I often value my kids' safety above all else).  Children are going to learn what to value from what we value.  I hope to teach mine to care for others the way my mom taught me.  I hope we can all teach this to the next generation.

Happy Mother's Day!