Mother's Day

Mother’s Day is a day set aside to show a little appreciation to the mothers in our lives.  Usually on Mother’s Day, I’m treated to breakfast in bed and a bouquet of fresh flowers from our garden – most of which are flowering weeds – but I’m not telling. 

Each year since Kaleb’s been two, for Mother’s Day, my birthday and Christmas he’s made me a birdhouse.  Carpentry runs in his father’s blood, but it’s not necessarily an area Kaleb is thrilled about.  He builds me things because he knows it’s what I want.  This is the kind of sacrifice that makes the day all the sweeter.

All of my birdhouses are all on display and some even have nests, which have given life to chickadees and sparrows alike.  I’ve loved watching the progression of Kaleb’s carpentry skills, as well as the ideas he comes up with each time he makes one.

One of my latest birdhouses looks like books on a shelf, another is in the shape of a grand piano.  I’ve gotten a snowman birdhouse as well as a castle.  My favorite birdhouse is the one that looks like the head of an old basset hound I used to own, complete with the tongue sticking out.  The clever design in that birdhouse was the holes Kaleb drilled in the top to collect rainwater which then ran through a tube down to the tongue, so the dog actually looked like it was drooling.  My boy knows what basset hounds do best. 

The next year Kaleb played off that idea and rather than the head of the dog, he made just the backend.  He also put in a water collection system, and a hydraulic lift, so when the left leg of the dog was pulled up, the anatomically correct dog peed on the tree using the stored water.  He’s all boy.

I feel somewhat spoiled to have such clever gifts made for me each year, but this year, I got nothing.  We were in Norway during Mother’s Day and their Mother’s Day is celebrated in February.

The logic of my now teenage son is that, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” and he refused to acknowledge or in any way celebrate Mother’s Day this year.  He loves to live by the letter of the law, while missing the spirit of the law every time.  So I didn’t get flowers, a card, a hug, a birdhouse or even a “thank you for all you do.”  It nearly broke my heart.

By bedtime on Mother’s Day, Kaleb wasn’t feeling too well and I had a hard time feeling sorry for him.  Cosmic payback, I thought - but at one o’clock in the morning he woke me up because he’d thrown up.  I changed his bedding and cleaned up the stinky mess.

I then consoled myself with the knowledge that at least he knows there’s no limit to a mother’s love - as it wasn’t his father he woke to clean up his puke.