Mothers and Daughters

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Happy Mother’s Day! I think it is a great match to celebrate Mother’s Day in May, when Mother Earth is being reborn. The flowers and trees are in full bloom, and most of us are in great moods due to the abundant sunshine. After all, Mom certainly deserves to get the best from us on her day, right?

My mother passed in the early 1990s, so Manny and I celebrate Mother’s Day with my daughter Carissa, her husband Ken, and my grandkids, Savannah and McKenna. Last year, Carissa and I gave each other house plants and challenged each other to keep them alive at least until Mother’s Day this year. (Neither of us has a green thumb.) So far, so good on my end…thanks to my husband Manny’s care!

On Mother’s Day, I find myself watching my daughter and being amazed at how great a mom she is. She has worked from home since the start of the pandemic and is now being told that it is a permanent thing in her company. She had to deal with being the girls’ teacher for a year when the schools went remote. The good news is how she gets to be there for her daughters because she is home. As a grandma watching my daughter be a mom, I am constantly impressed by her. I honestly don’t think I could have done it. I am so very proud of her.

In a lot of ways, Carissa reminds me of my mother, Anne. When Carissa was six years old, her dad and I moved behind my parents’ house. Carissa was at the age where she could walk through the gate in the backyard and visit Grandma and Grandpa. She loved her grandparents…and it was her grandma that she would sit and talk with for hours. 

Grandma Anne was a collector. She would go out to garage sales early every day to see if she could find a treasure. I’ll never forget when Mom came home with a huge bushel basket of salt and pepper shakers. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Carissa and her grandma sat for days that stretched into months, matching and cleaning this treasure. My mom loved these times. I believe she’s the one who taught Carissa to be the fantastic mother that she is!

I hope that all of you moms have a fantastic day. I also know many surrogate moms…aunts, other relatives, or friends of the family…who take on the role of mother in families’ lives. This is your day, too! I believe that motherhood has a whole lot less to do with birth and a whole lot more to do with motherly love. Happy Mother’s Day to all!

Next month? Women’s Edition will celebrate our 36th anniversary!

Positive Thought of the Month

“A mother’s and daughter’s love is never separated.” —Viola Shipman