Happy Mother's Day to All

I'm a day late here but I want to proclaim that I had a great Mother's Day. Offspring #1 and I talked for over an hour. Offspring #2 and I spent time at a park (I got to choose the activity). We went to the Itaska Park in western Ramsey (not the Itasca State Park - headwaters of the Mississippi). Together we walked the dog, kept track of our journey on a GPS that we're not entirely sure how to run, took notes on the trail, and took pictures for the trail description I'm working on doing. One natural feature I want to highlight is the "Leggy Tree." You can find the "Leggy Tree" at coordinates N45degrees 15.117 and W 93degrees 29.396. The picture on the left is from a distance and you can see the Leggy Tree to the right of the trail, a healthy and hearty white oak just about to burst into leaf. But it has legs. On the right you can see a close up of the base of the tree; Blunder coming through the opening between the legs of the tree. This poor tree has been used and abused but it still grows healthy on the eastern shore of Lake Itaska. If you go there you can see the scars from where someone attacked it with a hatchet. You can also see the burn marks where someone lit a fire between the legs. The Leggy Tree is another of my favorite trees. It is the very definition of resilience.

And resilience is what being a mother is all about. Before I had kids I thought being a mother was all about making good choices. I was wrong. You have to be resilient. You have to be like that toy punching bag - keeping coming upright after you get knocked down. Keep trying. Keep the faith. Keep bouncing back. I remember the moment I decided I would be a mother. I was going into the ninth grade that fall. My mother was gone all summer in Seattle caring for Aunt Marie. I had a lot of responsibility that summer because of her absence. But she came back with Aunt Marie. Aunt Marie was a favored Aunt of mine who lived in Seattle. She had a busy life as a single woman working for Boeng Airlines. She was well-traveled and successful. She, along with her sister Dorothy who also lived in Seattle, was fashionably dressed and elegant. But Aunt Marie had colon cancer. Although she was very, very sick, she wanted to return to the Twin Cities to see her family one last time. She came to our house from the airport via ambulance. We had her room all ready. We had a hospital bed and Aunt Jolene and I cleaned that room top to bottom. We put clean linen on the bed and gave her a brand new pillow. The ambulance pulled up and the attendants wheeled her out on a stretcher. I saw my father's face crumble in the shock of seeing her condition. She looked like she was about to die and she did die within a few days. She had to weigh all of 85 pounds. The cancer had eaten away at her body. She knew she was dying. I helped her a little in the few days she had left. She told me her only regret was that she didn't have children. That was the moment I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to have children. And I did have children. I had two wonderful children and they have been the joy in my life. I am so blessed to be a mother.