GirlTalk

Mother’s Day is a bittersweet holiday for me now.

I can still remember the joy I used to get when I sat in elementary school making gifts for my mom in art class and how I thought she’d love whatever I was making.

I can always remember the few times I thought it was just another chore to call Mom up and wish her a happy day on those many second Sundays in May. There were a few reasons for that.

But today, what I’d give to have another Mother’s Day to wish her well on.

And I can’t expect my own daughter to fill the void my mother’s death has left for me. She’s 24 and is still in the process of building a life of her own. She sends me the obligatory card and she’ll call me, but like I was at her age, it was just going through the motions.

I slipped once and reminded my daughter that if I were to go at her grandmother’s age, that I’d have approximately 23-24 good years left. At my age, I know just how fast that can go. After all, my daughter, who is 24, was just born “yesterday” - at least it surely seems that way.

When we are young, we never quite believe our own mothers will actually be gone one day. Heck we might even long for it secretly, especially when we’re hearing yet another bout of advice from a woman who has often lived a decade and a half to two decades more than we have. We take her presence in our life for granted.

This year, I received a special surprise.

A friend of mine, about 20 or so years senior than me, invited me to a Mother-Daughter-Friend luncheon at her church. It reminded me of the Mother-Daughter dinners that the PTA held each year when I was in elementary school in New York.

Those were always fun and made me feel special. It wasn’t very often a mother of five could take her eldest out to lunch at a nice restaurant.

Though my friend is older than I, I have never actually looked upon her as a surrogate mom. I’ve looked at her as my very good friend.

Good friends are a treasure to me because they are something else that seems to fade away as the years do, kind of like the color of your hair as it’s replaced by more and more grays.

We had a really nice time, sang some songs, watched some lucky women win the table centerpieces and after some prearranged entertainment and helping clean up, left the church where the luncheon was held to go home.

Then we stood outside and talked for two more hours. We are just connected somehow. It started through my job here at the paper, but over the years has grown into something much more.

It’s not fair… just when you think you’ve got this living life sort of “on your own” thing down, someone comes along and reminds you that you can’t… not really.

Happy Mother’s Day Palma! Thank you for being there!
Gina