What greeted me instead of my placement Sunday morning
On Mother’s Day I was exhausted after a long (for me) ride the day before in the wine country. Although I rode out on an errand late in the evening, I didn’t do anything else on my bike on Sunday. Instead we drove to Berkeley to have brunch with my mother-in-law. This is always a slog but we had a nice time once we were there. But when I came down first thing in the morning, the kids were already awake. They wanted to show me the cards and vignette they’d made me.
My daughter was enormously pleased that she’d found a “D” for my name to put on the necklace she made.
My son had made me a poster (which his sister tore, unfortunately, but we taped it back up) and a two-sided card, as well as a display that he felt evoked all of my favorite things. This display included the wire model tandem bicycle Matt had brought back from his last China trip (complete with tiny wire brake cables; I still love the way that Chinese bicycles, apparently even the model ones, come complete with all accessories), the bicycle key chains they had gotten from Bike to Work Day, stuffed toys, and a necklace made by my daughter at preschool.
Two bicycles in hot pursuit of salad and broccoli
The stuffed animals were holding heart shaped cookie cutters my children use for cutting out playdough. The tiny police officer is in plank position; according to my son, “That’s mommy doing yoga.” The bicycles are, by this point, self-explanatory. One side of my son’s card shows two more bicycles, “One is going to salad and one is going to broccoli, because you love bicycles and those are your favorite things to eat.” On the other side he’d drawn himself and his sister, complete with name-tags in the event of any confusion, “Because we’re your favorite people!”
My son’s butterfly poster is more true than I realized at first; being a mother made me transform into something new.
It’s true that we eat salad for dinner twice a week at my instigation. It is a struggle, to be honest. Most of the time I would rather have a glass of wine and a bowl of cereal, but these aren’t the eating habits I want to model, particularly because I remember what my health was like when I actually ate that way. So instead I have embarked on this long journey of trying to eat primarily vegetables at every meal (except breakfast, when we eat fruit). I could not have been more surprised to learn that apparently, I have been successful in convincing my children that this choice expresses some underlying preference on my part.
And of course my son and daughter are two of my favorite people. Not only are they incredible in their own right, they see me as a better person than I really am. Who could ask for more on any day of the year?
Hum of the city 