A Happy Mother's Day

As a mother, I have been an honoree for 35 years on Mother's Day.  Six years ago, on Mother's Day, I was sitting down here in Mexico trying to convince it would be okay if my kids didn't call me. "After all, it's so hard to get hold of me," I told myself, even though there was email and facebook and the myriad of phone #'s I'd given them.  In truth, I knew that my relationship with my children  was cracked, had been cracked for a long time, like a chasm in the earth that develops into an unbreachable canyon.  My boys on one side. Me and my drinking on the other.

At one point during that day, I asked myself, "When did it become acceptable that my children might not call me on Mother's Day? When did I become this mother that her children might not call? Why did I let that happen?"

I made a vow right then, that no matter what happened, that would be the last Mother's Day I would let my drinking come between me and my kids. I would start building a bridge across that canyon.  If they welcomed me when I got to the other side, or not, at least I'd built the bridge.

This is the facebook post my middle son-the one that became my son at the age of 7 when his natural mother, my sister-in-law, was killed in a fire-posted yesterday:

I would like to wish a happy Mother's Day day to the women that took me in and raised me like her own!!! There's not to many people that would do that!!!! I think without the love and support that you showed me my life could of turned out much worse so I thank you from the bottom of my heart for Saving this troubled soul!!!! You mean more to me than you will ever know I love you mom!!!!!!! 


Pretty damn good bridge builder, if I say so myself.