Children Through a Mother's Eyes

A strange thing happens to a mother
when she looks at her children,
and especially pictures of her children.

She does not see the grown man or woman of today
or someone altered by a cruel accident or disease,
No, not even one taken by death far too soon.

She sees the babe in her arms, newborn and helpless,
she feels the tug of a small mouth at her breast
or a tiny fist coiled in her hair.

She hears the first word and is filled with joy,
sees the chubby smile which made their hearts one,
and smells baby powder and sour milk and love.

A mother's mind is incapable of sorting
through time's troubles. bumps, quarrels and grief.
She only sees the child encircled by her arms, her baby.

Whatever happens, however time changes both,
the child will always, always be hers,
and she will always be a beloved mother.

Darlene M. Phillips (2010)

This poem was written by my mother after something that Janene said about David, and something Angie said about Nathan touched her heart.

A view from the garden.

We awoke this morning to find a little chill in the air. When I have to haul stuff up to the garden, I always like it when it is not hot. Somehow it seems easier if the air is crisp and cool. We had a few things to plant and it looked like the sun would come out. When it did for a minute or two, I was surprised to see the view to the north. We could only work a short while before the hail and wind forced us to come down from our mountain retreat. In preparation for the coming frost, we had to cover our little seedlings. We hope it doesn't get too cold. About twenty tomatoes, ten peppers and all our squash and pumpkins won't be too happy if it gets real cold.

A New Game Nathan Can Play

We love living so close to our kids. Tonight before heading over to my dad's house for his 76th birthday, we stopped in Angie's neighborhood and joined the boys and Angie for a walk around the block. (Laura and her Dad had gone to a movie) Nathan is a great walker now. When we got back to their home, Janene and Sam were playing a game with Ben in the stroller. Janene would push the stroller from the top of the driveway and when Ben got going pretty fast, then I would catch him. Ben would scream and then laugh his head off. Pretty soon Sam was helping too and both boys were having a great time. I had been holding Nathan so he couldn't get away and had to let go of him once to catch the stroller. He went up to Janene, took the stroller from her and started doing exactly what she had been doing - pushing the stroller and then bringing the stroller back up the hill. We had a blast! How exciting it is to see Nathan beginning to learn some things. He can now say "Grandpa!" pretty much on command, and he can identify shapes like squares and triangles at school. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

Mother's Day - Late Again

We were able to have a pleasant Mother's Day this year. All of the kids either called or came over for a BBQ. My mom and Janene's mom were here, and while it was a little crazy with all the grandkids (and even one great-grandchild -Wow! can you believe that Doug is a grandpa?), we all had a fun time and were able to catch up on each other's lives. Chelane sent a card from her trip to Spain, France, Italy, and Tunisia. Shon called from his job in Hawaii. Steve called from Mexico - he still has not had a sip of soda this year, and Lisseth came over the day before so she could be with Glen at the hospital.

I am pretty darn lucky to have my mom still with us and able to be involved with our family. She has had a pretty rough year, but she is too tough to give up. I was reminded of one of my favorite memories with my mom - and there are a lot of those. We were getting ready to go to church at our house on Colorado Street, and I was told to polish my shoes. We had a flight of stairs going down to the basement with painted wooden treads and I was sitting on the stairs with the bottle of shoe polish. It was the old type of shoe polish with the little dauber inside the bottle. I pulled the dauber out.... and shoe polish went all over me and down those white painted stairs. We were late and my mom yelled at me "Can't you do anything right?" I thought I was going to shrivel up and die. She sat down next to me, grabbed the bottle, and said "Here is how you do it!", and proceeded to flip shoe polish all over me, her, and the nicely painted stairs. I didn't know what to think. Surely there were going to be some swear words out of this, but no - my mom burst out laughing! We both sat on those stairs laughing until we cried. My mom has had to deal with a lot of serious stuff over the course of her life, but she has never forgotten how to laugh.

One of my favorite memories of Janene's mom was something that she always did when Janene and I were dating. You could always tell when Marie was in the house because she would be singing. She sang old songs from the 40's, Primary songs and hymns. Her rendition of Happy Birthday is a family classic.

Today, she can't remember who we are. She always wants to know if her mother knows where she is, and she often asks where Blaine is. If you ask her who Blaine is, she can't remember why he's important to her, but if you start singing an old song, she chimes in with the harmony part remembering all the old words. The other day, she woke up early at about 4:00 in the morning and I could hear her lying in her bed in the other room, singing one of those old melodies. When I poked my head in to check on her, she was sound asleep, still singing. When I get to heaven, I expect she will be singing when I come in the door. (provided I make it.)

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

A whole lot more fun than a baby shower!

This is one of my grandsons. His name is Mikey. Today, his mother, Brooke needed to go to a baby shower for Steve's sister, Christine. It just so happened that it started at the same time as Mikey's first soccer game. With Mikey's dad gone on a film shoot, Grandpa got to go to Mikey's game. We rigged up my truck with his car seat and drove to the soccer fields. West Valley has so many soccer fields that there was no parking, so we drove halfway back to Mikey's house and parked on the street and walked.

Mikey loved playing soccer. He wanted to kick the ball anytime he could, especially when the referee wanted the ball to be left alone. One of Mikey's teammates started the game off by kicking the ball into the wrong goal. As soon as he did it, he got this big smile on his face and turned around looking for his dad's approval. I don't think he ever figured out why his dad wasn't very pleased.

Mikey's team didn't seem to even understand why they were there, so Mikey's team only scored two goals. The funny thing is that Mikey didn't seem to know why he was there either - and he scored both the goals. He just likes to kick the ball. He had two girls on his team and they were both pretty good. A couple of the boys sat on the side and cried. Some of the time, the boys just wanted to talk to each other and totally forgot about it being a game.

Once, when it looked like Mikey's team was doing a good job moving the ball down the field, Mikey just stopped. He had seen a bug in the grass, and he was immediately on to better things. The best part was when the game was over, Mikey got a treat - a granola bar. He peeled off the wrapper, ate half of it, wrapped it back up neatly, and said "I have to save this half for my sister". His mom asked if he was nice to the other kids. His response? "Yep, I didn't even talk to them". We had a fun time, Mikey never quit talking on the whole drive back to Bountiful and seemed to be excited about getting to go home to a party where "no boys are invited" (baby shower).

Happy Holidays!

I woke up on Saturday, realized it was May 1st, and thought " Today, I'll get the rest of the garden planted. We'll run out to J & J and pick up some plants and really get this garden going." Then I looked out the window. Blaine, Janene's Dad, used to tell me I was pretty foolish if I planted anything before Mother's Day. It looks like he was right again. I went up to Angie's house and it looked just like Christmas. I wondered if I was going to have to put the truck into 4 wheel drive to get off the hill. I realized that the same thing has happened for the last couple of years. If I knew how, I would include a link to previous May Day posts with similar scenes. So much for global warming!