Top photo: Jan on the left, Mom on the right. (most recent) Side photo: Mom on the left, Aunt Jan on the right (2 years ago)It was my Mom's 80th birthday today. She lives about 900 miles away and has a caregiver so she's not up and around independantly anymore. I was here in Oregon. I planned to be there if she made it to this milestone birthday, but that will have to wait a bit and she'd better wait too!
She is on oxygen and more days than not, she confuses me with her older sister, Jan (yes, my favorite Aunt Jan from my first blog), or thinks I'm just in another room. Those kind of days make me sigh at the loss of my mom as my anchor, my strength, my most ardent and faithful fan. But other times she's with it, remembers the topic of our conversation and contributes, even has a spark of her old wit and enthusiasm!
On those occasions, I'll call them the best of times, I get to be the child again. She shines that spotlight on me that she turned on the day I was born and I get to lean on her as my parent. You know, we never had a fight in all the years growing up. Never yelled at each other. I didn't get more than a couple spankings in my whole life and I certainly deserved a HECK of a lot more! But she wouldn't believe that I could ever do anything wrong. Maybe she was in denial, but I prefer to think that she looked beyond whatever my shortcoming or outright sin was, and saw the greater good in me. And she let me know that. And I could thank her for it today and she would probably forget about it tomorrow. But I thank her.
The worst of times are ahead. I'm not going to dwell on that today. WORRYING does not take away tomorrows' TROUBLES, it takes away today's PEACE
I did get to share in the party, though. Through the miracle of modern communication, we were all there at her dining room table singing happy birthday in almost full view of each other! My Aunt Jan and her daughter, Nancy, my cousin, were there and had a laptop. You guessed it. Skyping is sure a lot less expensive than an airline ticket! We live in the best of times don't we?
So happy birthday again to my Mom, Donna Marlene "Mimi" Chamberlin Stutts. I am proud and thankful to be your daughter.
How much is the pancake mix and can you make waffles with it?
ReplyDeleteMargaret
Yes you can make waffles. You just add 2 eggs and 3 T. of oil.
ReplyDelete6 Grain Pancake Mix #10 size can serves 50
retail ~ $10.59
Party price thru me ~ $10.05
8 years unopened, 1 year opened
1/4 C. is a serving size. I got 2 medium sized pancakes out of it this morning for my breakfast and they were yummy!
Correction: there are 50 servings in a can!
ReplyDelete