Happy Mother's Day

My mother isn't around anymore. Part of her lives on in me and in my brother and in her grandchildren. I have her eyebrows. So does my brother. So does my son and at least two of my brother's kids. Is that a significant legacy to leave behind, for others to be reminded of you every time they see your kids or grand kids?

Why not? We all like our eyebrows.

That is not all my mother left behind in all of us. She had a spirit of determination and an amazing resilience given her difficult life. The one thing that I see in myself that is so very much like my mother is my impatience with things of little lasting significance, but my virtually unlimited patience with the 'big things' in life. I think too that I have her sense of fairness. All in all, I think that both my mother's genes and her example to me served me well.

In my own home, my wife serves as balance to me. She is more patient with our son than I usually am. She connects with him in an entirely different way than I do, and helps him in ways that I can't. She has a great sense of humour and keeps my son laughing during these critical teenage years when every event, every word, every action, everything seems to loom much larger in importance than it really should.

With me, she serves to pull me back into the present when that is necessary. As someone who lives in the clouds of the future almost always, I need to be reminded that there is a life to be lived in the present as well. There is that balance again.

On this Mother's Day, 2007, I want to say "For everything you are, for everything you do, I love you, Chrystyna," and wish you the very best Mother's Day possible.