Life lessons

My Moms always had a life lesson handy and not the ones you see being advertised on TV. Since she was also an irreverent, fun-loving person, in addition to being a great forward thinker and compassionate, a lot of the life lessons were hilarious. Like her answer to whenever I had a headache was to ask, "Kimmie, when last you go to the bathroom?" According to Moms, anything backing up down there would give you a headache. Now, that might sound weird to some people, but if I went to the bathroom after that I was always okay!

She always had a way of delivering even the most poignant lessons in such a tongue-in-cheek manner that they never flew over my head or got scoffed at when I was a teenager. Like I remember one day, she'd picked me up from school and we were right at the filter lane at the top of the road from here. I can't quite remember what had happened, but I must've been apprehensive about some people/something at school and she passed down a gem from her own Ma: "You don't ever have to be afraid of anybody because we all put on our drawers one foot at a time." I remember I'd expected something cliche like, "because we're all human beings" or "we all bleed the sae blood" or something like that, but what she said not only had me laughing again but also feeling confident again. I've never forgotten that one. Nowadays when I feel apprehensive, I just picture the person in question hopping about on one foot trying to put on their drawers!

I'm going to dwell on stuff like that today, Mother's Day, instead of the fact that she's gone and we won't be having double Mommy Day brunch like I'd always dreamed. God is looking out for me too, this morning just as I'd dragged myself out of bed determined not to lie in and cry, I got a call from a coworker who said that she'd been waiting since midnight for a decent hour to try and be the first one to wish me my first Happy Mother's Day. She was the first too, narrowly beating out another friend who sent a text message. So while I can't go through The Book of Questions, and 1001 Questions with my Mom, as suggested by an MSN.com reader, there are still lots of new memories to be made... I think I'll get that book to share with my husband, and maybe someday I'll be lucky enough that our daughter might want to share it with me too.