Well, Happy Mother’s Day a bit early, actually, as tomorrow we are headed to Los Angeles to celebrate my sister’s newest grandchild. We’ll probably wear masks. Our luncheon is outside. Life goes on. Mother’s Day is a day to honor our mothers, and I’m lucky to have a great one. She turns 92 years old at the end of this month, and I am fully in Abraham Lincoln’s camp: “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

I’ve had a great mother-in-law, and a mother-in-law that wasn’t so great — or at least that’s how I viewed things in my earlier life. Now that I’m a mother-in-law, I understand the not-so-great woman much better and hope she will forgive me for my failings. I’ve had great women who taught me how to quilt, mothering me into a craft that has sustained me for years. I owe them a great debt.

Where does the beginning start? We think this weekend of mothers and how they give birth to us and raise us. If we are fortunate we have a good mother. If life throws you a brutal curveball, you had a terrible mother. Reams of paper have been used in writing about those two polar opposites; I will not add my words to that pile today.

But somewhere we all had a beginning. Some beginnings are early, and we can locate the source and revere what gave us our start. Other beginnings come later, often after tragedy, pain, death, or divorce, and the reins of life are picked up again in a new beginning. I think it appropriate that whoever you decide is your mother — whether it be a birth mother, or an adoptive mother, someone who took you in, or someone who freed you to grow and fly — I hope that this day you are able to honor and remember them.

I also honor the mothers of all these grandchildren in our laps, a photo taken years ago, those young children giving us such delight (three are missing!). My daughter and daughters-in-law are all devoted to their families. I also love and respect my sisters, my in-laws, aunts, grandmothers. While there are always a few ringers, women who are best at a distance, I am fortunate to have such a great circle of love from women in my life, examples to follow and people from who I can pick up advice about teenagers, babies, husbands and daily living. And quilting.

I wish the same for you.
Happy Mother’s Day!