This day is a special one in my assigned portion of the Garden. Each year the humans choose a day in spring to celebrate their mothers. With gifts, cards, flowers, and kind thoughts they turn to the women who gave birth to them, who raised them, who took them into their hearts. It is a joy to see.
I visited Lamarr and Tammy first, worried that this first celebration without Tammy’s mother would bring pain to her heart. She did feel some pain, but there was not much time for that, for they were busy from morning to night. It seems that it is a long-standing tradition in the Woods house that Mother’s Day is Shawna’s day off, the only day she does not do a bit of work at all, and so she was settled into her favorite chair, sipping sweet tea with lemonade and directing her children in a deep-clean of the entire house. Floors were scrubbed, sheets washed and aired, carpets vacuumed and rugs beaten; the refrigerator was emptied and subjected to the sharp stench of bleach, while out in the small backyard the garden was weeded and mulched. Mitch shuffled a ladder around to dust out air vents, while little Mariah scrambled to pick up every one of her broken crayons from behind furniture moved by Lamarr and Anthony—including, much to everyone’s amusement, Shawna’s armchair with Shawna still in it.
Shawna directed Tammy as relentlessly as she did her other children, sending her first to reorganize kitchen drawers and then to wash windows. Only Bailey, newly revealed to be pregnant, was exempt from the work, and she sat in a place of honor next to Shawna, the two of them reclining like ancient queens. It would have been grueling work, except Shawna sang and told jokes and laughed, and her children joined in when they had the breath to spare. When they didn’t, they simply listened, happy in her happiness. And at the end of the evening, the young man who brought them six large pizzas was hailed like a hero.
Morgan and Brooke played host to Morgan’s mother, who had come into the city for the weekend. They made her breakfast, took her to their church, which now knows and loves them well, and then afterwards went out to lunch in a very crowded restaurant. It was a lovely time for all of them, and when she left, Serena made a point of hugging and kissing Brooke as well as her daughter. Morgan chose to interpret this as a softening in her mother’s judgment, and she was correct. Serena and Samuel have not quite reached full acceptance, but they are coming close.
Myrtle, of course, did not reach out to her mother, but she thought about her. She also called her brother, and they talked for a while, but despite my gentle encouragement she was not brave enough to bring up the trauma that separated their family. Another time, she will be.
Pamela did reach her mother, though it was a brief, awkward conversation. They spoke about the plans for Pamela’s next visit, coming up in a few weeks, and then a bit about Pamela’s trip to England this summer. At the very end of the call, before Angela could hang up, Pamela wished her mother a happy Mother’s Day. It surprised Angela, and for the rest of the day she felt both lighter and heavier in ways that she could not explain.
Ramona spent more than an hour Skyping[1] with her mother. They talked about the averted proposal, and Klara agreed with Ramona that she had made a wise decision. Ramona also expressed some anxiety over an upcoming visit to Jesse’s parents; she is worried that they will not see her refusal of his offer in the same way that Jesse does. I think her fears are groundless, but they may still have some influence on her actions and her words, so she will need some assistance.
I am not sure that it will not be me offering that assistance. I have still not heard from Nozomi. However, I have an idea now how to begin helping her. I can credit this idea not only to a human, but to one who is not really my charge. Since Don’s children spent the weekend with their mother, I went to check in on them, to see how they interact with their mother now that Charlotte has been confirmed as their stepmother.
It would not seem to have changed their relationship. Maria is still well-loved. She seems calmer, softer even than she was when last I encountered her. Whether or not that can be credited to her improved relationship with Don and her admiration of Charlotte, I cannot say, but it pleases me to see it. She even encouraged Priscilla and Jayden to call Charlotte and wish her a happy Mother’s Day as well.
I was just about to leave when Priscilla and Maria began to talk about Priscilla’s getting an after-school job to earn some money for college. This was a conversation Priscilla has been planning for some time, and so she was nervous. I stayed to offer her some support as she laid out her arguments to her mother.
Maria listened, considered for a moment, then nodded. “It’s all right with me,” she said.
This astonished Priscilla, who had been expecting her mother to need more convincing. “Just like that? No arguments that it’ll take up too much of my practicing time, or that my grades will suffer?”
“Do you think they will?” Maria asked, folding her arms.
Priscilla hadn’t considered matters from this angle. She wants the money, but she does have these fears.
Seeing her daughter’s confusion, Maria set a hand on Priscilla’s shoulder. “I trust you, Pris,” she said with a smile—the implication being that because of that trust, Priscilla should have greater faith in herself.
This gave Priscilla a rush of confidence, and it gave me an idea. I have hope that I can put it into action in the next few days. In the meantime, however—happy Mother’s Day. Even though we have no experience yet of the joy that is having a mother, we angels can still appreciate the goodness that they bring to the world, and the importance of their role in it.
[1] A technology that allows one to send not only one’s voice, but also one’s image across a long distance. It is a charming method to keep in touch, and Ramona and Jesse have been using it for phone calls when they are not together.