Fotunate Friday

OK so I missed my Thankful Thursday post...and turned it into this one instead.

As Sunday approaches I decided to take to the garden early yesterday. I got a funny email from a fellow gardener reminding me that my garden was overflowing with food and it I wasn't careful I would "miss the treasures from my garden".

Well I read that after I got past the, boy your garden needs to be tended undertones

I reminded myself that my garden played a key role in my recovery from depression and that it was well worth the early morning trip to tend it.

I am thankful....

As I was quietly pulling the peas and carrots and turnips from the vines and ground I could hear myself breath. I realized I was in active meditation. I was quiet, my mind was quiet and the world around me was calm. Scrub jays were picking at the cleared earth I was leaving behind and feasting on the insects and worms.

I was even.

I was tending to my mother and celebrating her.

My hubby bought tickets to a music thing three or four months ago and told me to mark my calendar for the dinner and music night. I did and realized it was the day before my fathers birthday....it wasn't until about a week ago that we were told that it also fell on MOTHERS DAY

I kissed him and was so sosososososos thankful that we had plans, months before being aware of it, that would keep us from the flurry of the day.

My mother is a wonderful person who has come to understand that I mostly want to run for the hills on Mother's day...and that this day has dramatically shifted me in a way I will never recover from.

She and I spend time together on our whims and are not dictated by a marked day on a calendar.

My Mother-in-law, she simply wants to be acknowledged by hubby and we do that and she is happy.

I sometimes feel badly that I have taken Mother's day away from my mother, like, because of my perception of the day I am not able to celebrate her anymore.

My Aunt use to throw these elaborate parties on Mother's day, she would invite all the women in the family and all the mothers would get gifts and cooed over and told how wonderful they were. I participated in these events for years and years...then when The Barreness moved in I couldn't go.

I was chastised and scolded that I was being selfish.

So I went.

There was a moment at these parties,when all the mothers are given gifts...I remember sitting there with my smile and a sunny made up disposition and watched people on all sides of me being given gifts.

I sat with my plastered smile, paralysed.

Then I remember Hubby simply handing me a fruity something.

I spent the rest of the event holding back tears and wondering why I had folded to family pressure.

From that party on I rejected future invitations, and was scolded and "black listed" for years.

My Aunt even tried to change the name of the event to Women's Day...but still hold it on the same Sunday.

I never went back...It has been 5years and just now, I am not spoken of in hushed whispers.

This is what I think of as Mother's day...isolation, depression and shame.

My garden yesterday wiped that all away.

I think I actually saw The Barreness standing by the fence, pouting.