Wishing you
A day
When all the world seems to be smiling just for you!
This is what the card said that I sent my mother for mothers day.
With a big smiling flower the colors of yellows and oranges.
Then I wrote,
“Mom, enjoy a little sunshine and maybe a special treat too.”
My mother has dementia and Parkinson’s and is not able to care for herself any more.
Her days are spent in a chair or in a wheelchair.
They have moved into an adult foster home so she can have the round the clock care she needs.
Years ago, mothers day was a day for flowers.
We would go to the nursery stores and pick out pansies, geraniums and marigolds then take them over to our grandma’s house and then to our mom’s house.
Baskets of flowers for them to plant when they felt ready.
It was tradition. 
Flowers the first weekend of May.
Then things began to change and relationships did too.
Grandma became more senior and sold her home.
The assisted living home she lived in did not allow her ‘flowers’ for the outside.
Then when her dementia came it was again a change for everyone.
Our parents lived far away from us and the fresh flowers for mothers day became a memory in time rather than a every year occurrence.
I have never really liked the Hallmark kind of days.
Valentines day, Mothers day, Fathers day and any of the other ‘days’ that tell us one must do something to make it meaningful.
Can’t these days be any day that has value and purpose?
Isn’t mothers day the day a new mom holds her newborn baby and realizes the ‘shift’ in relationships?
No longer is she just a daughter, she is now a mother to a daughter or a son.
I am one of the people who stand at the card section year after year and read the sentimental words and wonder… really?
So much to think about on this mothers day.
It could be my last one with her.
My dad is very ill too and perhaps this is our ‘year’ for both of them.
We already said goodbye to my husbands mom and dad.
Traditions change as our lives move in different stages.
On this mothers day I will reflect and remember to pray for all the mom’s with daughters and sons and tomorrow as I plant my new flowers in ‘pots or baskets’ and place my hands in roots and soil.

Perhaps I will even smile as I remember how it once was tradition.