Mother’s Day

Claudia was off being a good daughter on Mother’s Day spending the week with her father. My son in law and I had vague notions about heading over the Black Bear Casino for Mother’s Day because it was halfway between Duluth and his Mother who would travel up to be with her grandsons. I called the Bear and learned that there might be a one to two hour wait for seating and decided we ought to do something at our house.

Neither of us are cooks but Josh can follow a recipe and I did the shopping for the meal after looking up pleasing ingredients for a meal online. We capped it off with a pie from the Rustic Inn. Heaven.

After the meal Claudia called us from Florida using a video phone ap so we could all be together for a bit.

After the call with my phone in hand I decided to look up my Mother’s name on the Internet. All the first things that popped up were items I’ve posted about her or put on my old website when I was cataloging her paintings back when pictures could only be the size of a postage stamp to load quickly in the AOL Days.

I found something I’d forgotten about. It was very sweet and I teared up. I handed it to my daughter Keely. For a moment she was quite overcome. Readers of mine for the past couple years are aware that until her death in December of 2014 my Mother was a considerable occupation of mine. We couldn’t talk so I sang to her. I refused her offer to let me take piano lessons but I give her credit for my snow sculptures.

When I was little she encouraged me to do artwork but I never really followed her into the path she had failed to take as a full time baby boom mother. Her art career didn’t take off until my Dad’s death in 1987 then she moved to St. Paul and enrolled in the Minnesota Academy of Art and Design.

Besides putting grandchildren in bibs and having them undertake various art projects she found one pupil during her Artistic career; a next door neighbor. He wrote about her in a short reminiscence for his college admissions essay.

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