Masses of Mothers Day mentionings.....

This is being editted after the fact. RantFamily mother's day festivities were unusually festive this year, and this does not even count various motherhood themes entangled in other reaches of Planet RantWoman.

(Example 1. Various particularly piquant motherhood matters around RantWoman's Meeting. Hold in the Light so that even if they emerge with much quaking at least they emerge in Quakerese.)

(Example 2. Motherhood and apple pie threads: Peace camp events at Schlesinger Library seasoned with Protest Curmudgeon and local May Day celebration garnished with the legislative lurches of the special session)

RantWoman is trying to make LOTS of efforts to forgive. Unfortunately forgiving means first loudly and extravagantly naming what RantWoman is trying to forgive. Hold on for the ride. Holding in the Light does not hurt either.

First order of Business: RantMom got a rotten kind of phone call just as RantWoman was bringing over non-adventurous sushi for Mothers Day supper. RantBrother appears to have been trying to phone from some evil extortionist jail phone system. RantMom was NOT going to interact with the Robocall features in the first place. In the second place RantBrother is, last anyone knew, in Denver. RantMom says the weather there is cold and snowy so unfortunately, RantBrother MIGHT be better off being guaranteed of being indoors. Hold all and sundry in the Light.
   Update: Thank you Little Sister for using the online lookup to acquire the info that Rant Brother was indeed phoning from jail until his charges were dismissed in a hearing on Monday.

Also, hold in the Light O, P, P, N wholse mothers have all recently passed away and Wingnut whose mother and stepdad are having serious health and coping issues.

It's Mother's day and you want RantWoman to be centered for Meeting for Business????

Think all kinds of freight trains switching in the yard in the background. Take Little Sister for just ONE carload, tugged around by RantWoman's humble acknowledgement that one of the perks of being Auntie is that RantWoman gets to give the kid Back!.

Dear Little Sister

Look, it's your bad luck that your birthday and Mother's Day usually fall in the same week.  I am really glad you liked the pot of flowers I brought over for your birthday. I am glad it just made you smile when I admitted I lost patience on the greeting card front and did not even attempt to equal your standards in that realm.

Thank you by the way for asking me something about my health, taking 10 minutes to tell me all about more details than I would have thought to want of your interactions with the same topic and then for the 30 seconds it took me to say "Nope" and another 30 seconds to commiserate about insurance issues. Okay, it's petty of RantWoman even to mention it and it was YOUR birthday so you get to talk about anything you want.

(RantWoman is glad to hear that some RantWoman presence in a public input process MAY have something to do with cutting your exposure risk for specific idiotic features of your nearest bus stop and will look forward to full details about new concrete! RantWoman will also try to manage such self care as helps maintain faithfulness about the ocean of endless similar problems to stand firm upon .)

RantWoman already outdid herself with minimalist greeting cards. RantWoman is still glad to have a sister and this time it's Happy Mother's Day time. Plus now RantWoman has a whole blog so things are going to get way more verbose than when rantWoman was chronicling Irrepressible Nephew's growth 500 characters at a time via  alpha pager.

Now Irrepressible Nephew stands over 6'2". No mmore standing on Auntie's shoulders to be Tall Monkey. He gets there on his own. His shoe size is larger than his age. He barely admits in public that  he knows the adults he is related to. RantWoman is heartened to hear of some teachers and a church youth pastor and adults from a school friend's family who all seem to be important presences.

RantWoman humbly acknowledges,  if Irrepressible Nephew were RantWoman's kid, he would probably have a whole different set of complexes. RantWoman really appreciates the ways you are trying to do a better job than our parents did about many topics. RantWoman appreciates this and then RantWoman plows into topics where there is still some kind of OWWWW.

Take Irrepressible Nephew's birth and care of minor children if a parent is unable to do it, only one of the MANY corners at the RantWoman Yucky Topics Festival corner of the RantWoman Spiritual Amusement Park. Also a topic sort of perennially on RantWoman's mind due, among other things, to Little Sister REALLY needing a whole village anyway because of multiple medical issues.  

RantWoman remembers the RantParents doing wills and talking about who they wanted to raise the RantProgeny if the RantParents died but that was kind of before people started doing advance directives.  But here's the thing: RantWoman's Meeting community is blessed with many children and families, some of whom also have hard things around the edges. RantWoman went to a certain Advance Directive event. RantWoman had much to say but did NOT say everything on her mind. It's not like talking about circumstances involving advance directives sounds like a way to have a real fun time for her Meeting's parents, but was rantWoman's reticence depriving others of push to think about....?????

 [long narrative, digression?]: When Irrepressible Nephew was born, Brother in law was in Guatemala and Little Sister had a high-risk pregnancy for a whole bunch of reasons. RantWoman has no idea whether anyone tried to encourage Little Sister to think about bad possibilities. RantWoman also has ZIP expectation that Little Sister would have received any questions about the topic well.

As it was, Irrepressible Nephew was born c-section and Little Sister developed some kind of infection. The hospital was ready to discharge the baby on the schedule one would expect for healthy newborns, but Little Sister was a patient several days longer. The hospital told Little Sister that if she had someone else with her in the hospital 24/7 to take care of the baby that he could stay with her. Otherwise there were going to be issues of CPS or Auntie suddenly having a newborn to take care of. Auntie RantWoman immediately inspired confidence too: her first effort to change Nephew's diaper resulted both in her getting peed on and the diaper somehow getting attached basically backwards.

Little Sister scrambled. A couple of Little Sister's Friends and RantWoman traded off for overnights but some of the time during the day Little Sister was getting help from the teenage Latinas in her church. RantWoman decided that as long as the atinas were over 12, the legal age for babysitting Auntie just got to observe. Little Sister was really motivated to be a mother and RantWoman is glad things worked out, but RantWoman wouldn't have minded a smoother path, not to mention fewer recapitulations...
  
Earth to RantWoman: do you EVER manage anything less that fire hose level of intensity...?

Honestly, not so far but keep hoping and Happy belated Mothers Day.