A Mother’s Day Fate
Moms. We all have them. Whether we have a beautiful relationship with them, a strained one, or complicated one. Whether they are still here with us earth side, or have passed on. Whether they have birthed children or simply done the hard job of helping someone grow and given love. Moms come in a variety of forms. I’m lucky enough to be a mom of two by birth and two more by love with another new one on the way. I celebrated my own mother from afar. I wish I was able to see her in person, but actual distance and social distance made that not happen this year. I feel very fortunate to have gotten showered with love and appreciation by the ones who call me mom. My feelings of being mom are very strong. Going from being a full on stay at home mom for yearssss had my start to motherhood in those deep trenches. Then transitioning to single mom and business owner mom has me feeling appreciation for my relationship for my children so hard. It was a hard transition, but something that comes with a huge sense of personal pride. And now with double the amount of kids that I mother I feel very connected to Mother’s Day and taking the time to honor it. It’s good for all us moms out there to sit back and really deeply think about what a badass you are. Look at all you’ve done. It’s incredible, a superhuman feat. I’m very, very proud of myself. I hope on Mother’s Day all you Mamas out there can really reflect on that and appreciate yourselves too. You are amazing and selfless, you deserve to know that about you.
It is our tradition that we go camping for Mother’s Day each year. I started this tradition on my own. On my very first year of being a single mother. I was feeling sorry for myself at the time and decided to take matters into my own hands. So I booked a spot and packed up the car and spent Mother’s Day weekend in the woods with the kids. We have now done this each year since. And it keeps getting better. This year we had plans to leave on Friday and head out for two nights of camping, and adventuring. This shit storm of a year had other plans. So while we cussed out Coronavirus under our breath, we cancelled our annual camping trip.
Turns out, there were great things in store for us regardless. On Friday morning we ended up buying a boat. What?! We started talking about this a few days before. We spoke of how amazing our quarantine could be if we could just take off and boat. The idea was a lightbulb and I felt so much freedom in even just the idea of it. We are surrounded by water and felt this was such a great way to enjoy the beauty of where we live. We had a small budget and a huge family (soon to be 7!) so we knew it was a long shot. But as the universe some times does, shit came through in a big way. We found a beee-auuu-tiful vintage 1954 wooden WestCraft recreation boat. It was under our budget, included a trailer for towing, had 7 seats and was located in the waters around our home. Meant to be? Probably.
Saturday we spent our day on our maiden voyage into the water with the kids. We launched and took off to explore. Our exploration was fruitful. We stumbled (floated?) upon a private sandy beach on a small island. We pulled our tiny little boat right up to the sand, jumped off, picnicked, and played. It was hours of amazingly fun family time together. It felt magical. We all felt it. Everyone was giddy with it.
Sunday was Mother’s Day and just another spectacular example of shit just falling into place. Thank you, Universe! We packed up the kids into the adventure van and set off in search of a beach somewhere (anywhere) on Highway 1 that we could socially distance play and picnic. All of those beautiful usually very private state beaches along the hwy were all closed to the public. But we kept on. It was a goal to get to the beach but a lot of the day was also about the adventure to get there, or somewhere, anywhere. After many, many closed beaches we found a pie stand selling fresh lemon and berry pies. First score of the day! We discussed abandoning the coast and heading inland to the woods to have a makeshift camp lunch. Just before we headed in, we found a single solitary beach with a few scattered people on it, and a single parking spot available on the street. Fate? Probably.
We played in the waves. The water was so freezing it would hurt your toes. But it was perfect. The boys went way deeper than they were supposed to and both got their pants totally soaked. Yao and I took a bet that Kota would be the first and probably only one to fall while running away from a wave and get soaked and come to us for help. We won that bet pretty quickly. After plenty of time enjoying the water we let the kids climb and roll down the massive sand dunes. And in more perfect timing, we were just about ready to head out and eat our food, when a ranger showed up and shut the beach down and ushered the scattered people away.
Heading inland towards the woodsy canopy of the Redwoods we didn’t have any sort of expectation. There is a place where we often camp deep in those woods that we thought maybe we’d be able to just walk into it to just eat and play around a bit. But that lucky lady Fate pointed a turnout to us. We parked and took a quick and easy hike down from the road to discover a beautiful creek with a sandy beach, fern covered walls, shade from Redwoods, and huge moss covered boulders. Was it a dream, or was it meant to be?
Yao brought out the grill he packed up. He cooked us all hotdogs and peeled oranges and we ate our lemon pie out of our hands for dessert. Yao and I took a bet on who would fall into the creek first. We both agreed it would be Carter. Soon after we won that bet. Two for two on our bets today! I felt so much love from all of my family. The day (and whole weekend) was filled with all of the things that I feel define us as a family. It was filled with so much appreciation towards me. Homemade cards and gifts just saturated in love and appreciation. I felt love and comfort and deep connections with all of my kids and my partner. It wasn’t camping. But it might have been even better.
Cheers Mamas!
