THE BEST GIFT MY MOM GAVE ME IN AN EMAIL

Happy Mother’s Day to the moms, grandmothers, sisters, aunties, cousins and girlfriends who play a role in a child’s development.

This Mother’s Day Weekend, I want to share the best gift my mom gave me.

It was in an email.

These were not words of advice, inspirational quotes, or the mass schedule at our parish.

This gift was in the works for over a decade.

It was tucked between words, sentences, and lots of exclamation points!

Like Maria, let’s start at the very beginning.

Don’t worry, it’s short

! Like me!

We moved to Ohio shortly after our middle child (my lefty) turned one.

In a blink, we moved our life into two moving trucks.

The transition from Colorado to Westerville, Ohio, was filled withsnarky comments, meltdowns (mine), preschool waitlists, traffic tickets, and humidity.

Cloudy skies did not mean cooler temperatures like they did in Colorado.

In the Midwest, mayonnaise is a food group.

I signed up to volunteer in the Sunday School program at St. Paul’s Church in Westerville.

I want to say my volunteering was to encourage these kindergartners with their faith.

But in full disclosure, volunteering may have been an attempt to move our daughter up on the kindergarten wait list.

Tuition included door-to-door school bus service.

Although my motives may have been suspect, I met two of my closest friends while reading Noah’s Ark and overseeing the building of an ark with popsicle sticks.

Email made it easy for me to update my parents and in-laws on the daily challenges of a young family in a new state filled with humidity and Buckeye fans.

My emails explained our middle child’s bedtime routine in great detail and with a healthy dose of humor. The routine included five random objects he had to have in his crib before bedtime.

Or how his sister practiced her first-grade spelling words by reciting the words while dropping her head over the edge of her bed, and reciting the spelling words upside down.

We all have our processes.

Email was the easiest way to communicate with my parents because my days started early and ended after midnight (Columbus time)—hundreds of emails.

I shared everyday stories and events. I recapped my middle’s meltdown at the airport when he realized he was not flying on the plane with his Auntie Tricia.

His screamed until we got to the parking garage.

As soon as I buckled him into his seat belt he took a deep breath and asked … “Now we get chicken nuggets?”

All of these stories made my parents laugh in an attempt to narrow the distance between Ohio and Colorado.

I shared potty training stories and our daughter’s first day of school.

I complained a lot in those emails but they were always countered with funny stories like my first speeding ticket (in Ohio), a misunderstanding that unfortunately occurred in front of our daughter’s soccer practice. It was her first day.

Most days, the goal was to grab a shower.

It turns out these stories will be around for many years to come…

THE BEST MOTHER’S DAY GIFT

In early 2020, my mom gave me a 3-ring binder. During those initial months of the pandemic, my mom cleaned and sorted her closets, photos, cards, and artwork from her grandchildren.

When she handed me a photo album, I assumed she was “passing them down” for me (to store).

My mom has a history of dropping off “treasures” and tucking them discreetly where I won’t find them until they are home.

But this album was different.

My mom handed it to me and just said she thought I might like the contents.

Again, I thought she was giving me the photos that never should have made it into an album.

Instead, as I opened the binder, I read a few sentences. It was a binder filled with 8 1/2 x 11 loose-leaf paper.

The words were familiar.

I looked at my mom, returned to the page, and caught the date and my previous Yahoo email. In that moment, the words on the sheets of printer paper were mine.

The binder was filled with emails from a long-forgotten Yahoo email account.

Unbeknownst to me, my mom saved and printed every email I exchanged with my parents while we lived in Ohio. She continued when we moved back to Colorado.

Every single email.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude and laughter while reading about the mind-numbing trials of raising three young children in the Midwest and the humidity.

I left the binder on the coffee table for the kids to read these emails. They were stories of their childhoods.

Their personalities and big events, heartaches and laughter were captured in these emails.

Thank you, Mom, for the best Mother’s Day gift. We all enjoy grabbing the three-ring binder from the living room bookcase to read over the holidays and during visits home.

Listening to my adult children read aloud and crying from laughing about each other is the greatest gift.

As I remind my friends and family, the better stories are the ones where plans go off the rails.

Those are the stories that make us laugh and reshare. Mom, you gave me a binder of memories (and documentation) when stories get blurred.

We all have stories to share … start typing!

Thank you, Mom! I love you.

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