Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my Mother's birthday, (Happy Happy Happy Birthday Mom!) and in case you're keeping track, my new baby is one week old today. I promise a new baby post soon, but as this is the first time I have sat down at the computer since coming home from the hospital and I have a very small window of time in which to do so, I am reposting a blog from Mother's Day last year, in honor of my lovely, kind-hearted, selfless Mom's birthday.

The drawing/painting above was a gift for her last year, and the entry below describes what (and who) inspired it.

{{As with all good crazy people, my story involves both my mother and my childhood. When I was little I had a lot of bad dreams. Terrible horrible no good very bad dreams, nearly every night. I still have a lot of them, actually, just with a fraction of the frequency. But when I was just a wee thing, my sainted mother taught me that more often than not, I could be in control of my dreams, partly by thinking of lovely things as I was falling asleep,and partly by making myself aware I was only dreaming and since it was my own mind, I could make it anything I wanted to. (Did I have a choice but to become an artist with that sort of wide-open creative encouragement, come to think of it?)

Anyway, we would play a little game at bedtime where my mom would say something like, "I'll see you in Dreamland... I'll be wearing a pink dress with white polka-dots and butterfly wings and a lime green tiara. I'll meet you at the gum-drop tree. How will I know you?" And I would describe in great detail my dreamself and her attire. It was never quite the same from one night to the next, but my mom nearly always wore pink with white polka-dots in some form or another, and I was always one for tu-tus. Sometimes I was a mermaid swimming in a purple sea, sometimes some sort of winged creature but it was a delightful little tradition and it did the trick.
From time to time in my adulthood we have talked about it, and once at a family gathering when my nephew was telling us about his bad dream I engaged the whole extended family in a very elaborate Dreamland reunion which sort of unlocked a lot of really wonderful memories for me of whispered fairytales and enchanted dream meetings with my Mommy, the person who taught me what love and beauty and magic were.

So for Mother's day, I did this little drawing for my mom, of our grown-up(ish) idea of how we'd look in dreamland. Of course, in our dreams we're both seven feet tall and weigh about ninety pounds, but what I think its really about is how we'd look if we looked on the outside like we feel on the inside. I guess that means I'm a fairy-CanCan dancer with an affinity for Jane Austen, horn-rimmed glasses, pearls and tattoos (I'm a complicated creature) and my mom is femininity personified, the queen bee and a nurturer of all living things, an angel in an apron with whom I share my sense of whimsy and my love of beauty.

Hope you like it, but mostly it was a labor of love and the target audience was my mother who is admittedly easy to please, so if you don't, well, I just don't care. That's what Mom's are for. }}



And now, here's her real birthday present:

F i o n a L i l l i a n R o s e

7 pounds, 14 ounces ~ 19 1/2 inches ~ June 9, 2009

Thank you for being everything you are, Mom. We all love you so much. The role you had at her birth was more encouraging, empowering and precious to me than words can possibly describe. Hope your birthday is wonderful, in the midst of the busyness.

Love, Elizabeth, Justin, Christian and Fiona

p.s. If you'd like to wish my Mom a Happy Birthday, leave a comment here, or over at her blog.