A Toast! To Motherhood!

My daughter  E and I went out for dinner the other night. It was just the two of us, eating in our favorite neighborhood restaurant, talking to our favorite handsome waiter, Bo. E had a “Shirley” (her name for a Shirley Temple), I had a Chardonnay, and over drinks we talked about our day and doodled on the paper table cloth.

Part of the restaurant was blocked off for a birthday party. Just a curtain separated the party from the restaurant, so while we couldn’t see the people party, we could hear their voices.

With the ting ting of the knife against a glass, we could hear the toast begins. The toasts revealed that it was a woman’s birthday, a woman who seemed to be loved and admired by her fiends,  especially the  two friends who performed a rap song in her honor.  I imagine it’s a only your really close friends who could write and perform a rap song that rhymed Gefilta  Fish with Make a Wish.

Finally, the birthday woman’s son made a toast. He wanted to celebrate his mother on her 80th (!) birthday. He had a list of things he was grateful to his mother for bringing him.  I took the red marker I had been doodling with and made some notes:

"Mom", he said. “I  am grateful to you for many things:

for the way I can never find my glasses
for starting me in therapy in third grade
my coronary disease
my addictve personality...”

Really, I thought? You can do better. She’s 80 after all.

Fortunately, he continued... “And I am thankful:

for my siblings
for the way you modeled healthy love
for sobriety
for the way you were always my protector, my champion
for love, for your pure unconditional love”

I was on the other side of the curtain, yet I still cried. And clapped.

I looked at my E and said, “What do you think you’ll be saying at my 80th birthday party?

“Oh, Moo,” said E, rolling her eyes.

God willing, we’ve got some time for E to work on her toast. But my ringside seat to this son’s beautiful testament to his Mother’s life gave me pause. If E were to deliver a toast to me later in life, what would I hope she says?  And, am I living in a way that lives up to that?

I hope her toast would come close to the beautiful words I heard this son deliver. Clearly, their life together wasn’t always easy - addiction, coronary disease, all the time spent looking for lost eye glasses. Still, from the toast, it was clear that love was always in abundance. No matter what he did, he knew that his mother loved him, would do all she could to protect him, support him.

It seems me that unconditional love is the best possible toast.

“Cheers!’ I said to E, clinking our Shirley and our Chardonnay. “I love you. No matter where you go or what you do, I love you”

“Oh, Moo.”