I spent the weekend on a paper chase going through every file and box of papers in this house in search of certain things needed for immigration and stuff. Lord almighty! I am not the most organized person at the best of times, but after the move to Canada, living out of boxes for two months, then moving here, my paperwork is absolute chaos.
I’ve set out three times to try to organize files and paperwork and each time other things intervene; tax stuff, revisions, house stuff, life in general. I suspect it will take a week straight of doing nothing but filing and so on to get the papers in order and I simply don’t have one day free let alone a week. So for now it shall stay as it is, some stuff in boxes, some filed, some just thrown willy nilly in unlabeled files. And no doubt all if it more confused and lost than before my paper chase.
The good news is I did sort of find what we needed, or mostly. There was one thing I didn’t, but am hoping another document will do in its place.
Anyway, that was my exciting weekend. A paper chase and waiting on the Roger’s technician who came by Sunday to switch our phone to Roger’s. He was to be here Sunday between 2 and 5 which kind of put a crimp in our doing anything Sunday. He showed up at three or four minutes before 5 pm and finished after 6:30, closer to seven Dave thinks. I found most of the papers I needed just before that and left Dave to wait for the Rogers guy while I ran to the office supply store to photocopy the paperwork, then came home and moped about, wracking my mind to try to sort out where the last bit of info was and wondering why I was so blue. I blamed it on the weather, all this rain and so on. But today I sorted out the real source of my present down mood.
It is May.
Yes, that’s pretty much the crux of it. May is always a mopey month for me. May holds mother’s day, May holds my mother’s birthday, and May holds the anniversary of my mother’s death. Nothing like stuffing everything into one month is there? It’s good in a way, because then I get all the moping over with in one month.
Now here’s the funny thing. Mother’s day went past me this year without note. I didn’t even KNOW it was mother’s day. Before I moved to England, Mother’s day would have been marked with a visit to mom’s grave with flowers then I would have taken a card and flowers or something to her mother, my Gran, who kind of stepped in as Mom when Mom died. After the move to England, visiting the grave and then Gran was out, but I would at least call Gran and wish her a Happy Mother’s day.
This year, my first year back in the country, I did NEITHER, not even a phone call!! I didn’t even KNOW it was mother’s day. Actually, I must have KNOWN. On Saturday, Owen, our sweet paperboy, brought a homemade card with our newspaper. The card had a teapot crafted on it with a Lipton’s teabag in it and wished me a Happy Mother’s day. I remember opening it and a lot of different memories and thoughts racing through me along with confusing emotions. I thought of my mother, and Melanie and Bryan, and then I quickly put the card back in its envelope, buried it under a bunch of paperwork on the table and turned my attention back to the paper chase and being mopey and didn’t think of it or Mother’s Day again until my Gran called today.
What an odd conversation that was. Gran asking how I was because they hadn’t heard tell of me for a while. I blinked in confusion because we’d had tea with Gran and Aunt Sue last weekend so it hadn’t really been a while. Before moving to England, I tried to see Gran once a week without fail, however, I haven’t managed to get back to that yet since the move, there is always so much to do just now. I explained about my paper chase and waiting for the Rogers man, and Gran said Oh, that was all right, they’d just expected to see me yesterday and had been a little concerned when I hadn’t shown up. Jackie and John had gone and Jim and….
Blinking in confusion as Gran rattled off about the family gathering, I tried to sort out what I’d missed. I know my cousin, Jen’s, birthday is this week and thought they must have had a get together to celebrate that and somehow I must have missed the email about it that would have gone out to the family, but when I interrupted her to ask if that was what it had been, she said no and she seemed to realize I was drawing a blank on this and said, “It was Mother’s day. I thought you might stop in after going by your Mother’s grave.”
“Mother’s day,” I echoed and sat down. I was pole-axed that I had missed the whole day and that it had managed to pass without my taking note. Although, in truth, I guess it didn’t. I may have mentally blocked it, but not emotionally. I now understood why I’d been so blue and mopey all day Sunday. I always am on Mother’s day, and for the better part of May too. At least I now understood my mood which I’d been putting down to the weather.
Anyway, I apologized to Gran for missing it and shall have to make up for it. I guess I’ll take flowers to Mom’s grave on her birthday, Friday, and visit Gran afterward. I’m still rushing around today, then tomorrow and Wednesday Dave and I have some traveling to do for this immigration stuff. So I may as well leave it to Friday. I can take Mom a big bunch of flowers then to cover both occasions.
I hope everyone else had a good weekend, and I hope you spent Sunday with your mothers or at least gave them a call if you weren’t able to visit. Enjoy them while you have them to enjoy. You’ll miss them when they’re gone, especially on those special occasions. For me, I wished she’d met Dave, she would have loved him. I wish she’d lived to see me published and hit the NYT, I wished she’d been at our wedding, and wish she could see this house, I think she’d have loved it too. I’ve been missing her a lot this year, so maybe it’s fitting that I missed Mother’s day.
Lynsay Sands 