Brian’s Mother’s Day Post 2014

Nailed it.

In 2012, Alma wrote an article for CBS.com, which was sort of a Dad’s guide to curating the perfect Mother’s Day: 1) Allow Mom to sleep in, as late as possible. 2) Prepare a bunch of interesting recipes for breakfast in bed, for when she does finally get up. 3) Allow her to relax after breakfast. 4) Make room for individual time with each of the kids, and 5), have at the ready a thoughtful, though inexpensive, gift. While I pretty much violated her advice on most of counts, yesterday turned out to be a great day.

I rushed everyone out of bed before 8, stressed that we would be shut out of every Montclair restaurant, because for the “nth” time (where n=# of years we have had children) I failed to either plan to make breakfast (see #2 above) or make a reservation somewhere in advance. There really is something wrong with me. As it turned out, Alma was already awake and out the door with the dog, which gave us time to lay out the very thoughtful gifts the kids had prepared on their own (#5) , along with the flowers from Whole Foods (my less thoughtful contribution) which barely made it through the night in our basement refrigerator. We made it to Red Eye in time to get one of the first tables (a tease), and 80 minutes later (60 waiting for our food, 20 eating) we were on the way back home. But good start.

I worked on refreshing and adding more acreage (well, 16 square feet) to our vegetable garden, with each of the kids helping to dig, turn soil, add compost and plant while Alma took one at a time off of the production line for a walk, a bike ride, a baking session, and a mother-daughter volleyball rally. A quick trip to Home Depot with Kid #3 to get more chicken wire and fence posts, 20 minutes deliberating which staple gun to buy, 2 convenience store stops to fulfill a last minute butter request (more baking) and the garden was finished and planted (organic Kale, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers), just in time for our annual 2-hour each way schlep to Park Slope. Great time there with family, and a miraculous 1 hour return trip got us home in time for Game of Thrones and Mad Men.

A lot of ground covered for sure, and a huge thumbs up from Alma, who, as it turned out only really cared about #4. Happy wife, Happy life.