Thanks, milum.

Sun's shining, breeze is blowing, the kitchen's redolent with supper baking...family's safe...and my daughter dreams of being a mother herself one day.

On the drive home from New York where I'd picked up Loftan from her first year in college, I reminisced about raising her from the storehouse of mental images she's given me to stir through happily over the years. The most precious memories are the ones associated with her growing up continuing even to this day. I expect this is probably true for most mothers. The clarity of focus for happy memories with children rarely blurs over the years.

Oh, I've got to tell one tale here. Maybe someone else will tell another.

I was determined as a young mom to expose Loftan to as many concerts as possible. She was a little bitty thing--as young as two when I began her experiences as an audience member. Off I'd cart her to piano recitals, ballets, symphony concerts, but always during the day. I knew not to push my luck with her attention span during the evening hours.

But one night a violinist was due in town to perform a concerto. She'd always been such a model audience member, I decided to chance it. I dressed Lof up in a pink-ruffled dress that had little bells sewn into the hem, and I told her not to shake her dress during the concert. She looked like a miniature festival tent in that little dress--and she jingled along as we looked for our seats in the concert hall. Darling. Little pink bows in the naturally curly red hair. (I was out of my mind, you realize.)

She did fine during the first movement of the concerto, but during the second slow one, she became sleepy and a little restless. I couldn't get up and leave because of the bells in the hem of her dress, so I held my breath watching the sure movements developing by my side that showed me she was trying to control her restlessness. During the cadenza, when the orchestra stopped playing and the violinist began a sensitive, very soft improvisation, Lof could no longer contain herself, and she moaned out the purest, well-projected yawn I've ever heard break forth from the lungs of a three-year-old.

The good news was that that was the first and last of her expressions of misery.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms here.

Best regards,
DubDub

PS: For the record, she's studying viola performance and hopes to play professionally in an orchestra one day.