mother's day

Yesterday was Mother's Day and the kid and I celebrated by ordering in from our favorite pan-Asian restaurant and just taking it really easy.


My mom spent the day in bed, where she is likely to be for quite a while. Earlier n the week I got a call that mom had a lump on her back — it turned out to be exactly what I expected, a compression fracture. She has had these before. There were a few zany back-and-forth calls with the nurses, suggesting that she might need to see an orthopedist, which would require hiring an ambulance and some health professional to take her. Luckily, once I spoke with her doctor he shared my feeling that there would be absolutely no point to put her (and me) through something like that. What would be the point? She is very frail. The best you can do in this sort of situation is to brace the injury, try not to move her too much or too strenuously, and let time heal.

All smiles when I was in earlier in the week to hang some of her paintings in her room at the nursing home

She loved seeing her art up on the walls

I love her version of a horse race a la Degas

That may have been more Mother's Day drama than I was looking for, but I have chosen to go with the flow, and not let things I can't change affect me. Mom and I are on our own, separate journeys. As are we all.

happy mother's day

My mom, with her mother, father and maternal grandfather

Me and my mom

The kid and me

scenes from (last) weekend

We spent Mother's Day at the Morikami Museum, a beautiful local museum and Japanese garden. We had a bento box lunch after waiting an hour to get seated — luckily we could peruse the art galleries while we waited for a table, and saw a fantastic show by metal artist Mariko Kusumoto — more on that later. The gift shop was also a blast, as the kid got a Totoro t-shirt, which she had to don immediately, and I got a cat-bus wallet. If you haven't seen Hayao Miyazaki's brilliant My Neighbor Totoro (or any of his other films) than you won't understand our geeky thrill, and you should rectify that situation immediately.

"Totoro, To-to-ro!"

At the Morikami

The history behind the Morikami, from its website:

"In 1904, Jo Sakai, a recent graduate of New York University, returned to his homeland of Miyazu, Japan, to organize a group of pioneering farmers and lead them to what is now northern Boca Raton ... they formed a farming colony they named Yamato, an ancient name for Japan. ... Ultimately, the results of their crop experimentation were disappointing ... By the 1920s, the community, which had never grown beyond 30 to 35 individuals, finally surrendered its dream. One by one, the families left for other parts of the United States or returned to Japan.

George S. Morikami in his pineapple field — Delray Beach, Florida, from Florida Memory

... One settler remained. His name was George Sukeji Morikami. A modest farmer, George continued to cultivate local crops and act as a fruit and vegetable wholesaler. In the mid-1970s, when George was in his 80s, he donated his land to Palm Beach County with the wish to preserve it as a park and to honor the memory of the Yamato Colony. ... With the opening of The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, a living monument was created, building a bridge of cultural understanding between George Morikami’s two homelands."

Related articles

• 'Ghosts, Goblins and Gods' at Morikami (pbpulse.com)

happy mother's day

Everybody's got a mother.

Happy Mother's Day from 3 generations ...

coming to america

A little pre-Mother's Day photo of my mom onboard ship, around the age of 6, probably when she and my Grandmother were on their way to their new home in America (from England).

one more mother's day story . . .

A friend's Mother's Day blog post reminded me of a particular Mother's Day I experienced when I was still living in Brooklyn, in my twenties. I had come into the city to hang out with friends that day. I'm pretty sure we had dinner and then continued on to hit a few bars in the East Village, which was our usual haunt at the time, before it became first NYU-ified, and then whatever else it has become today.

After the festivities I was walking west towards Broadway on my way home to the subway, probably the Broadway Lafayette station—or I may have even been walking a friend home towards the West Fourth Street stop. But I distinctly remember that as soon as I hit Broadway I realized, at 12:01 am, that I had just missed Mother's Day. I'm not sure if it was the high spirits, but I knew immediately I HAD to call my mom and let her know that I hadn't forgotten. I called COLLECT from a phone booth on Broadway (when they still had phone booths) to wish her a happy Mother's Day and she wasn't pissed. We had a short conversation and then I hung up, feeling a teensy bit ashamed at almost missing it, but mostly relieved that I was able to tell her those three words (and relieved that she is a bit of a night owl, giving me that opportunity.) The true meaning of being a mom is in there somewhere.

So again, a day later, Happy Mother's Day!