Happy Birthday

to  booksrbust  !

Reality and Un-Reality

Last week I had the misfortune to see Kate Gosselin (of "John and Kate Plus Eight") guest co-hosting on "The View", during which she shoehorned the phrase "I'm a single mom" into the discussion approximately 21,947,368 times.     Granted, sometimes it doesn't take much to set me off, but...

:::::ahem::::::

This camera whore is a "single mom" like ketchup is a vegetable.

My sainted mother, who survived the Herculean labor of raising me without committing infanticide OR losing her marbles, is a single mom.    She is a single mom who had to weather the traumatic loss of a husband she loved more than life, and try to raise three little girls in a "fixer-upper" house left less than half remodelled.    She put herself into the job market and kept us together until we could fend for ourselves, with fewer advantages than many single moms of today can access.       

She did everything she could to encourage us to make the most of our abilities, which is more encouragement than she had been given herself.   She taught me to love music through her own deep emotional connection to it:
 
Mom:  Honey, come here, you've got to listen to this...

::::plays "Eres Tu" / "Love's Theme" / "Healer of My Soul" / "Kathy's Song"::::

Me:   That's wonderful...can I go back to bed now?

As a result, I now realize that for me, the existence of music remains a kind of proof of the existence of God. The one good thing that came of "Kate"'s TV prattling was the phone call I had to make afterwards:

"I love you, Mom"