moms are so the greatest

It's funny how, even as adults, sometimes what we really need is our mother. Perhaps its largely a result of our culture, this not quite entirely ever growing up. I've been supporting myself, other than college costs, since high school, and other than a few months during those rather tumultuous college years, have not lived with my mother since high school either. And yet, during these last dark few months, I've felt like I needed her in a way that I haven't since I was a kid. And she came. At first I was disappointed that she couldn't fly out here to New York right away, but in the end I think it worked out perfectly. Looking forward to her visit was something of a shining light in the cold and gray of winter, and by the time she actually got here (a day later than planned, due to her flight being canceled because of bad weather--and this in March, after an incredibly mild winter!), I was doing well enough to have an absolutely wonderful week with her.

We hosted an afternoon of knitting, which was just lovely. We met the professors for lunch over in McIntosh, the Barnard student center. "The professors" consist of a few old friends of my father's, with whom I've rather inconsistantly managed to stay in touch over the years, and it was a lovely hour down there in Lower Level McIntosh. They're an odd, endearing, quirky group of people, and it was good to be reminded of our mutual affection. We walked from Barnard down to 79th street and bought yarn for mom and double-pointed needles for me. Met Shanna and Nate at Genaro, a delicious little Italian restaurant on 92nd Street. Mom accompanied me to work a couple days, got to meet the also rather odd, endearing, quirky group of people with whom I work (yes, I, too, am sensing a pattern here). We went to another of the professor's apartment for dinner one evening, though this particular professor is more a dear old friend and in some ways a parental figure. We took the A train all the way down to Broadway-Nassau and met Nate at the Strand Annex, then bought sandwiches and drinks and wandered out to the end of the South Street Seaport pier to eat our lunch. Afterwards Nate showed us the lobby of the Woolworth Building, where he's working these days. Then we left him there to work and walked all the way to West 4th Street, wandering through Chinatown and Soho and eventually through Washington Square Park. We spent a couple quiet evenings at home, watching movies, eating, drinking wine, knitting, talking, talking, talking. I knit my first hat. Patternless and funny looking, but Mom seems pleased with it. I showed her how to make a stripey scarf. We had Arielle, one of my oldest and greatest and dearest friends, and her mother Adele, over for dinner one night, to me a truly magical evening.

And Mom spoiled me rotten. I think she let me pay for a couple lattes here and there, but her generosity and concern and love were overwhelming. I'm now the proud owner of the afore-mentioned double-pointed needles, and the cutest little orange colander you ever saw, and a salt cellar, and a myriad of other little tidbits, not to mention a kitchen newly stocked with juice, greens, bread, tea, cookies, yogurt, bagels, hummus, chocolate, cheese, etc. I think she was a bit taken aback at the emptiness of my refrigerator.

She left yesterday, and I miss her calming, wonderful presence already. But it was a wonderful week, full of love and connection, and I'm already looking forward to spending a week or two out in her hometown sometime this summer. And with daylight savings time already in effect this year, though I don't really think this is the only reason, the world doesn't seem so dark these days.

P.S. She remembered to bring the readers copy of the book I left in Barnes & Noble a couple weeks ago, and I am happily plowing my way through macabre descriptions of people dying of the Spanish influenza in 1918.