{"id":249,"date":"2009-05-10T08:13:55","date_gmt":"2009-05-10T15:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/2009\/05\/10\/249\/"},"modified":"2009-05-10T08:13:55","modified_gmt":"2009-05-10T15:13:55","slug":"mothers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/2009\/05\/10\/249\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother’s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nCurrent mood:\u00a0\u00a0content
\nCategory:<\/strong> Life<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s my turn to blog at The Seven Wicked Writers Today and here is what I wrote:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day again, my least favorite \u2018holiday\u2019 of the year. It\u2019s a terrible reminder that I don\u2019t have a mother. I lost her when I was six to the ravages of colon cancer. This time last year, I blogged about my favorite memory of her, which was waking up in the middle of the night to find her tending to a beaten and raped trasnvestite my father rescued on\u00a0his taxi-driving\u00a0night shift . I will forever remember her kindness\u00a0to this stranger. It is my most\u00a0cherished memory of her because she died soon after.<\/p>\n

In the past week, my publisher and friend Tina Haveman lost her mother and the funeral was on Friday. Today will\u00a0be brutal for her, I am sure.<\/p>\n

For those of us without mothers, whether we lose them early or late\u2013 I don\u2019t know which\u00a0is worse to be honest\u2013but either way, it\u2019s hard. Having a mother is something many people I know take for granted. Tina did not. She visited her mother every single day, which always impressed me. I knew she\u2019d visit her in the evenings and around 7pm each day this week, I\u2019ve thought about Tina and how the evenings must be surreal not going to visit her mom.<\/p>\n

Tina made a comment to me this week that some people take their mothers for granted or don\u2019t speak to them at all because some mothers just aren\u2019t good mothers. I know this is true. But I wish for just one hour, I\u00a0could spend some time with my mum and ask her questions, just normal questions about her favorite music, her favorite flowers\u2026<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, on the anniversary of her death, I\u00a0asked my\u00a0father to remember just one thing about my mother that he hasn\u2019t blocked from memory. At 83, her passing still grieves him and it took me a long time to realize that. He told me a sweet story, that she used to go into the back yard of our Bondi Beach apartment every morning and examine her roses. He said she would talk to the spiders who\u2019d taken up residence, asking them not to stay there anymore.<\/p>\n

I laughed, because I have always hated killing bugs, even spiders. He told me\u00a0butterflies followed her down the street and I believe that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So of you have a mother, and she\u2019s a good mother and she deserves it, please\u00a0give her an extra, hard hug today, for those of us who don\u2019t have one. And may butterflies follow you both home.
\nAloha oe,<\/p>\n

A.J.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\nCurrently\u00a0listening:
\nReloaded: Greatest Hits<\/font><\/strong><\/a>
\nBy\u00a0Tom Jones
\nRelease date:\u00a02003-10-14<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Current mood:\u00a0\u00a0content Category: Life It’s my turn to blog at The Seven Wicked Writers Today and here is what I wrote: It\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day again, my least favorite \u2018holiday\u2019 of the year. It\u2019s a terrible reminder that I don\u2019t have a mother. I lost her when I was six to the ravages of colon cancer. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}