Tag Archives: moms

The end of tradition?

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Some of the pots of flowers I planted each year at our old house.

This is the first year I didn’t send flowers to my mom for May Day. It was a touching tradition that began when I was in first grade at Emerson School a block away from our house in Snohomish, Wash. Mom died earlier this year, so May Day brought fond memories, but also regret that I wasn’t ordering a bouquet with a card that said “Happy May Day, from ???”

Mrs. Iverson, my first grade teacher, had us make construction paper baskets and color them. She’d staple on the handles before the bell rang. On our walk home, the neighborhood kids would pick wild flowers or flowers from yards to fill our little May Day baskets.

When we got home, or stop at a neighbor’s house that we’d want to “May Day,” we’d hang the basket of flowers on their doorknob, ring the bell, run for it and hide. We’d watch behind a fence or bush at the surprised mom or lucky neighbor.

I wrote about that tradition HERE.

When I left for college, I always sent Mom a card for May Day. Later on when we could afford it, I ordered flowers.

“I got the most beautiful bouquet of flowers,” Mom would call and say. “Thank you!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It wasn’t me,” I’d answer.

“I wonder who it was?” she’d reply.

When my kids were little, I showed them how to make the baskets and they’d fill them with flowers from our yard. They loved to hang them on our door knob, knock on the door and hide. After they left for college and moved on with their lives, my husband picked up the slack.

Monday was May Day and he got busy with work and forgot — in spite of my daughter texting him the night before to make sure I got flowers. He left a few minutes ago for a mysterious errand, so we shall see.

I do have one special friend who remembered. She sent me a Happy May Day text.

Did you celebrate May Day as a child?

What are family traditions that you’d like to keep alive? What ones have faded away?

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P.S.. I heard the doorbell ring. Couldn’t find anything. Hubby was inside peering out the window. “Maybe it was UPS?” Later found this inside the house.

National Novel Writing Month has arrived!

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My last year’s project.

I wrote 50,000 words last November in honor of NaNoWriMo. The Playgroup is a novel based on my experiences as a young mother in Palm Springs, Calif. It’s a story about testing friendships and how one person changed the quiet lives of the moms’ group.

I wrote 2,000 to 3,000 words each day and made it to my goal by Thanksgiving.

But then, I lost the manuscript. I was waiting until the new year to begin the process of editing and revising, but I blew it. I never backed it up and my laptop was erroneously deleting files. I lost my community newsletter and The Playgroup rough draft.

UGH!

I thought I had set up automatic backups to icloud — but I didn’t. Now I manually back up to a thumb drive each day.

I began rewriting the manuscript and it’s taken on a new life. My biggest change was the point of view. It was written from one character but I expanded it to the POV of four moms. I’m at about 25,000 words now, so my NaNoWriMo month will be half the words I wrote last year.

I’m currently flying to Seattle for the week to visit my mom, so I don’t think I’ll get to writing until I return home. Not an awesome start to the month, but I’ll be back!

Have you taken on a writing challenge? What is it and how did it go for you?

The secret to handing out unsolicited advice

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I learned from my daughter that she didn’t like my unsolicited advice. Really, nobody does. I catch myself giving unsolicited advice to people I see in the park, to other parents, especially on the swim team, and to my adult kids — my kids really don’t like it. I’m sure all those other people are so appreciative of me, right?

I saw an interesting article called How I Secretly Give Unsolicited Parenting Advice To My Friend Without Hurting Her Feelings, by Diane Mtetwa on the website Moms.com. Naturally, I was interested to find out what her secrets were. Here’s an excerpt.

Unsolicited advice can be turned down fairly quickly. This is how I offer advice to a mom friend before assuming she needs it.

Nobody likes unsolicited advice. The desire to receive unsolicited advice diminishes, even more, when you become a parent and it literally comes at you from every angle. You don’t even have to wait until the baby arrives before everyone you know has an opinion about how you should raise your child. People who don’t even have kids somehow think they know more about how to raise kids than you do and don’t hesitate to put their two cents in.

This barrage of unsolicited advice makes most parents learn to tune it out together or show resistance to the advice before they even hear it out. For the most part, this is for the best in order to keep your sanity as a parent but some advice, even unsolicited is good, might actually help you out, and doesn’t hurt to listen to. As much as I hate unsolicited advice myself, I know that I’ve gotten some good ideas when I’ve been too stubborn or prideful to ask for help. I don’t know if it was doubt in myself about my ability to raise a child or not wanting to admit that motherhood was as hard as it was but in many ways when I first became a mother, rather than asking other people for advice, I was determined to make my life harder by re-inventing the wheel and figuring it out on my own.

What I learned from my own experiences is that I didn’t love unsolicited advice for several reasons. The first being that people who knew nothing about my situation were keen to offer up advice not knowing if I’d tried whatever they were suggesting already or not. That was my biggest pet peeve about it and when people insisted that they knew my child better than me. I also deep down inside took it as someone questioning my parenting and assuming that I was doing it wrong. I’m sure this was true in some cases, but friends and family members who truly were concerned and knew how rough of a time I was having just wanted to help. I keep this in mind when I’m giving my own unsolicited advice but try to do it as secretly as I possibly can to avoid resistance.

Some of the author’s secrets to giving out unsolicited advice sound like great skills for all people to develop better relationships. Her tips include listening, sympathizing, and lending a hand. The article is definitely worth the read. She said she makes sure she tells the friend confiding in her that she doesn’t know her situation or child better than she does, but she can empathize. Also, she pulls out a story similar to her friend’s to say, I know someone who went through something similar. The end result is her friend will usually ask her for advice. And then it’s not unsolicited.

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When we were all much younger.

What are your thoughts about unsolicited advice?