Da pope and Mom's Day.

Liddiebug | Deposit Photos

Happy Mother's Day to everybody who is, was, has, or had a mother, perfect or im-, and including those with offspring who are or were persons of the nonhuman persuasion.

I think that covers everybody.

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This past week, Catholics got a new pope. Pope Francis, the first of that name (which I had forgotten 'til just now), died on April 21st, and Pope Leo XIV, formerly known as Robert Francis Prevost, was elected on just the second day of the conclave. I joked on Bluesky that it must have driven TV news outlets wild that the cardinals got the job done so fast. Here they'd barely settled on a name for their live team coverage and whomped up the graphics package, and it was all over.

If my take seems irreverent, remember that I'm Pagan. The head of the Roman Catholic Church doesn't have much of an effect on my life. I once worked with a guy who told a story about a conversation he'd had; the other guy asked him what he thought of the pope (different pope, obviously; this was decades ago) and my co-worker replied: "What's a Presbyterian supposed to think of the pope? He's the bishop of Rome!" 

That's pretty much where I am, too.

Anyway, a lot of Catholics have high hopes for this new guy. He's an American, for starters (from Chicago!), although his family background is about as melting-pot as they come. He's also a naturalized Peruvian and has served the church in that country for years. Most recently, he's been holding a top spot at the Vatican. Pope Francis seemed to like him, and it appears likely that he'll be as liberal as Francis was, although church approval for women in the priesthood and LBGTQ+ folks will probably still be a bridge too far. 

Another thing that's extremely unlikely to change is the Catholic Church's directive, shared by virtually all other Christian denominations, that its adherents should be fruitful and multiply. It's because the faith wants as many Christians as possible, either by birth or by conversion. Leo hasn't explicitly said how he feels about abortion since his elevation, but in the past he has taken the church's position against it lumping it in with euthanasia for good measure: "God's mercy calls us to protect every life, especially those society overlooks—the child yet to be born and the elderly nearing their journey's end".

That might look good on paper, but of course it sidesteps the question of practicality, especially in this country, where mothers receive so little social and financial support. And the people running our government right now seem hell-bent on making it even harder. So much for protecting every life.

At least he favors gun control.

But as I said above, I'm not Catholic. Catholics and members of other Christian denominations -- of every religion, actually -- have the right to believe whatever they want to believe and practice their religion as they see fit. As long as they don't force me to live by their rules.

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I mentioned above that Pope Leo is from Chicago. This meme is probably my favorite: 

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These moments of slightly irreverent blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Working mothers deserve better.

80s Child | Deposit Photos

First, happy Mother's Day to anybody who has a mom, had a mom, is or was a mom, and/or had to be their own mom.

And a special shout-out to all the working moms, who have had a rough go of it over the past few years. The pandemic exacerbated long-standing problems in finding child care. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the child-care sector lost 80,000 workers between February 2020 and November 2022 -- about 6.7% of the sector's work force. It's never been a lucrative job -- the pay averages about $13 an hour, and 95% of child-care workers are female, most of them Black and Hispanic.

Even before the pandemic, finding somebody to watch the kids while you worked wasn't easy, unless you had accommodating family nearby. And if you worked weird hours, it was that much harder. 

My first day back at work after delivering my first child was a Sunday -- Mother's Day. Back then, I was working as an anchor-reporter for WTAR-AM in Norfolk, Virginia. I was scheduled to work about four hours that day, writing and delivering newscasts on the air. Kat's father was in the Navy and was out at sea that weekend, so I schlepped the baby, the portable playpen, and all the other assorted gear that an eight-week-old kid requires into the newsroom. I figured I'd keep an eye on her in the newsroom while I wrote my newscasts, then put her in the playpen and turn up the air monitor while I went into the booth to do a newscast. She would be able to hear me, even though she couldn't see me. Genius, right?

Not so much. She spent the first five-minute newscast screaming. I didn't think anybody could hear her over the air, but it messed with my concentration. So for the second newscast, I brought her into the booth with me, holding her on my lap. That worked great until she spotted the glowing red on-air bulb above the window and had to tell the world about it. For the remainder of the day, she spent my on-air time in the playpen in the boss's office. She still screamed, but at least the noise wasn't close enough to bother me...too much.

From then on, I left the kids with a sitter whenever I had to work. After the divorce, and as the girls got older, finding someone to watch them was often tough, particularly while I was still in broadcasting and worked an evening or overnight shift. Go ahead, try to find someone who's willing to stay at your house from 11:00 p.m. until 9:00 a.m. while your kids sleep. Let me know how that works out for you.

Anyway, it was a huge relief to switch careers and begin working for the big law firm, which let me work daytime hours and had an emergency daycare center on site. 

Parents -- not just me -- can be better workers when they know their kids are cared for. But when it comes to help with balancing work and family responsibilities, employees are at the mercy of the benevolence of their employers. And Congress hasn't exactly made fixing the situation a priority. So I was pleased to learn that last month, President Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to expand programs for child care and elder care, including improvements in at-home care for veterans, better pay for child care workers, incentives for government contractors to include child care and elder care benefits in their bids, and a reaffirmation of the right of child care and elder care workers to unionize. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a start.

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Speaking of Mother's Day and working: Today is my last official day of retirement for a while. Tomorrow, I'm going back to work, probably for the next several years. I like being retired just fine, but my condo building needs some major repairs, and the only way I can afford them short of selling the place is to go back to work. 

I'll be a full-time proofreader for the state Legislative Council Service. Alert hearth/myth readers know that I've been working for the legislature for several months each year anyway, so it won't be that big a change. I believe I'll be working from home most of the time. I'll still be able to volunteer at El Rancho de las Golondrinas during summer weekends, and I intend to keep writing these weekly blog posts.

If any of that changes, you'll be the first to know.

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These moments of bloggy work-life balance have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Mothers with feet of clay.

In case social media somehow missed out on informing you: Here in the United States, today is Mother's Day. What started simply as a day to honor all mothers has become ridiculously commercial. Hallmark started it with Mother's Day greeting cards, but soon the florists, restauranteurs, and spa owners got into the act. Nowadays, you're not supposed to just tell Mom thanks for all she's done for you -- you're supposed to gather the family to wine and dine her and shower her with gifts.

I'm not the sort of person who would turn down flowers and a meal I don't have to cook. But I'm mindful of the folks for whom this is kind of a lousy day: women who want to be moms but aren't, for whatever reason; women who are no longer in contact with their children; women whose mothers have died; and women who have learned, or who have come to realize, that their mothers weren't exactly the Hallmark ideal.

It's late enough in the day that we can talk about imperfect mothers, right? Brunch is long since over and the grandkids have gone to bed. It's just us grownups. We don't have to sugar-coat the holiday tonight. We can admit that not every mother is perfect.

My mother died in 2008 at the age of ninety-three. She was born before the Depression, one of six kids in a family headed by parents who were immigrants from what was then Czechoslovakia.

As a child, of course, I thought she was perfect. Then I got older, and became certain I would raise my own kids differently than she had raised me. But she was still Mom to me.

Then I had kids of my own, and yes, I did a lot of things differently -- but not everything. And now she was Grandma as well as Mom -- but I still didn't think of her as anything else. I had long since stopped considering her to be perfect and I got annoyed with her a lot, but it didn't occur to me to think of her as a person apart from the relationship I had with her.

It wasn't until she began losing her memory in her final years that I could see her as a separate person. A woman. Human. Imperfect. A product of her time, yes, and of the family she had grown up in -- and of ours, too. All the things she had experienced in her life had made her who she was. And then dementia began to take them away.

Given time and perspective, I think, we are all capable of reaching a point where we realize that everyone we meet is doing the best they can with what life has given them to work with. It may take us longer to realize that about some people than others.

So today, I can say, "Thanks, Mom. I know now that you did the best you could with what life gave you to work with."

That's not a bad epitaph, all things considered. I hope someday my own kids will say the same of me.

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Speaking of families of origin: Progress on Mom's House, my memoir, has been suspended since we began packing for the move. We're in the new place now, and while we still have some stuff to wrap up at the old place, I am just about ready to pick up the book again and -- at long last -- get it out the door. Look for the launch in the first or second week of June.

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These moments of familial blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Remembering Mom.

Today is Mother's Day, in case it had escaped your notice.

My own mother has been gone for six years now; she died just a few weeks after her 93rd birthday. For perhaps ten years before her death, she had been sliding into dementia -- not Alzheimer's, just your garden-variety can't-remember-stuff. Still, until her death, she lived in the same house in Northern Indiana where I grew up. She even kept driving until she turned 90 (mainly because there's no bus service in our neighborhood). My brother, Lawrence, who lives in Chicago, took on the bulk of the responsibility for keeping Mom and the house going -- and kudos to Lar for that, as I am a 13-hour drive away.

At some point during the final years of Mom's life, I began keeping a journal. It may never see the light of day in its entirety, for various reasons. But here's one snippet for you on this Mother's Day.

The setup is this: Mom had gone to the DMV to get her driver's license renewed. She failed the eye exam, though, and then she couldn't find her old license, claiming the DMV took it. My brother convinced me to drive out to Indiana for Easter, help her get her license renewed, and get her eyes checked. I couldn't get her an eye appointment on Good Friday, so Lar insisted that I take her back to DC with me. Once she got her eyes checked, I was to put her on a plane back to Chicago. Lar would then pick her up at O'Hare and drive her the two hours back to her house.

Sounds like a setup for a slapstick routine, right? It gets worse.

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The last day of Mom's visit was on a weekend. We got up early and had breakfast, then got in the car and drove to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. I parked the car in the short-term garage, grabbed her suitcase, and began walking toward the terminal. Mom asked me to slow down.  I was mildly frustrated by her lack of progress by the time we got across the bridge to the terminal, and was beginning to worry that we’d miss the boarding call; spotting a wheelchair, I said, “Sit down, Ma.  I’ll give you a ride.”  We made fine progress after that, although Mom kept saying, “I never thought I’d get to the point….”

That wheelchair was a stroke of inspiration. Because of it, the security guards allowed me to go to the gate with Mom.  They did confiscate my penknife, which I’d forgotten to take off my keychain and leave in the car. I sweet-talked them into holding onto it for me until after Mom’s plane left.

It was at about this point that one of the screeners called out, “Does anyone have any weights in his bag?”  Nobody said anything.  He tried again.  “How about a bottle of Listerine?  Does anyone have a bottle of Listerine in his bag?”

“Oh, that’s mine,” Mom said.

“You brought a whole bottle of Listerine with you?” I asked her.  “You couldn’t bring just a sample size?”

“Ma’am, we’ll have to open your suitcase and take a look inside,” the screener told her.

“Okay, sure,” Mom said.

“Listerine bottles sometimes look like dumbbells on the x-ray,” he explained.  Sure enough, they found nothing in Mom’s suitcase that would be fatal to anything but oral bacteria.  We headed through the doorway and were immediately at the gate.

“Okay, Mom,” I told her as we waited for the boarding call, “the gate attendant is going to ask you a series of questions about whether your luggage has been under your control at all times, whether anyone has given you anything to take on board the plane – stuff like that.  Tell them no.  I mean, you have to answer them honestly, but tell them no.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I can’t answer for you,” I said.

“Okay,” she repeated.

“And for God's sake, don’t joke about having a bomb,” I said, laughing a little.  “After 9/11, they really don’t think that sort of thing is funny anymore.”

“Okay,” she said, laughing, “I won’t say anything about a bomb.”

Finally, the gate attendant announced that the plane was boarding.  I wheeled Mom up to the gate.

The attendant rattled off the usual questions, very fast.  I looked at Mom, silently urging her to answer.  Mom looked at me, expecting me to answer for her.  Oh, shit, I thought.  I rolled my eyes in exasperation at the gate attendant, who said to me quietly, “She’ll have to be searched.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh.  So I rolled Mom over to the table where the secondary searches were taking place.  

For the second time in less than half an hour, the security guards went through Mom’s suitcase.  “There’s no bomb in there,” Mom said, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Mom!” I hissed, thinking, Jesus Christ!  Fortunately, the guard had his back to us and didn’t hear her – otherwise we might still to this day be in a padded room at the airport, explaining ourselves to the FBI.   

Finished with her suitcase, the guard got Mom out of the wheelchair and ran the wand over her; she checked out fine, of course. One of the flight attendants escorted her onto the plane as I waved goodbye.  Relieved to be out of there, I collected my penknife from the security guard outside the gate and headed home.

Later that day, I called Mom to see whether everything had gone smoothly on the O’Hare end.

“Hi, Mom, it’s me,” I said when she answered her phone.  “How was your flight?”

"What flight?" she asked. "Lawrence drove me home."

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Happy Mother's Day to everyone who has ever been a mom or who has ever had a mom. And here's hoping that your day has been one to remember.

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These moments of memorable blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.