The sweet indulgence of ordinary days

Even though this is my third(!!) one, Mother's Day sneaks up on me. I forget that I'm one of those mother-type people now, too. So I didn't have any great expectations about Mother's Day, and we didn't make any big plans.

I could not have asked for anything more out of my weekend and my Mother's Day. We had amazing weather, to start with. Sunny and 70+ all weekend, with a few spring showers just at the end of dinner last night. I'm a fragile desert flower; sun makes me beyond happy. The small child was uncommonly pleasant all weekend long. Seriously delightful (except perhaps when trying to get her to nap).

Saturday brought me a toddler-free morning- errands without one in tow are sheer bliss. I was able to find everything I needed for my planned gardening at our awesome neighborhood hardware and garden stores, sparing me a much-dreaded trip to a big box store. (Home Depot just makes me cry. It does.) On a whim, I threw some wee garden tools for the Olive into my basket. On another whim, I stopped into a new coffee house for cappucino and a croissant. Just because I felt like it; and it felt so indulgent - me, alone, just sitting, for no reason other than that I felt like it.

I got home right after Seth and the Olive, and we went right to work gardening. She loved it. Loved it! For the first time, she really, truly helped instead of just "helped." I got her to fill a bucket with potting soil over and over, and bring it to me to put on newly transplanted day lilies. She helped me scratch up the dirt to prep it for sinking new stepping stones. She took her own watering can and watered all of the new plants. She was enamoured with every worm that I dug up and then sent wriggling back into the dark, rich loam, and we had to dig a few extra holes to look for more worms. I've dreamt of this day, when I could be out there with her, working, laughing and getting dirty.

We broke for lunch, attempted a nap (fail!), and then headed out to a first birthday party for the daughter of friends we don't get to see very often (win!). It was one of those fantastic parties, where you have a great time from beginning to end, where you feel gregarious and witty and meet new people, where you realize your kid is old enough to run around with a lot less supervision, where you just sit outside with a drink in your hand for hours, and talk and laugh. My only error was a failed execution of the proper water-to-food-to-wine ratio, which left me a leetle smidge more tipsy than I wanted to be, and gave me a bad night's sleep.

The Olive made up for it, though. She slept until past 7:15 on Mother's Day morning. This is utterly unheard of. She's usually up and talking a million miles an hour by 6:15; I'm usually awake before that, waiting to hear her wake and call me. For the first time in years, I got to lie in bed and read before anyone else was awake, one of my favorite indulgent pleasures.

But by 7:40, we were outside in our pajamas, on another beautiful day. I got some coffee for my wine-muddled head, the Olive and I searched the car for her missing shoe (found!) and my iPhone (found, but at my friend's house in Maryland from the night before. Oops.), drew with chalk on the deck, shared a banana, and pondered the rest of our day.

We ended up having a casual breakfast at Pound, the new coffeehouse I'd been to on Saturday. Their patio was surprisingly deserted, so we had it all to ourselves to share egg and cheese paninis, sip espresso, climb on and off the metal benches a hundred times, and watch the birds and squirrels in the tree canopy above us. Next, a trip to a favorite playground in hopes of encouraging an afternoon nap. The Olive can climb up the ramp of the slide by herself now, a trick she's been wanting to master since she could walk, watching the big kids and trying it over and over again. There was also plenty of running and jumping, because dang, that kid can run. Fast, and often.

Our next stop was Eastern Market, where my girl picked out a bouquet of pink snapdragons for me. She picked them for the color; what she doesn't know is that they look like the ones my mother used to grow in our garden in Santa Fe. A little grocery shopping for the week, some tastes of apple at the farmer's market, and back home for lunch. I got the patio umbrella out, brought the food outside, so we didn't have to go inside just yet.

That one glass of wine too many caught up to me at naptime, and Seth got the Olive to sleep by taking her for a ride in the car, then eased her back into the house and into her bed, while I got to lounge in bed and try to doze for a couple of hours. It was enough so that I was ready again for my girl when she woke from her nap and called for me. We had snacks, played with Play Doh, then (of course) back outside again for more digging and gardening, and some wandering around the block to pick up every stick. We had the luxury of nowhere to be and nothing to do, because my husband was cooking me dinner. I love to cook, but it wears on you when you do it all the time, and you have to feed small people who cannot wait to eat at 8:30 pm and would prefer macaroni to blanquette de veau. Having someone else (anyone!) cook a meal for me feels like the ultimate indulgence these days.

We ate outside again, drinking in the weather and the cool white wine, watching the Olive slurp spaghetti, taste the veal piccatta, shovel in creamed spinach (!), and eat her body weight in watermelon. It started to rain just at the end of dinner, but we stayed out there anyhow, under the umbrella, getting just a little damp in the passing showers. I got to play with my girl some more, and then break the news to her that our lovely day was over, and it was time to go upstairs for bath and bed.

I am always both a little relieved and a little sad when I have put my girl to bed at the end of the day. Relieved, because man, she's two and can be quite exhausting; but sad, because I miss her company. The sadness is always more pronounced on a Sunday night, because the weekend and my time of having her greedily to myself is over. The working day looms.

Exhausted, but satisfied, I went to bed and put off the reality of Sunday night with one more indulgence: my new Kindle. Holy shit, my husband (and daughter, nominally) got me a KINDLE for Mother's Day. The big Kindle, with the 9.75 inch screen and the 3G. I still can't believe it. We just did an iPad hand-me-down - Seth's mom got a new one, she gave Seth her old one, and I got Seth's. I was chugging along quite happily with the Kindle app. Even if I did covet the non-reflective, high-contrast, real book look of the Kindle, I was only going to drool at them online and not actually buy one.

You know why he said he got it for me? "Because you like to sit outside on the deck at Martha's Vineyard and read. And you can't read with the iPad outside. I know how much you like to do that." I still don't know what to say, and I haven't thanked him enough. I am grateful and humbled for this sweet man who somehow loves me so, in all my prickly and temperamental glory.

The Kindle is, of course, AMAZING (3,500 books! In my hand!). But the best gift this weekend was simply time. Just enough time to myself. Relaxed time with all three of us. Easy, easy lovely time with my girl. Who is ever more fun to be, as we talk and truly do things together now. The ordinary indulgence of time - there is never enough.