Happy Mother’s Day to My Five Favorite Girls

I am a boy mom.

A very happy, totally fulfilled boy mom.

God gave me five sons, no daughters, and I can say with complete honesty that I never felt I was missing a thing.  I've blogged about this topic numerous times over the last decade-plus (it's one of my favorite subjects, I guess), but I'll just bother you with one link, to this old post  (if anyone reading this one thinks it isn't long enough already and wants some bonus reading!).

I adored my boys, and I thought that having a houseful of them was a unique privilege and honor (not to mention very high on fun and very low on emotional drama!).

I was not one of those mothers who looked at her toddler-aged old boy, filled with angst, and worried, "Someday, another woman will become #1 in his heart.  He'll get married and I'll lose him."  I'm so thankful that that's not the way my brain was wired.  (And I do tend to be a worrier; so I'm very grateful that I was not plagued with those particular sorts of anxieties about the future.)  I just enjoyed my passel of boys at all of the various stages of their babyhoods and childhoods and young adulthoods (even the teen years, which don't have to be a nightmare--so don't let anyone make you believe, and even assume, that will be the case!).  I loved having them all living under our roof, but I knew they would eventually grow up and leave me. And I knew that I would no longer be the #1 woman in their lives, once they got married and their wives took that spot.

BUT!  (And this is a big but, and I cannot lie...)  #sorryaboutthat  #acomedianiamnot

Moms of boys: be not afraid of the girls who will supposedly “take your boys away from you”—it doesn’t have to be like that!  If you've raised them right, in a loving, stable household with your strong marriage as a model, chances are good that you're going to love and approve wholeheartedly of the girls they choose.

Trust that they will choose well.  Support their choices.  Think of those girls as true daughters.  And if you’re as lucky as I am, you won’t even have to try very hard to think of them that way.

I should have said up there at the beginning that I was a boy mom.  Because now I have five girls, too.  And I can no longer imagine what our family would be like without them.

Our five sons and five daughters.  (And one photo-bombing grandson.)

I was just about to share a link back to another ancient post in my archives, one written in 2013 after the birth of our oldest son's third daughter (the first two were twins, born less than two years earlier).  But if you want to skip reading the whole thing, I’ll retell the part that ties in with this post today:  

My husband and I were still living in NH at the time; we'd flown out to CO to help with the twins while our son and his wife were in the hospital with the new baby, and then we stayed on for about a week after they got home.  On the last night of our stay, our daughter-in-law Regina's mom flew in to help out for the week following our departure, so we overlapped for one night before our flight out the next morning. 

Although I have always had a wonderful relationship with Regina, and I knew how grateful she was that my husband and I had come out to help, when her mom arrived, I was struck by the strength of that beautiful mother-daughter bond between them.  How precious that relationship is, especially when a daughter has become a mother herself.  When I went to bed that night, I was plagued by the thought that in some ways,  I had become a bit irrelevant.  I was no longer the most important woman in my son's life; that woman was now his wife--which is absolutely as it should be, and I'd be concerned if that wasn't the case!  And the most important woman in my daughter-in-law's life was, of course, her own mother.  So where did that leave me?

I felt weepy as I got ready for bed that night.

Well, I think Regina must have been a mind reader or something, aware of my need for some sign--some words of affirmation, perhaps--proving that I still had an important role to play in the lives of our children.  On the way to the airport, our son drove and my husband sat up front with him, while I was in the back seat (still brooding about becoming irrelevant).  With no fanfare ("Oh yeah, Regina said to give you this"), my boy handed a little gift bag back to me.  What was this? 

Inside the tissue paper I found a small rustic wooden sign with these words painted on it: FIRST MY MOTHER-IN-LAW, NOW ALSO MY FRIEND.   Well, dear readers...if I said there weren't any tears over that unexpected gift, I would be lying.

And there have been many more happy tears shed in the ensuing years, brought on by the sweet words and gestures of not only Regina, but the four other girls who eventually joined our family.  These amazing gals have all become dear friends and so much more.  They are outstanding wives to our sons and devoted mothers to our 22 precious grandchildren.  They visit us often and generously share their children with us.  They make it very clear that it is important to them that their kids' grandparents are a big part of their lives.  They seem to really like us!  (And if not, they are great actresses!)  Truly, we are inordinately blessed in this regard.

My daughters-in-law text me often (more often than my boys do, to be honest--ha, ha!  Are you surprised?).  If a day goes by and I haven’t heard from at least one or two of them, I get a bit worried (and I miss them!)--that's how often we're in touch.  Most of the time, it’s just random chit-chat, family news, and information sharing; but sometimes, the words are profoundly moving.

Here are snippets from just a few of the texts I've gotten over the years; they warmed my heart so much that I felt the need to screenshot them for safekeeping.  (I used to keep special letters I'd received in the mail stored away in a shoe box...I think of these texts as letters, 21st-century-style!  And I'm storing them here at the blog. )

If you don't come here often: we moved to from NH to VA in 2017
in order to live close to three of our five boys.

After the birth of a new grandchild, we don't need thanks from our girls.
We want to thank THEM, for wanting us to come and meet the baby ASAP!

How blessed am I?!  These girls make me feel so loved and appreciated.  Relevant, even!  (Ha ha!)

I was just getting ready to wrap this post up when another sweet text from one of our daughters-in-law popped up on our family stream.

I didn't "lose" my boys; I gained five girls.  And just like with our sons, they're all favorites.  It's a five-way tie.

Happy Mother's Day to the best daughters-in-law a boy mom could ever ask for.  I thank God for you every day!  XO XO XO XO XO

Letting Go (and Dinner for Two)

It's been two months since I posted anything here.  2011 me doesn't even recognize 2024 me!  When this blog was in its infancy, I used to get up pretty much every morning raring to sit down at my laptop and write.  

In March of 2011, when I first decided to dip my toes into the unfamiliar waters of the blogosphere, my life was about to change drastically: my youngest son was getting ready to graduate from high school that June and head off to college after the summer; and my oldest son was three months away from becoming a first-time father to twin girls, making me a first-time Grammy.  I was not technically an empty-nester yet, but I was getting close.  And suddenly, I had more free time than I'd ever had before--so for several years, I blogged almost daily.  But then as, one by one, new daughters were added to our family, and traveling to visit our ever-expanding brood took up so much of our energy, my blog output started to decrease quite a bit.  I loved writing about my family and my life, but I became too busy living it to blog about it as often as I used to do.

In 2017, my husband and I moved away from our "forever home" in New Hampshire, where we had raised our boys, to Virginia, where three of them had settled with their growing families.  So much has changed in the intervening years.  Today, I have five married sons and 22 grandchildren.  Two of our boys live too far away, one in Wisconsin and one in Tennessee; but we feel pretty blessed to have three of them living less than an hour's drive from us.  Life is gloriously busy down here.  We live in a smaller house, with a smaller yard, but I have grown to love our new VA home every bit as much as the NH one we tearfully left behind seven years ago.

As difficult as it was at the time, that move was good for me.  I'd already started having to learn to accept change, to practice detachment, because by then all five of our boys were grown and gone and living their adult lives.  Even our baby was an Army officer stationed in Germany when we made our big move south.  For a person who gets very attached to the things--and the people--she loves, leaving that well-loved house, with all its happy memories, was one of the toughest things I've ever done.  But ultimately, it made my life better!  The blessings we have reaped by living close to so many of our kids and grandkids are countless.  Our 2017 move was one of the best decisions we ever made. 

Just yesterday, I was reading a January 2024 blog post by Elizabeth Foss, and as usual, her writing spoke to me.  Loudly.  She included a quote by Corrie ten Boom (a WWII concentration camp survivor, who'd risked her own life to hide Jews), and when I read it, I knew that God meant for me to see it. "Hold loosely to the things of this life so that if God requires them of you, it will be easy to let them go." And when ten Boom said, "things," she wasn't only talking about material things; she elaborated, "Even your dear family.  Why?  Because the Father may wish to take one of them back to himself, and when he does, it will hurt you if he must pry your fingers loose."

Whoah.  Did I ever need to read those words, to be reminded of the fleeting nature of this life on earth and the need to let go of things, and even of people when the time comes.  It's so easy to say, "Of course!  Yes!  I'm a devout Catholic and I know that this life is short and filled with suffering, and it's the next one, the eternal one with God in Heaven, that matters."  And yet, things here matter to the human heart.  And people; oh, how they matter!  It seems that mothers' hearts break on a daily basis.  Just having a child grow up, leave home, and start his adult life somewhere far from you can do it--even though that's the goal: giving your children wings and then watching them fly away.

I loved it when all of our boys were little, living under our roof.  I loved it when they were gathered around our table for every meal.  I think I'm in need of a short trip down Memory Lane, so bear with me while I share some pictures of those good old days.  (And also, if you're a young mom, remind yourself how lucky you are to have the awesome digital photography of the 21st century always at your fingertips, instead of the grainy, poorly lighted snapshots moms my age have of our kids--ones we had to wait a couple of weeks to see, not even knowing how they'd turned out!)

Those boys: they are my life!  Hang on a minute...I need a tissue.

Okay, I'm back.  

Listen, the last thing I want to do is sound all maudlin and "woe is me."  I'm just feeling nostalgic is all.   And the years seem to be going by too quickly for me these days, the changes coming at me rapid-fire.   At 65, I know that the road of life behind me is much longer than the one ahead, and it makes me think about all the things I love in this world.  

But I would be lying if I said that feeding a passel of little boys was always a complete joy.  We had two in particular who were mighty picky eaters.  When they used to ask, "What's for dinner?", I would put them off with, "I don't know..." or "I don't want to talk about it right now..."  If we ever got through a healthy home-cooked dinner with clean plates and no complaining, I used to feel like I was on a high.  They all loved my baking, so dessert was usually successful; but the main dish was hit-or-miss with some of them.  I wasn't the greatest cook, to be honest (it's hard to get excited to cook when you're not sure people will eat what you make).  I could whip up basic "comfort foods," like beef stew, lasagna, shepherd's pie.  But I wasn't very adventurous with my cooking.

That's one nice part about being an old lady like me: you miss your kids being gathered around your table (picky eaters notwithstanding); but if you made the right choice in a husband, and he's your favorite person to hang out with, dinner for two can really be a joy.  And it's fun to try new delicious dishes together.

This past week, my husband and I had two meals in a row that I thought were so yummy, simple but elegant--and I would never have made them to serve our boys when they were little.  We ate these meals on trays in the family room while we watched Matt Walsh's show together, pushing pause every now and then to chat.  I thought my plate looked so appetizing both nights that I snapped pictures.  And now I'm going to share them--lucky you!

On Monday, we had baked potatoes and roasted prosciutto-wrapped asparagus (with parmesan cheese and bits of French fried onions on top).  It was so good!

On Tuesday, we had filet mignon, cooked by my husband on the grill and topped with sautéed mushrooms, and green salads (his was a bit more elaborate than mine).  I also had some plain yogurt with fruit and granola, in lieu of dessert. Because it's Lent.  (I know some of you probably think I cheated because that sounds like a dessert; but in my book, if it doesn't include chocolate or caramel or icing, and it isn't a cookie or a brownie or a cake, it is most definitely not a dessert.)

There is so much to let go of as you get older.  But there is also much to look forward to.  Every night that my husband and I are at home eating our dinner together, it feels like a date.  That's not too bad a way to live, is it?  Sure, sometimes we miss those bygone years when we always had our boys with us, when we saw them every single day; but they are all thriving at the moment, praise God.  And we are so, SO happy to have each other.

Full disclosure: I took those Corrie ten Boom quotes to heart, and I want to live my life holding onto things loosely; but when it comes to my husband, my grip is probably a bit too tight.  I'll be working on that, but I can't promise I'll get good at it!  In the meantime, I hope there are lots of dinner dates in our future.

Six Little Sailors (and My Five Babies)

The second-born of our five sons now has five sons of his own.  His youngest (our 21st grandchild) was born this past June.

He and his wife Ginger also have a little girl in Heaven.  At 16 weeks gestation, Saint Monica Mary Pearl went home to God on August 27, 2019.

But here on earth, they have five boys, just like we do.

Our boys didn't have extensive wardrobes, and there weren't a lot of clothing items worth hanging onto after they grew out of babyhood; but I did keep a little blue sailor suit (circa 1985, size 3-6 months) and a bigger white sailor suit (circa 1983/84, size 2T).  All five of our boys had professional pictures taken in the white one between one and two years of age.  But only two of them (#2 and #3) had photos taken in the little blue one.  I know I didn't have it yet when it would have fit my firstborn, and son #2 was the first one to wear it.  I'm not sure, though, why I never got photos of #4 and #5 wearing it.  (They were my biggest, both over 10 pounds at birth, so I wonder if they just grew out of it before I thought to put them in it?)

I'm sentimental about those vintage sailor suits.  And so is my daughter-in-law Ginger.  She has had all five of their boys photographed in the blue sailor suit that their daddy once wore, and four out of the five in the white one (I'm sure the little guy will have his picture taken in it, too, when he gets old enough!).  Yesterday, she texted us this collage with our boy (top row, middle) and his five boys all wearing the same little sailor suit.

This is why I hold onto things!!  Isn't that collage just priceless?

Looking at it makes me nostalgic for the days when I was the mom of sweet baby boys.

Oh yeah, that's right: I still am.  They'll always be my babies.  They are still sweet, they are still just the cutest, and I love them so much.  They're all my favorites.  

On that note,  I'm going to show you another collage--one that I made about seven years ago.  It illustrates my point, about the cuteness.

Son #2 has joked that maybe they'll "beat" us and end up with 6 boys.  I say go for it!  I had an enlargement made of that collage of sailor suit babies, and it's already hanging up on the wall; but I will be more than happy to update it, if the need arises!

A Beautiful Mother's Day and a Beautiful Life!

I am late with my Mother's Day post, but that's about par for the course for me these days!

We had such a special celebration last Sunday, because our oldest grandson, G-Man (who is the oldest of son #3's five offspring), made his First Holy Communion that day.  What could be better than spending Mother's Day seeing one of your precious children's children receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time ever?  It was beautiful.

This grandson of ours will always occupy a special place in my heart because of the four-and-a-half months we lived with him and his parents when he was a baby.  We were still living in NH at the time, and my husband was still working as an airline pilot.  So he commuted to work while I played the part of full-time nanny, so that our son and his wife didn't have to put the little guy into day care.  Our daughter-in-law had completed her three-month maternity leave from her job at UVA, and there was about a four-month stretch until the end of the school year.  She had decided that when that semester ended, she was going to quit her job and stay at home with the little guy.  We filled in that gap and it was a very special time for us--and of course, G-Man was often the star of my blog posts in those days, as you can see here.  

Oh my, reading over that old post has made me misty-eyed.  And also amazed at how surprising life can be, and how beautiful.  Two years after that post was written, we had moved away from NH and become Virginians--which we never would have imagined doing at that point.  (Best move ever: with three sons living close-by, we are no longer constantly in travel mode.)  G-Man has a little brother now who's just a bit older than he was in those old photos.  And he's often riding on my left hip and staring at my face, just like his big brother was in those photos from 2015.  Oh my goodness, it's like deja vu (all over again. Ha ha!).

After Mass, we went over to G-Man's house for a brunch with lots of beloved people: G-Man, his parents, his four siblings, and his maternal grandmother; son #4, his wife, and their four kids; and one of our boys' cousins (named after yours truly!), who lives in the area and has two delightful daughters.

We got a picture of G-Man with his grandfather (my guy, whom he calls Papa), his godfather (his uncle, our son #4), and his father.  All of his earthly fathers looking out for him, body and soul.

So that was Mother's Day, one for the ages.  

If you come here often you know that ever since we moved down to VA, the boys who live nearby come over to have a special Mother's Day dinner with my husband and me, without spouses or kids--so that we can relive the old days when they were just mama's boys.  (The gift of time spent together, which is my #1 love language.)  It's usually not on actual Mother's Day, because we want them to spend that with their deserving wives.  I've written about this tradition before.  Here's last year's post, which included a big surprise for me. 

Oh no, not again.  An old blog post, making me misty-eyed! 

Anyway, I usually only get three or four of my five boys at once, but I'll take whatever I can get!  I am so grateful for this tradition.  I didn't think it was going to happen this year, because everyone is so very busy with their kids' school and after-school activities, work, and other commitments.  I had said that we should skip it this year, and that our wonderful celebration for G-Man's First Communion was enough of a Mother's Day treat for me.  

But those boys...the Tuesday after Mother's Day, our VA sons (all three of whom live between 40 and 50 minutes from our front door) came anyway.  And we had steaks and baked potatoes, with cheesecake for dessert.  And we talked about the two brothers who were missing, so that it was almost as if they were there, too.  And we laughed. And it was wonderful.

I have the best sons.  Just sayin'.

I tell you what, I'll always be glad that I have this blog. It's keeping memories alive for me.  As the years pass, things tend to get blurry.  But all I have to do to remember exactly what I was doing and thinking and feeling during some moment in my life is to click on an old post buried in my archives, and I'm transported back in time.  It's a gift, this blogging thing.  I don't do it as much as I used to, but I don't think I can ever give it up completely.  I'll be 65 this summer; my memories are only going to get fuzzier with age.  I'm going to need to read the story of my life, and luckily, I'll know where to find it.

Deep thoughts about blogging.  Yikes, that's enough of that for today. 

A belated Happy Mother's Day, dear readers.  God bless you!

Five Dads

If you come here fairly often, you know that our youngest son and his wife recently welcomed their first baby, a sweet little girl.  So now all five of our sons, incredibly, are dads.

For the past few years, my prayer has been to live long enough to meet son #5’s first child.  He's five years younger than his next oldest brother, and he got married about five years behind the last of the rest of them.  I felt like my husband and I had been very blessed to see our four oldest boys become dads (more than once each!); so I would pray, "Please God, let me live to see my baby become a dad, too!" 

Now that I've met his darling firstborn child, my prayer has changed to, "Thanks so much!  I am eternally grateful!  Now if you don't mind, I'd like to meet a few more of his children, too, if you're going to send more. I don't mean to be greedy, but you know: ‘Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.’  (Matthew 7:7)  Just asking, seeking, and knocking here…but Thy will be done, of course!”

                                            🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

It has been a unique blessing to watch our boys become fathers, let me tell you.  I can think of few things that have been more rewarding.  All five of them have embraced fatherhood with zeal, falling into the role as naturally as if they'd been born for it (and since they don't have religious vocations, I absolutely believe they were born for it).  

It's about the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen, watching these beloved boys with their children.  And to illustrate that point, I'm just going to end this post with a little photo dump (using some snapshots--not necessarily the most recent ones-- culled from the hundreds, maybe thousands, I have to choose from!).

Son #1 (father of 6 on earth, 4 in Heaven), 
with his youngest.

Son #2 (father of 4 on earth, one in Heaven, and one
on the way), with his third-born.

Our middle son (father of 5), with his firstborn.

Son #4 (father of 4), with his youngest.

Our baby, with his first baby.

I LOVE my family.  Love them to pieces.  These boys.  Their wives.  And the 20-going-on-21 grandchildren they've given us to treasure, as well as the five tiny precious souls who wait to meet us in Heaven (pray for us, sweet babies! We need your help!).

Thank you, God, for EVERYTHING!  Especially for these five dads.

July 2022 Recap: Fourth of July Fun!

So, I'm still working on getting all of our July memories recorded, because better late than never and all that good stuff.  I recently blogged about a nephew's wedding and a grandson's Baptism.   Now it's time to tackle the Fourth of July!  It was indeed a day of glorious family-centered celebrations.

All of our gang who were able to be there (our four youngest sons, their wives, and 13 of our grandchildren) moved into our Oyster Haven house on the 3rd, the day after the wedding.  On the 4th, we all headed a few miles down the road to my husband's childhood neighborhood, where every year they put on a giant parade, complete with a decorated fire engine bringing up the rear.  All the kids (and let's be honest, most of the grown-ups, too) dress up in red, white, and blue, and they have their bikes and strollers adorned with Stars and Stripes.  Spectators set their chairs up near the curbs in front of their houses and sit with beers or sodas in hand, catching up with neighbors as they march by.  Our grandkids really enjoyed taking part in this longstanding neighborhood tradition, one that their dads remember from their own childhood days when they were visiting their Papa and Grandma during summer vacations.

These are some of our people!

A trio of Pearl dads (and a Pearl mom) with their offspring.

Mama's boys.  

Our youngest son has been growing his hair and beard for a little over a year, ever since he ended his career as a field artillery officer in the Army and started grad school.  For the Fourth, he got a special haircut. Yes, he paid someone good money to give him a redneck mullet.  He went off in the morning, presumably to get a long overdue "real" haircut, and came back to surprise us with it!  We got a good laugh out of that. And as if the silly haircut wasn't enough, his parade outfit was short overalls emblazoned with Old Glory, no shirt underneath.  (Stop, you're killing us!)  When he walked into his aunt's house, where many of his Pearl aunts, uncles, and cousins were gathered to get ready to march in the parade, he was heard to say, "Did somebody order up some freedom?!"

'Murica!

His wife is amused.

These three Pearl cousins were born within a six-day period; the nephew on the left came first, our youngest son came four days later, and then the niece in the middle came two days after our boy.  We called them "the triplets"...before there were TWO sets of ACTUAL triplets in the family!

Not-quite-triplet cousins.

We were able to get a group photo of many members of the newest generation of Pearls, the children of our boys and some of their cousins. 

 

The fun wasn't over when the parade ended, though. Afterward, our crew said goodbye to the extended Pearl family and went back to our Oyster Haven haven for a cookout.  And then when the sun finally set, there were sparklers, glow necklaces, and the next-door neighbor's annual Independence Day fireworks, a truly spectacular show which we can watch right from our own back yard.

This was a turning point for G-Man; this year, he conquered his fear of
the sparklers!

There are times when I don't recognize my country anymore, and I worry about what the future holds for our boys and their children.  I love them all more than life itself!  But on days such as this one, when we celebrated America the Beautiful with such innocent joy and happiness--with hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, ice cream sandwiches, fireworks booming nearby over the lake, and the kids all running around the lawn at Oyster Haven long after it got dark, way past their bedtimes--it was hard to feel anything but hopeful.

When I look at the faces of my grandchildren I see the future, and it looks bright.

God bless my family, now and always.  And God bless America.  (I'm officially ordering up some freedom! Are you with me?!)