May 11: My mom

I have a fuzzy picture somewhere of my mom standing outside a tent at Dinosaur Park somewhere near Drumheller. The year was 1983 and that would have made her 32, which is nine years younger than I am right now.

I was 10 and it was my Grade 4 class's spring camping trip. It was the biggest and longest field trip I'd ever been on. We camped there for two or three days and we ate meals that had been cooked over campfires, we went on hikes, we saw snakes and cacti and "bottomless pits" and we saw a whole lot of dinosaur fossils.

My mom was there as a chaperone. I'm not sure why she went. I didn't ask her and I was a little scared that she'd embarrass me. But she didn't. We had a grand ole time.

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When you reach middle age, there's something scary about seeing pictures of your parents when they were younger than you are now. It's really scary if you're in the picture too. There's a picture of my mom lying on the floor and playing with my sister and me when we were just little kids. My mom looks really happy in that picture but for some reason, it scares me to death.

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This is supposed to be a Mother's Day note.

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1980. My mom got a card I made her in Grade 1 art class. It was a piece of yellow paper, folded in half. I tried to draw daisies on it but I couldn't finish the drawing because there were no white crayons. I used yellow to colour in the middle of the flowers and I had to content myself with writing the word 'WHITE' on the card and then drawing arrows from it pointing to the petals.

I was embarrassed giving that card to my mom. I thought she'd accuse me of laziness. But she didn't.



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It is Mother's Day and my mom is surely being feted on this day by my siblings, who live in the same city she does. I live on the other side of the country and so all I can do is call my mom and wish her a happy Mother's Day and listen to her tell me what she did.

FAST FORWARD SIX HOURS

My mom spent Mother's Day volunteering at something called In From the Cold, which is a church-run charitable drive in Calgary that helps homeless people get back on their feet.

My mom is generous to a fault.

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