Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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to Judy at her baby’s milestone birthday

August 26, 2025

Dear Judy,

Fifty years ago you were likely preparing for the hospital, anxiously awaiting your much loved and much planned love child with Harvey. Actually, knowing your nature, you had been ready for a while! Your suitcase was probably already packed, and you had long since made plans for the older kids to be at Grandma Goldie’s house. I wonder if you had Mexican food one more time before going into labor. Did you know you were having a son, or was that a surprise? I don’t know if I ever heard that detail.

What I do know without a shadow of a doubt is that you loved being his Mom. I think possibly, of all the passions God gave you in this earthly life, you loved nothing more. And he has flourished because of it. He flourishes still, drawing constantly on your love, your belief in him, your character shaping, and the hope that your prayers “hang in the air around him,” as the saying goes.

We would love to be partying with you this year. This milestone. This week to celebrate so much, not just the passage of a truly stunning volume of time but also the achievement of deep and hard earned peace. You might not agree with every single choice he has made in recent years, particularly this tattoo that’s about to happen, but most of those would just earn some smirks and jokes and a prized onery look of mock judgement over your eyeglasses, after which you would probably smile again and ask him, “Well, have you ate?” And even if he had eaten, he would say no and choose between a few favorite restaurants.

You would be proud, though, deeply proud, of so much. I hope you can see the best highlights from wherever you are, because he is carrying the mantle for you in ways we could not have dreamed of before you left. You should see what he has accomplished at the Commission. The storms he has navigated, the spiritual infrastructure he has built. Not aligned with any political party, but aligned with doing the right thing, he frequently invokes stories about you and your party-indifferent love for people and getting things done efficiently and transparently. He is the manager you always declared he would be, just on a much larger scale. We still have that concrete planter you gifted him to celebrate his first bank branch manager job on May Avenue in Oklahoma City. Every time I see it I think of you and how firmly you saw his future, decades ahead of time. People commonly talk about a mother’s love, and that’s good and true; but you also demonstrated the power of a mother’s vision. Thank you for that. Thank you for holding it for him, and thank you for showing both of us how vital it is to see through the storm into a beautiful future, an unclouded day.

He is an excellent father in law, as you were an excellent mother in law. His instincts and affection are so genuine and tender, it makes me fall more deeply in love with him every time I watch him with Alex. And if the kids’ wishes come true, he will be an excellent Grandpa, too. He’ll spoil those babies rotten and never apologize for it. We already have so much energy built up here at the farm for future grandbabies, and I know you would be happy to watch it all unfold, so long as we don’t let them have three wheelers.

Sometimes he laughs in a way that makes it feel like you are in the room with us. Sometimes he looks at me over his glasses in the exact way you would. And did you know we have a dear friend now, named Cathy, who has about a hundred uncanny traits similar to yours? When we finally acknowledged it to each other, it was such a comfort. I think her likenesses to you draw him in for weekend touchpoints. A sacred rhythm.

He is still finding ways to “Take care of the children,” as you implored him to do. The opportunities and inspirations change seasonally, but it’s always a natural fit when it happens. I wish you could share in some of it. The Batmobile in particular is a project I wish you could touch and hear and experience, bodily. There is no doubt you are woven into it.

He still loves your chocolate fudge cake and lemon ice box pie more than any other holiday dessert. He still has the same, soft old Snoopy you gave him. He still holds every good thing about childhood up to the high standard you provided. He still tells all his stories to anyone who will listen. You are here with us, is what I’m saying. We miss you terribly, but you are still here. You are very much alive in his personality, and I hope you feel it.

Thank you for loving him so well for the thirty eight years he had you that he still feels it. Thank you for raising a boy who could become the man that he is, the kind of man this world desperately needs. Disciplined, in control of himself, ambitious, protective, fiercely loyal, fun loving, and God fearing. Thank you for managing to establish so many traditions and cravings in him that endure to this day. Our life is so rich because of that. Your vacation-loving, Batman-crazed, video game-playing baby boy is all of that still and much more.

Fifty years old this week, more handsome than ever, and healthier than ever, too. Your son is doing great. Your motherhood continues. I just wanted you to know.

We love you, we miss you,
and we wish you could be here for his birthday.
xoxo
Marie

her second mother’s day

The moment she announced her growing family, we all shrieked with joy. And I mean SHRIEKED. No one was expecting it. We were all just so happy to be together. About 25 family members were holding hands in our living room, saying grace over the fragrant and long awaited Thanksgiving feast. She was the last person in the family to speak her gratitude (her fiancé was the first. He must have seen the opportunity and stealthily guided the group’s clockwise sequence), and she did so with her standard calm, quiet reserve. It took exactly half of one second for the news to cross the air between her pretty mouth to all of our ears, and it created such a stir of energy, such a wave of joy and chaos, that I think no one will ever forget that moment. We caught most of the family response on security camera. There was much jumping and hugging and a little crying.

This is actually her second Mother’s Day weekend. Her first was spent in the hospital welcoming that peach fuzz baby boy we have all become obsessed with and who we each believe regards us, one at a time, as his favorite uncle or auntie or cousin. Grandma and Grandpa have zero competition from us.  

Her craving for motherhood was kept mostly quiet over the years, but her talent for it has been obvious, displayed in the myriad ways she lives and loves. She has always exuded compassion, concern, stability, wisdom and a kind of softness that is matched only by her strength. She is both disciplined and playful, able to hold it all at once. She has spent more than two decades, it turns out, building an emotional and practical nest for her baby bird that is so strong, so comfortable, so safe, and so nourishing that now, at this moment, we see she is not only the mother he needs, the mother he chose from Baby Heaven and came to Earth to find; she is in many ways the mother we all wish to be.

Last November I was lucky enough to spend about a week with my baby sister and her baby boy in their nest. I got to see firsthand her tenderness, the way her lean arms scooped him up, tiny as he was then, into his favorite embrace. The way she fed him and bathed him. I got to watch both of their faces light up when they made eye contact. I heard her voice, which has in our adulthood issued some of my most treasured deep and serious conversations, collapse gently into songs like The Itsy Bitsy Spider and Frère Jacques. I got to see her weep when he was briefly inconsolable during a long car ride. She felt his pain, and she always will. I remember silently hoping she was ready for that part.

I went to California thinking maybe I could impart a smidgen or two of motherly guidance, ha! But no. She was already overflowing with instinct and goodness. She was a steady, shining conduit for every single thing he needed, right when he needed it. And that is exactly how it will always be. In the months since, she and her husband, our new brother we love so much, have shared hundreds of photos showing this peach fuzz baby boy’s growth and vibrating happiness. It is bizarre to think back to that Thanksgiving, to that moment right before she announced her pregnancy, back to the reality where we did not yet know this whole new person.

They say that when a baby is born, a mother is also born. I love that. I think it is true for many women, but in my baby sister’s case, I think she just finally emerged. She had already been a mother for a long time, growing herself behind the scenes and waiting for ripeness and good partnership, a gift every baby deserves. She is one of the most luminous mothers I have ever witnessed, and I am so thankful she has added a nephew and a brother to our big family for us to love, too.

Happy Second Mother’s Day, Gen.
LYLAS
xoxoxo

some garden & parenting advice

Jessica started her fall garden a couple of weeks ago, and my gardener-mama heart has been so full. Daily, we have been chatting all things soil, seeds, sun exposure, needed growing weeks, frost expectations, compost methods, you name it. This is a wonderful exchange for many reasons, as you can imagine. But something stands out.

Just a short bit into the thrust of her efforts, I caught myself praying that her fall harvest would be abundant. I asked God in kind of a pleading way to reward my baby’s efforts with lots of perfect vegetables and flowers, just all the good, beautiful rewards of hard work well done. I nearly begged Him to give her the “things” that would encourage her to keep going. Proof, you know?

((daily harvest, eggs already in the fridge xoxo))

He corrected me immediately.

The best rewards of a garden are not necessarily included in the harvest.

Gardening in its purest form is an ongoing cultivation of Life, a physical expression of art and science, a balance of need and provision between man and Earth and insects and God, of creativity and learning. Gardening is an adventure of trust in natural cycles. And much of this can only be learned by trial and, mostly, error. Lots of valuable error.

I know this.

So why would I deny Jess pleasure of learning on her own? Why would I swerve her away from the immense value of the journey itself?

My Grandpa Rex was a lifelong gardener and a lifelong student of, well, everything he could get his eyes or hands on. He was famous for being okay with not having all the answers, and yet I trusted him to always eventually find the answer and call me back. He trialed new ideas in his various gardens right up to the end of his gardening years, and he had wickedly specific reasons for even the paint he used on his shed. I think of that daily. I love how he never seemed to grow the same garden twice, and he thrived through it all. I want that for Jessica. Grandpa’s life showed the fruits of his labor far beyond his beautiful tomatoes and larkspur. I want that for her, too.

((little girl jess & not yet married Jess, always playing in the garden))

I will be here to guide her as much as I can, and to share my growing adventures alongside her own. And I will help her find good answers to her excellent questions. But I will not pray merely for a good harvest. Now, I am praying for a good experience, too. For good lessons and soul checks. For epiphanies and understandings, connections, realizations. I am praying for her good LIFE. It all matters.

Then, if she pays attention and has a little luck, she’ll get fresh produce, too.

Whew, I am thankful for that mild correction. He always knows what I need to hear.

“When we plant a seed,
we plant a narrative of future possibility.”
~Dr. Sue Stuart Smith
The Well Gardened Mind
XOXOXOXO