The Gate to Mother’s Day

My son and his partner came over for brunch and then fixed the fence gate, thus giving our thirty-old-fence a temporary reprieve from replacement.

This win goes in my husband’s column. His commitment to saving our old fence and repairing the gate has been deep and unwavering. He is just as committed to fixing the lock on the back porch door. My husband has built whole relationships around the fixing of the porch door lock. Our boys grew up fixing that lock. We set a place at the table for the porch door lock.

We used to have regular debates about the gate and the porch door. That was before I decided that I don’t need to have an opinion about either unless somebody’s safety is involved or, almost more importantly, one of the animals could see the open door or gate and take flight. Losing Swirl, Tempest, or Herc is a big fear of mine because if they got loose, Lord knows one of them would get hit by a car and there’d be screeching and keening heard around the world.

So, now the gate is fixed on Mother’s Day, pushing off any possible screeching and keening for a while.

The porch door lock is functional, for the time being.

And the screens were put up on the big windows in the dining room, letting in whatever spring breeze can work its way up our narrow, shared city driveway.

Perfect gifts and emblematic of the whole long thread of motherhood.

Repairs. Maintenance. Patience. Mother’s Day in three words.