A Happy Birthday To Someone Special!

In spite of everything that I have going on in my world, time must be spent on the things that are important, and this year, I have decided to do it a different way. I want to wish my mother, Janet Flinn, a happy birthday today.

I won’t say what year mother was born, so I’ll let you figure it out. Let’s just day she was born three days after Marty McFly returned to the future. It’s a fact that we often point out when watching the film, and while I hope mother doesn’t care too much about it, somehow I think that she might.

My mother has always been a rock of sorts for me. I have a tendency to be pompous and full of crap on many of my views of the world, and she has this amazing ability to cut right through the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter. It’s amazing really, but I have never met anyone else who has such a clear view of the world and how it operates.

Mother is also quite practical. We always joke that people we know can find easy ways and hard ways to do something, and generally they’ll pick the hard way, but mother has a way of knowing and understanding how things work, and what the best way of achieving a task would happen to be. She is a puzzle master. This is no joke, and while I’ve never played my mother in chess, I have to think that she would clean up in it.

I'm not kidding, she can pack anything, and everything

From packing a car, or organizing a room, my mother has this amazing ability to see the space, and the things needed packed, and fit them in such a way that is the most practical and makes the most sense, and more often than not, fit all materials into the space, after everyone else had given up. This is a talent that I have personally noticed that she has no equal to, at least in my world.

I'll also say, as one who has seen it many times over the years, no one can give the evil eye like mom can.

My mother’s cooking has always been basic. While she doesn’t come to the standards of my Grandma she isn’t really a novice either. When we were younger, she took it upon herself to ensure that all of us knew how to cook and clean, because she saw it as a way to make sure we were self-sufficient. And I’ll say this; NO ONE can make potato salad as good as my mother can.

A rare quiet moment

Everybody I talk to has good things to say about my mother. Granted, my presence rather biases that assessment, but even so, the nature of the comments tells me that it must be truth. While my mother has views and opinions, and when asked, will express them, she generally wants to know what’s going on in your world, and how your life is going. Everyone I’ve ever talked with has told me how nice she is to them, and I’ve always tried (but honestly, not always succeeded) to emulate that.

You’ll notice that I haven’t posted many pictures of mother. She is rather self-conscious of her image, but also, more often than not, she is the one behind the camera taking the pictures. In our family photo albums, there are tons of shots of my brother, sister, and Dad, but not as many of mother. It’s just life, and I’m sure that’s the same for many of you.

At any rate, I just want to say that I love my mother, as many do, and I wish her the very best birthday that she can have. Here’s hoping to many, many more.