When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob Bobbin' Along...

This may seem like a rather strange title for a post, but for me and my family it has a lot of meaning.

You see today, April 19th, 2011 would have been my mom's 86th Birthday. I've been thinking about her alot today and missing her.

Easter's coming this weekend and for a number of years we've celebrated mom's birthday along with the rest of the April birthdays, Craig, Colin and Laurel, on Easter. With having such a big family, we tend to clump birthdays together for our family celebrations, it's just easier that way. So this will be the second Easter without mom to celebrate with us.

Last year was really hard. Laurel volunteered to have Easter dinner at her new house and she did a great job. Both Carls were there, and Auntie Dolly and Uncle Johnny. I know we all thought alot about mom though. I handed out the kids Easter candy from my gramma's basket, just like mom always did, but it just wasn't quite the same.

This year, Easter's back at my house. I'll cook the turkey and stuffing. Carrie & Craig will bring the potatoes and Laurel will bring the carrots and turnips. Auntie Dolly will bring the cheese. We'll have cake and ice cream for dessert and we'll all eat too much. I'll hand out the Easter candy from gramma's basket again and we'll all still miss mom. It will be a little bit easier though.

The Carls are going to Gail's this year, but Auntie Dolly and Uncle Johnny will be here. In the native tradition, when a mother dies, the closest sister to her age takes over her place as mother. In our family, this is Auntie Dolly. I'm quite comfortable with this and so are my kids and grandkids. We've all spent a lot of time together. Auntie Dolly and Uncle Johnny never had children of their own, so for years we've included them in our holiday and birthday celebrations. So since they've inherited me, they now have 5 pseudo grandchildren, each with a spouse, and 15 pseudo great-grandchildren, and Auntie Dolly still says, when she's gone no one will miss her. I don't believe that for a minute.

So where does the robin come into this. You see, mom's favorite bird was the robin. Every spring she would be anxiously awaiting seeing the first robin so that she would know that spring had finally arrived. Okay, so some years the robins seemed to jump the gun a little bit and show up when it was still pretty cold and miserable out, but that didn't matter one bit to mom. Over the years she even amassed quite a collection of robin figurines. We've all bought her some and somehow she never ended up with any duplicates.

Last Saturday, Wayne and I went over to Carl's to sort through some more of the "stuff" that Carl wants disposed of. So far Carrie and I have gone through most of mom's clothes and jewellery as well as a lot of the things that she accumulated over the years. We've gotten rid of a lot of clothes and other things that we didn't think that any of us would want, but I've kept a few of her "souvenirs". This time we started tackling the basement. When mom and Carl bought the house on Barons, they moved from a two and a half storey, four bedroom house to a one storey 2 bedroom house. Needless to say, even though some things had been disposed of prior to the move, there is still a basement full of boxes. We managed to make a small dent in the pile, packing up some things that came back to our house to be put to use or just saved and delegating a large amount to the garbage pile.

While there, I decided it was time to pack up the robins and bring them back to my house. Sunday afternoon, I started going through all of the boxes and manged to make a real mess of my living room. Since then I've been doing what I do best - procrastinating. Finally this evening I finished sorting everything out and unpacked the robins. I've chosen the ones that I want to keep and have found a home for them where they'll be safe. I've also delegated about 2/3 of them for my kids to pick and choose from. So right now, if you were to walk into my front room, you would think you were in a bird sanctuary.

I think it was a good day to sort through them with it being mom's birthday. It made me think even more of her and going through some of her pictures and keepsakes has brought back a lot of memories.

I miss you mom, but yesterday when I was outside at work, I heard the loudest robin saying 'chulook, chulook, and I knew you were there with me. Happy Birthday. I love you always.