Friday, May 11, 2007

Men at Work


I love men best when they are working. I love watching them work, especially when it involves lots of physical exertion. I love it even more when the work benefits me in some way--then I am the queen bee and, they, my faithful subjects.

My son, Ryan, likes to mimic the blissful expression he claims I wear when watching all my men working around the house. (Funny, he doesn't notice that I'm always working just as hard by their sides.) He's right, though. I do enter a sort of blissful, goofy alternate state of well-being. I am never happier than when they act as a crew of big, strong, capable men asking me, "Where-do-you-want-this-to-go?"

What to get mom for Mother's Day is not a dilemma for my boys: They know all they have to do is don a tee-shirt and work boots and show up for instructions. Yippee! Mother's Day means I'll get my yard edged and trees trimmed. Someone will plant shrubs and power-wash the garage. One of them will climb through a bedroom window to scurry around the roof cleaning out rain gutters while the other moves a piece of furniture to the basement.

Wiser women than me must have schemed for the holiday to fall in May. Mother's Day is not for candy and flowers; it's for help with those difficult household projects and spring-cleaning chores. It was invented by mothers desperate for a little help. The goofy expression I wear is probably universally recognizable to mothers around the world as joy.

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