The Greening of the Homestead and Excessive Joy

Today is the convergence of Mother’s Day and Lag BaOmer, so it makes for a nice oasis in the midst of the joyless wasteland that is Sefirat HaOmer. I haven’t shaven except for National Guard duty, and though I listen to jazz on the merits of Rabbi Willig’s opinion, I don’t truly enjoy it.

It’s raining, so we’ve had to cancel our own Lag BaOmer festivities at Eitz Kar. There will be no bonfire.

But the rhododendron is in bloom, the moss that is our “lawn” is a bright shade of green, and the fiddleheads and other plants are sprouting through the blanket of leaves in our woods. The daffodils that we can lay no credit to in our gardens look like little characters from Disney’s Fantasia.

And just as when we first moved here, there is little excuse to be inside when we can be outside. Even in the seemingly permanent rain that hovers over Maine, the birds sing, the pileated woodpeckers chase each other, and the wild turkeys occasionally come through and decrease our tick population.

Today is also Leah’s first Mother’s Day as Amelia’s legit adopted mother. I thought we would do a little dance for joy when the certified paper came in the mail, but our response was more along the lines of “well, here it is.” A decade-plus of all sorts of indignities, anger, sadness, and feelings of helplessness coalesced into an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper with a raised stamp. It’s not that it was anticlimactic, but rather, a legal acknowledgment of what we have known all along.

I think, however, that even if today would be a day for excessive joy, it’s far better for this to fall on the spectrum of our rote day-to-day. Our continuum over the last two years since Nezzie was born and this adoption process started has been thankfully even.

With a nod, a smile, and a Baruch HaShem, we move on and live our days as they come.