Oddly enough, this isn't a story of my mother but about me. (And yes, I can hear those of you who know me well saying, yeah, yeah, isn't it always?) But becoming a mom was a very big deal for me. It took me several years to get pregnant. We went through a battery of tests, ingested fertility drugs, took temperatures on a Basal thermometer and had sex on a schedule. (sucks the joy right out of the act, lemme tell you) When my OB-GYN ran out of procedures and ideas, he sent me to the University of Washington's Fertility clinic.

The doctor who did the original workup was on an Endocrinology Fellowship from Ireland. So when he found a lump in my throat, everything fertility related came to a screeching halt. Turned out I had a cancerous growth on my thyroid. That was in December and I went home pissed off and discouraged. Which pretty much shows how young I was (25) because I wasn't as concerned with the fact that I probably had cancer as I was that they hadn't finished the tests. I decided then and there that I didn't need a baby, that we had each other, Steve was back in college, we had a mortgage and a dog and I was looking at weeks, if not months of tests, surgery and recovery --and that was more than enough.

You can see this one coming, right? Because having decided this, the next month I began waking up sicker 'n a dog and, yep, I was pregnant. So the Mother's day before our sweet baby boy was even born, the soulmate made me strawberry waffles for breakfast--a tradition that endures to this day.

(I love this pic. It was taken the day we brought our baby home from the hospital, then discovered 27 years later when we took the mantle off the fireplace. It's usually pinned to my bulletin board in my office)

We aren't talking Eggos--he makes his own waffles, combines fresh and frozen strawberries and whips up the highest fat cream in the universe. And, oh, mama, it is to die for. (Our son is a chef--I think he got his abilities more from his dad than from me) In the thirty-three years since that first Mother's Day breakfast, we've only missed our time-honored strawberry waffles once--and that was because the soulmate was on a three month start up on Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic and my son had to work.

So how about you? Have any Mother's Day traditions?