Memories Lighting the Corners of my Mind Segwaying into Mother's Day

I am having the deck replaced with or without Tim's blessing. The HeMen came and ripped it out on Thursday. The deck sits close to the ground, and I was EXCITED to see what would be underneath. I was anticipating 22 years of stuff I hadn't missed. There wasn't as much stuff as I had hoped, but here's what was unveiled, laying there on the ground, like discarded underwear:

2 soccer balls. flat as a pancake

several tennis balls, dirty dirty dirty

a softball

No Frisbee. I was expecting a Frisbee

A vintage Adams peanut butter tub. The picture to our left there is not the real tub, however, it is the real brand. (I try to impress) I used to buy this peanut butter but you had to stir and stir and stir after you first opened it, because it had no lard (or whatever they put in peanut butter to keep it from separating)....only peanuts and salt. I chuckled at what a granola I used to be, willing to stir my peanut butter because there were no additives. As I recall, stirring that stuff was a greasy mess. What a MOM my kids had!!! A Peanut butter stirring Mom!!!! I forgot how great I was!!!
The kids used to use those tubs in water fights. Somebody must have kicked it under the deck when I sent them out to pick up the water fight mess. I never caught them.

Moving along..

Some pieces of really long, 2" white PVC pipe. I have no recollection of us EVER using PVC pipe. Tim and I were NOT PVC pipe people. We knew how to do nothing. PVC people are people who go to Home Depot and buy stuff and bring it home and fix everything and make life better. Tim and I would live life with the drawer off track until our fixie neighbor came over and was disgusted with us and helped us. We were really quite pitiful.

A roll of tar paper that the roofers must have stuffed under there 6 years ago when we weren't looking so they didn't have to carry it off. dirty birds.

Someone's flip flop. It was one of those from the late 80s or early 90s that had strips along the side of the sole. I think it was Jake's. It was found almost smack dab in what would have been the middle of the underneath of the deck. As I looked at it laying there in the dirt, I felt this little pang in my heart for my children, all grown up and gone. Then... in the recesses of my mind, a little memory poked, then jabbed, then punched itself through.

I remembered one of the kids hounding and badgering me because someone in an act of revenge had taken their flip flop and chucked it under the deck as hard as they could and wasn't I going to get them in trouble and why wasn't I moving and how could I let them get away with that and wasn't I going to crawl under there and get it and why wasn't I listening to them and why was I batting them away with both of my hands???

Hey Jake, I found your flip flop. And I'm gonna finally get David really really in trouble. Or Leigh. I don't think it was Mitch because he couldn't have wrestled your flip flop off your foot. You were too fierce. I'm betting David. Anyway...

Mother's Day is in a week and now that I've found your flip flop I'm really deserving, don't you think? Remember, I stirred peanut butter for you. And I kept buying you balls no matter how many you would loose. 100s of balls I purchased with my own money. (I could really use that money NOW) And I let you do something with PVC pipe that was really really fun for you. I don't know what it was, but I have evidence that I let you do something. So you just sit there and think about what I've done for you. You can never ever EVER repay me.

I've got to stop now, because the virtues of Mommacita would fill up another post.

Isn't it a thing of beauty how I can turn garbage under my deck into what a deserving Mommacita I am? I've gotta say, sometimes I impress even myself.

Not the real garbage, merely a reinactment