Mother's Day

Well today was Mother's Day and it started for me at 6:27 am when my daughter skyped me from Africa- she is currently living and working in the south of Sudan near the borders of Uganda and the Congo in a little community called Yei -- pronounced yeah. Which still seems so odd to me. Contact even by computer is difficult with the time differences that most times I can not stay up late enough to chat on line or get up early enough makes contact difficult at best. But any contact is better than none- she is truely lacking in services where she is now as she does not even really have a snail mail postal address we can only get things to her through the company she works for the American Refugee Committee. I do not know if anyone out there is interested but here is a link talking about some of the areas they serve and the services they provide. http://www.arcrelief.org/site/PageServer?pagename=programs_sudan She is working with AIDS, HIV and gender based violence in a unstable enviroment. With today being Mother's Day and all makes me question how she got where she is. It is certainly not what I would have chosen for her but obviously she makes her own choices. As a mother this is so hard knowing that even to see her would be almost a 24 hour flight. Yes, I know because I have made that flight before 22 hours in the air. We have not spent many Mother's Days together in the last 5 plus years and a chat on line or maybe a skype call is so exciting. Last year we were together for mother's day and her birthday before she took a job in Zambia. The year before that she was in New Orleans and the year before that in Africa in Malawi. She has spent most of the last 5 years in Africa working primarily with HIV and AIDS in three different countries so far and has traveled so much through other African Countries that she has almost filled a 2nd passport. Everyone says what a wonderful person and how proud we must be of the work she does and then they say how glad they are that it is not their child. Well she is mine and always was willful. This will be a difficult fall for me as I find I reach maximum after she is gone a year and I do not get to see her or touch her. This time I can not just hop a plane and go as I would not be granted entrance to the Sudan but I am thinking maybe I could meet her in Uganda or Rawanda for holiday. She was always up for travel and most of the trips I have made have been with her my husband and her father is a home body as is her brother. If it were not for the brother and his 3 sons and wonderful wife living less than 1 mile from us I would be a basket case. They keep me balanced and busy enough not to worry about Auntie and the things she encounters. So I got a wonderful gift from son and his family a lovely grandmother's ring with each of the boys birthstones and they came to dinner......it was GREAT- husband fixed a primerib roast with all the trimmings for the three mothers and his 93 year old father so we had quite a group. My mother, my husband's father, my son and his wife and the three boys it was wonderful. My father and my grandfather passed away just a few months ago just a few weeks apart so the gathering was bittersweet in some ways. But I got the house cleaned-laundry done-and even got to sew, working on a little quilt for my neice who is expecting her first child in August. Tomorrow it is back to work and back to baseball and babysitting. The boys are 11, 8 and 1 and the 2 older ones are both playing Little League and my husband and son both coach the 11 year old's team which leaves my daughter in law for the 8 yr old and me with baby although at 32 pounds he is a big one. He will be 2 in August and is a real active kid. Well off to sew a little more before bed. Hmmmm this was longer and easier to write than I thought it would be.

Sandi