If you’ve been following along my journey – from North to South, from Mom to Mother-in Law – then you know the Flapper’s story. Gertrude (aka Gi) was indomitable. Unsinkable is another word that comes to mind; widowed three times and crippled after a car accident in our Year of Living Dangerously, Grandma Gi managed to raise five children in PA. Her sixth child, the baby, was raised in NJ with another mother.
My second mother Nell was a first generation American housewife. Her parents emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the same PA coal town that my birth family called home. She moved with her husband Jim to NJ during the Great Depression to find work at Picatinny Arsenal. Little did she know that after raising one daughter and sending her off to nursing school, she’d find herself raising another when she was fifty years old for her friend the Flapper. Nell was the kindest, funniest, most loving mother imaginable. She was in fact “Mommy.” When I was 18 months old, and we would visit the Flapper in the hospital in PA, Nell would let me push Gi’s wheelchair down the hospital hallways. Gi was my other “Mother.”
I felt lucky. Two mothers might seem like one too many, but in fact they gave me a special gift. One taught me to be strong and independent, while the other taught me to love unconditionally. One worked outside the home her whole life, while the other never learned to drive and welcomed me home from school each day with a hug. I had two birthday parties and two Christmas trees; twice the fun. Neither one was a gardener, but one was a tremendous cook. My green thumb did not come naturally, but my daughter seems to have inherited it.
Mother’s Day is always the day we plant, so today we planted tomatoes and herbs and peppers in pots. Matt was in charge of protecting the tender plants from rabbits. The soon-to-be parents will be moving into a new house in June, so we now have a movable garden. Their new baby girl is due in August. Between her Great Grandmother Ada, Shavaun (Matt’s Mom) and Nana me, she’ll have three times the Grandma love! 
