Happy Mother’s Day to my mother, Katherine, and my step mother, Molly. My mother was the emotional ballast and unappreciated caregiver in our family as well as a working woman, piano and organ player, devout catholic, and friend of many and adored by more than a few in the small town in Maine where we lived. But she suddenly left this world much too soon, leaving behind a bereft husband and three grieving and traumatized sons.

Into this emotionally fractured family entered my stepmother, nearly 50 years old and childless up to then, to rescue and give stability to our reeling family. Had she not I’m not sure what would have happened to us, though nothing good for sure. I probably don’t do it well and seldom do it consciously, but I figure I carry pieces of both of them foward in my own journey (or better yet ramble) through life.

Time and moments of reflection only make me appreciate and love each of them more.