Happy Mother's Day ...

To all the Vox Moms out there!

I'm not a mom myself. But last night, I got a glimpse of what the whole parenthood thing means. My mom, sister and I went to see my niece in a dance recital. The recital was at a local high school, and was primarily numbers from the high school dance company. My niece is in elementary school, and her dance teacher happens to be the same woman who runs the high school company. So the elementary schoolers got to come in and do one number, at the end of the show.

All the elementary school moms I was with sat lovingly through the entire show to see their little ones on stage for maybe 5 minutes. The rest of it was the high schoolers strutting their stuff. Which, while entertaining, was not what a large number of those moms had planned on seeing this particular night.

See, Kenny Chesney was in town yesterday, doing a show at a nearby concert pavilion. Most of the moms, including my sister, are HUGE Kenny fans. And many had sold or given up their Kenny tickets (again, including my sis), when the dance recital got scheduled for the same night. They all joked about how they could be there now, instead of spending two hours watching a bunch of high school girls twist and turn and bounce so that they could witness their own kiddos' five minutes on stage. But the bottom line was they did it lovingly and without regret, because their children had worked so hard for this moment and were so excited about getting on that stage.

And that to me pretty much sums up what moms are all about.

My niece, by the way, rocked. I may not be a mom, but I am a very proud aunt.

I brought the camera to take some pictures at the recital, only to find out that cameras weren't allowed. But since I had it with me, I took some pictures of my little brother instead. I never mentioned a brother? Oh, well. That's because he's ugly. So ugly that he's cute, and my mom even named him Otis Ugly:

Ugly Otis

I love this little dog. My parents have had him for years. He snorts and grunts and flies through the yard trying to bite the other dogs' tails, and never stops barking, and gives all sorts of attitude. When I house-sit for my parents, he crawls on top of me when I'm sleeping and stares down in my face, and I wake up thinking I'm looking at an alien or a very large bug. But he's precious just the same.

Of course, the little brother thing is a joke, but my mother always proudly said that she tries to treat her dogs just like her kids. Our family photo albums have just as many pictures of the various dogs that grew up with my sister and I as they do of us ourselves. Since for whatever reason my parents always had male dogs, I've always joked about having four-legged brothers.

That's one of the things I love the most about my own mom - her love of animals and the way we always had pets in our family and how the joy of critters was instilled in me and my sister pretty much from birth. I can't imagine life in a family that didn't have pets.

Ugly Otis 2

I mean, LOOK at him? What would the world be like without Otis Uglies?

Happy Mother's Day to all!