Every year it comes around, that day when we honor the mothers with a flowery show of appreciation for all they have done. It’s pretty much the same as it has always been and where kids hand over ugly renditions of greeting cards and husbands rush around trying to get a gift at the last minute.
Often the day begins with a trip to the local church where parishioners are encouraged to “put your hands together” and clap for all the mothers in the audience. Or they are asked to stand and be “recognized” which I always found to be a tad goofy since I could recognize my mother just about anywhere.
Others plan a day of celebration for dear old mom which means she has to dress the rug rats, get them in the car, keep the peace to wherever they might be going all the while balancing her own purchasing of Mother’s Day gifts for not only her own mom but for her spouse’s as well.
Ol’ Dutch and Miss Trixie are a tad late in our travels to Colorful Colorado this year and so we got to partake of the celebration of our closest mom, Miss Tinkerbell. Some of you know her as the wife of my son and she is the epitome of motherhood.
Like a lot of moms these days she balances work and kids and husband and house and a myriad things all the while keeping herself in pretty good repair. It makes me believe in miracles such as Jesus walking on the water when I see her perform her daily dance to the family music.
My son, Bubs, was wise enough to ask her what she wanted to do on this celebrated day and she actually came up with something that Ol’ Dutch was not only included in but can really get into: a crawfish boil.
For those of you not familiar with that terminology, it’s an eating establishment that serves up platters of a small crustacean also known as a crawdad, mud bug and “ewwwwwwww” to people who go there.
They had a bouncy house set up for the kids which meant Tinkerbell got a break and we sat in the shade outside and downed those crusty crustaceans along with copious amounts of water, beer and in Trixie’s case, margaritas.
This leads to what is known as “happy” in Trixie’s book and she and Tinkerbell enjoyed the time immensely.
Bubs and I would shrug every so often and say “yes” or “whatever” and that pretty much kept us in the clear and free to consume large quantities of armored delicacies.
Now Ol’ Dutch has always been a fan of people watching and this day turned out to be no different in that respect as it appears that not only did Tinkerbell decide to come out for the festivities but so did a lot of other mothers from the area.
I am sure there were fancy restaurants full of new or old or budding mothers this day around Dallas but they sure didn’t have the dirt floors or country western band that sounded like a hound dog with its tail caught in the door.
But regardless of the atmosphere Ol’ Dutch got to see a plethora of mothers in various levels of dress and undress parading past the table in clothes maybe a tad too tight for their blossoming figures.
Women who had fit in the size 6 dress before “the baby” tried to get one more wear out of them and the size 12 bodies just overfilled the material allowed.
The worst thing I think I saw was the number of men who were carrying diaper bags around the venue. Now when Ol’ Dutch was having babies of his own, well I never had them but the wife did, he was always smart enough to grab the stroller, bassinet, emergency supplies and baby and not be seen carrying a purse.
But the men these days have lost their grip on manliness and I had to take away several man cards during the time we were there.
Ol’ Dutch has held a long-standing opposition to divorce of any kind and there are reasons for that of course. But for goodness sake’s men, be nice to your woman so she stays with you to carry the diaper bag if for no other reason.
Man cards are harder to come by every day that goes by for sure.

Kevin Kirkpatrick and his Yorkie, Cooper, fish, hunt, ATV or hike daily. His email is [email protected]. Additional news can be found at www.troutrepublic.com or on Twitter at TroutRepublic.