They are both home this weekend, both heads sleeping under my roof.

One is twenty, the other sixteen. I know these days will not last much longer. Little ones are supposed to leave the nest and make homes of their own.

Soon and very soon, Mother’s Day will be reduced to a single dinner at Cracker Barrel, where we fight the masses for table space and complain when our biscuits and coffee run out.

That’s just what we did yesterday, along with half of the population of northwest Alabama and most likely a small chunk of Mississippi folks who decided to get in their vehicles and drive east. Large groups overwhelmed the small restaurant, where families gather to remember the old days. It’s pretty easy with all those farm implements, photographs, and memorabilia hanging on the walls. 

It is there that an idealized past surrounds us, and Mama doesn’t have to cook the biscuits.

And maybe it is easier there, too, especially for all those families whose mothers have passed, or whose children have gone away and might get home for Christmas every other year. Maybe it is easier for the ones who have lost their children, the ones for whom home is just too painful this weekend.

There were eighteen of our clan along the back wall next to the window, grandchildren and their boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives filling out the original fantastic four that were my mom, dad, sister, and myself. 

I took stock of the families around us. An older couple to my right both had their tinfoil dinner packets, the same as my husband and I had. There was a group of eight lined up ahead of us, and two members of the party, a portly gentleman and his wife, eyeballed my group’s plates as they were served.

Farther out, there was a group of around ten. I knew some of the family members of this group, which was comprised of siblings and in-laws. Their mother is no longer with them.

And closer to the fireplace, I saw a large group more like our own. They also had a crying baby, but overall, their children were younger. 

Most of the children in our family are now young adults who are trying to figure out just what it is that they are supposed to do in this world. No more questions of, “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Now is the time when the rubber meets the road, and home becomes a distant image in the rearview mirror.

It won’t be much longer.

There are two young women still asleep in their rooms on this Sunday morning, this Mother’s Day.

I have learned that talking to them at this age is easier when working a puzzle, or while cooking, or taking a walk, times when they don’t have to make eye contact, because it is easier to discuss the bigger questions of life. It is easier for them to talk about their day when their hands are busy. 

It is easier for me to hide my expressions when they are honest about their lives. I don’t want them to make the same mistakes that I have made, but then again, how else do we learn if not by stepping in the messes that we’ve made?

I try to be Guiding Mother and Listening Mother, not Preachy Mother, and not Guilt-Trip Mother. 

For Mother’s Day, I told them not to buy me anything, but I did ask them for some things:

One, to paint my toenails. The early weeks of spring are long past, and it’s time to take care of mom, who has let herself go. Youngest Daughter is skilled with personal care aesthetics.

Two, to draw or sketch or paint a view from the porch. I want to hold the pond and its rising mist and swirling pools where the catfish top the water. Oldest Daughter is gifted with capturing real life in images.

Seeing my children use their talents and skills is one of the best presents they could give me. Their growth and flourishing in this life will mean I’ve done my job.

But the last present, the best one, and one I hadn’t thought to ask for, was so very unexpected:

I was organizing some of my beloved, cluttered stacks yesterday and found two of the same Bible study guides, purchased several months ago and forgotten.

Would they want to do them with me and with their dad?

Sure, they said. There were no excuses. No one had to be up early in the morning for school or for work or for practice, so we talked until all four of us were ready for sleep and were past getting any good out of our theological quandaries.

We hadn’t even finished the first session.

I don’t share this to seem like I’m “holier than thou” or to act like I’m better than anyone else. But I remember going to my grandparents’ house where, if we spent the night, we all gathered in the living room, and my grandfather or grandmother would read from the Bible. Then we got on our hands and knees and said our prayers, elbows propped on top of the prickly, synthetic velour of the couch.

True story. It might as well be a scene straight from the walls of Cracker Barrel.

I have wanted that for my own family, and last night, God served it up like a heaping basket of steaming, buttery biscuits, and we each took one and were satisfied.

Oldest Daughter: “That was a really good Bible study.”

Youngest Daughter: “So when we can’t all be together, can we FaceTime and do this?”

They both looked me in the eye when they said it.

“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” 

Deuteronomy 6:6-7