Mother’s Day is coming up and this week I digress from my usual post topics to reflect on my two sons. They are both adopted and while I was divinely guided to them one came to us through an adoption scam where even the attorneys were not paying attention as the bank accounts were drained. It was so convoluted and evilly executed that it made both the New York Times and Washington Post when uncovered. I had many visits and conversations with the FBI as well.The second adoption went much more smoothly until I entered a period of three months where the birth mother kept changing her mind about wanting him back. Looking back, I don’t know how I got through those years. It was before I woke up. Something trite like, “I was walking through a fog” seems to sum it up perfectly.In those early years I was so overjoyed at my family that I would create all the celebrations for Mother’s Day. Taking a three day weekend to Disneyland became de rigour. As the boys began making their way through school the classes would always channel them through the annual Mother’s Day creative ideas. In preschool I had tea and cookies. In grade school I watched elaborate plays with sandwiches and sodas afterwards. The one thing that was always constant, however, was the hand-drawn Mother’s Day card.As they grew and had semester tests in school, the trips dissolved away and were replaced with baseball and soccer games. The hand made cards remained. The cards were always presented to me in the kitchen, while my Mother’s Day Sunday morning coffee was brewing. Each boy would step up, hand me their card with a beaming smile, wait for me to read it out loud, and then hug them and kiss them. Then, they skip off to play.I have never been into the gift buying of holidays. Yes, I do purchase a carefully selected gift or two for my sons on their birthdays or for Christmas. But I always emphasized the sentiments and the personal actions over the material gift. I’m not a saint, but merely a reformed materialistic nut. When I had my estate sale I was shocked at the thirty years of accumulated stuff I released that held no significance for me whatsoever!Through all of this, the one thing I hoped for was that my boys would internalize the idea that it is the heart and the sentiment that matters on special celebration days. And, they have. They are teenagers in high school now. And still, every year, each one sits down and hand makes me a Mother’s Day card. They continue to present it to me in the kitchen while my coffee brews. The only difference is I’m hugging young men over six feet tall now and don’t have to bend down anymore.