Missing Mom in Big Sky

It occured to me shortly after finishing my last post that I barely mentioned Toren, the mother of Brett, Bree and Brad.

At the very end, I included a photo of her thoughtful thank you card, in which she had her family write their own personal thanks, alongside some flowers she'd bought for Julie, but without credit.

I wrote about going on a walk in the evening with Brett and Bree, but I failed to mention that a couple of evenings Toren took drives up Ousel Falls Road to look for wildlife.

On one of those drives, Toren, Julie and Bree spotted a herd of elk roving between pastures, which had them all smiling when they returned.  Toren said their family also saw a moose on their way back from Yellowstone, as well as a bear and several bison while in the national park itself.

When we went on our Beehive Basin hike, Toren drove us all to the trailhead and picked us up several hours later after we called her from the trail.  There had been no parking at the trailhead, meaning we would have needed to hike an extra mile if Toren had not made those two roundtrip drives which had her on the road for almost an hour each time in exchange for some brief thank yous.  Isn't that exactly what the kind of thing moms always do that we take for granted?  God bless mothers.

As an aside, Julie and I bought groceries to make a few meals for our guests, but my shredded barbecue chicken and cole slaw dinner on their second night apparently didn't win too many hearts, because I just finished eating the leftovers last night.  I will boast that the box of huckleberry ice cream sandwiches we bought were a hit.

However, Toren and John said that when on vacation, they like to dine in restaurants, which certainly proved to be easy for us.

Dinner out, with no preparation or clean up, is a treat all moms appreciate.  It's a favorite feature of all cruises and most vacations. The Megas family enjoyed all of their restaurant meals in Montana, including the farewell dinner when they treated Julie and me to a huge delicious burger and Cold Smoke at Choppers.

Surprisingly, they often chose rather pricey Big Sky varations of the traditional comfort food mac-and-cheese over that great Montana beef we love when we're up here, but the important thing is that they shared that meal time together.

Like most kids, I tended to take being with my own mother for granted, especially when I was a boy.  Time spent sharing a meal or watching TV were all too frequently experienced by me as sort of break from my real life of attendng school, playing sports with my friends, or going on a date.  Now that Mom has passed away, of course, I look back and wish I could have back all of those underappreciated moments.

Not until becoming a parent myself did it occur to me that Mom probably considered those shared minutes to be the reward for hard work and devotion to her children.

When Jay and Amy spent valuable vacation time with us in the Rockies a week earlier, we were extremely happy, particularly because we were hundreds of miles from their friends who otherwise vie successfully for their attention, just as mine did with me when I was younger.

On our time family together in Big Sky, we shared lots of wonderfully-present moments, with sharing meals and watching real estate shows or Seinfield reruns together supplemented by great nature hikes plus Cricket Darts, Rummy and Cribbage games filled with laughter.  I should note that before they passed away a few years ago, the kids' grandmothers also loved joining in on card games.

Among our family meal highlights were Jay preparing sausage and ground beef sauce and pasta with his mom, Hogs and Heifers at Bar 3 BBQ, truffle fries at the Bunker Grill, pigs in blankets and scrambled eggs for breakfast at home, and vanilla ice cream sandwiches from Hungry Moose.

That's one of the great things about travel.  It helps us pay attention to those special moments with families, and perhaps that's why some of my happiest childhood memories revolve around our family trips to my mom's home town.

If you're lucky enough to have your mom still with you, by all means reach out and say thanks for all she's done to make your life happy.