Mother's Day

I was just sitting here thinking about Mother's Day, which is right around the corner (hint hint!)  and all the wonderful memories I have collected over the years.  Now Mother's Day never used to be a big deal in my house.  My husband was not raised in a very celebrating type of family due to finances so he just never really saw the importance in giving gifts for any occasion, and when he did, they were often gifts purchased for practical reasons rather than sentiment.  The first mother's day gift I can remember was my first microwave... and I was already the mother of 4! 

He's gotten much better now.  I receive gifts for every other occasion, if I get a birthday present this year, chances are he'll forget next year.  Last mother's day he outright asked me what I wanted and later that day he purchased a beautiful pocket watch for me... the kind that you can see through to the clock-works inside!

The best gift came a few years ago, and completely took me by surprise.  I was told to sleep in.  It was 10 am before I was let out, and allowed to sit at a fully set brunch table.  After a wonderful breakfast I was given a large flat package wrapped in brown paper.  The children had decorated it with drawings and mother's day wishes.  It was beautiful.  I carefully untaped it so I could save the paper.  What I found inside made me cry.

Many years ago, while in high school, I was instructed to make a batik, which is a picture made from dye and wax.  I had won an art contest before for this type of art work, so I put my heart into this piece in hopes of winning again.  The first piece had been abstract and half hearted, but it had won, so I was sure that the new piece... won I was putting my heart and soul into, would surely do as well if not better.  I was wrong and the landscape didn't even make honorable mention in the school, let alone make it to the national contest.

I kept the piece of cloth folded up and in a box of junk that I carried from house to house after I married.  Occasionally while going through the box I would recall the disappointment, but the cloth remained in the box... Until our last move, when my husband discovered it again.  And just before Mother's Day he took it to the frame shop and had them frame it.

So he gave me a piece of my own art work, big deal right?  Right!  His gesture showed to me that he understood what I had put into that piece of art and how important it had been to me at the time.  And because it was important to me, it became important to him.  And that is part of what makes that big knuckle head so special to me.

Now, my favorite gift from the kids has to be from our first year in North Carolina.  We had just move there and still had boxes laying around the house.  My oldest boy who was probably just 5 or 6 at the time, wanted to give me a gift for mother's day other than the plant he had brought home from school... so he went outside with his little brother to find me a present.  I called them into the house a short while later.  They got awfully quite in the livingroom/dining room so I went to check on them.  I heard them scurry around but they were innocently sitting at their little table when I walked in.  That immediately made me suspicious, but before I could say a word, something caught my eye.  I walked over to the box that I had seen a movement and picked up a glove sitting on the top.  And out popped two toads!  I screamed with surprise... I'm not afraid of them, but I wasn't exactly expecting these bug-eyed creatures to jump out of the glove!

My boys cried with disappointment and I spent the next hour reasuring them that I loved their mother's day present, and that just because I was putting them back outside, they would always be my special pets!  Of course I had to name them first, and after that we called every toad we found in the yard by their names.  The boys never seemed to notice that Huck and Tom were constantly changing size and color!