The Touch The Feel of Cotton!

Happy Anniversary to my best friend and husband!  It has been two wonderful years and I can't believe I have been so blessed.  I hope you know why I gave you a jar of cotton balls this morning.  The 2nd anniversary is, you guessed it, cotton!  I could have given you a shirt but I thought the cotton balls got right to the point.  Plus, I needed some anyway.  Of course this isn't the only surprise awaiting you today but you will just have to be patient and let the day unfold. 

I had to scramble yesterday to make some anniversary plans as we had expected Ron would be in the hospital today recovering from surgery.  Since it was postponed I had to get it in gear.  I will not divulge my plans just in case he reads my post before I have a chance to surprise him.  Thank goodness my Board meeting was last night and I'm going to be home this evening.

Mother's day is coming up and it is always bittersweet since my mother's death.  But, I hope to spend time with my girls and I'm glad Ron will be able to be with us as well.

I have a cedar chest I keep in the spare bedroom.  It doesn’t contain heirloom quilts or treasured family keepsakes.  Every Mother’s Day I like to sit on the floor and open the chest and carefully exam its contents. Inside are all the special mother's day gifts I have received from my daughters through the years.  

There are handmade gifts from school.  One of my favorites is a construction paper cookbook with recipes from all the children in my daughters’ kindergarten class. Their submission to the cookbook was a recipe they titled, My Mom’s Stew!  Of course they left out several key ingredients but the jest of the recipe was  there.

I have another book titled, “My Family Having Fun”.  In this book they told a story in drawings about what their family did to have fun.  One picture depicted myself dressed in high heels wearing cross earrings and a cross necklace and bracelet standing next to themselves (identical twins) only one of them had red hair and the other blond hair.  With us was a dog and a cat neither of which we had at the time.  In this picture we were just standing in front of a house.  In another picture we were on an escalator “shopping” and the last picture and my personal favorite, we were all in the bathtub (dog and cat included) in a sea of bubbles waving American flags.   (a typical clean, patriotic, animal loving family having fun)

I also received the various store purchased or garage sale gifts such as the snowman earrings, the tennis shoe purse and the broken milk jug clock that had a dangling minute and second hand.

One special gift received from my daughter Julie was a wrought iron sequined butterfly necklace she purchased at a garage sale.  Many of the sequins were missing but she was so proud of her purchase.  Every morning she would watch me get ready for work anxiously waiting for me to put on her necklace.  One morning she asked if I would be disappointed to learn it was costume jewelry.  I wasn’t!  The only problem with the necklace other than the missing sequins was the fact that it weighed a ton.  It was more like a gate ornament for South Fork ranch.  But, I hung it around my neck and waited until I was at work to remove the necklace and hang it on my rear view mirror.  One day after work I got in my car to find the necklace had actually pulled the rear view mirror off the windshield!

Many of my treasured gifts still hang on the wall in my bedroom.   I have a wooden plaque hanging in my room with the following saying burned into the wood:

I love you in Big ways

I love you in Small ways

I love you this minute

And I’ll love you Always.

I love to read it just before I fall asleep at night. 

On another wall in my room hang two plaster hand prints, one of each of the girls when they were four years old.  They made them when they were attending a mother’s day out program and they are hanging in the same place I hung them some 38 years ago.

All these mother’s day gifts are more precious to me than gold!