funny bone

I was so young when I lost my Mom that it’s sometimes a challenge to hold onto the memories. I mostly remember her through stories my Dad and Niles have told me through the years.

Mom always had a way of making life a little more sparkly. Presents would be wrapped in unexpected ways using comic books, photos, feathers, flowers, glitter, balloons — and they’d be hidden or hanging from the ceiling.

On April Fool’s Day she’d send me to school with a cardboard sandwich in my lunchbox, a note written backwards: “yad sloof lirpa yppah” and three yummy desserts.

On Halloween we cooked an entire orange dinner together: pumpkin soup in a carved-out pumpkin, carrot bread, paprika fried chicken and orange popsicles.

A Contest She Knew I’d Win

One of my best memories is our flower planting contest. I think I was about four.  I definitely remember going to the nursery and buying my own gardening gloves with yellow flowers printed on them and picking out a bright yellow watering can and a rake that was just my size.

At home, my mom pulled out two seed packets and said we would have a contest to see whose flowers grew tallest. She told me to pick the packet I wanted, a yellow one, or a purple one.  Both were pretty, but I was in yellow mode. We raked the yard, planted our seeds side by side, and watered them every day.

Mom’s purple pansies were pretty, but they grew low, flat, close to the ground.

But my yellow flowers grew and grew and grew —

TALLER and

TALLER and

TALLER!

I won the tall contest!

I definitely won the Mom contest!

Happy Mother’s Day Mom. You’re with me, even though you’re not with me.

xo/evie