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By Katie McKy
Mother’s Day is coming and “World’s Best Mom” t-shirts and coffee mugs will sell well. Buying such a generic gift is quick and easy, but it won’t convey the depth of your gratitude. Now, unpacking your gratitude for your mom isn’t easy for several reasons.
One: How do you truly thank someone for cleaning your bottom thousands of times? Then there are the long-forgotten minutiae of motherhood, like the countless times your mother wrestled your wriggling feet while she tried to adjust your socks so they were just so.
Two: Revisiting all your mother did for you takes time, which is dreadfully difficult when modern life expects us to multi-task all the time. You have to pinpoint specific old memories in a vast sea of childhood and adult memories. It’s far easier to simply buy that coffee mug and scan your credit card.
Three: No mother is perfect, and to recall the good and wonderful, you can’t be distracted by your disappointments in good, ol’ mom. Now, if you’re a mother, you have an advantage here, for you’ve lived in both roles – mother and daughter. You’ve experienced sterling moments as a mother, and you’ve had your less-than-shining times, too. No mother is perfect, so if you harbor disappointments, let them go. This is the time for focusing on gratitude.
If you’re struggling to amass some specific motherly moments due your gratitude and you have a sibling, tap your sib’s memory, too. When I talk to my sister about our shared childhood, she remembers good times that I’ve forgotten, and I remember good times that she’s forgotten. A sibling can help you fill your gratitude ledger.
Once you’ve got your gratitude list, what do you do with it? Well, you can take your mom to her favorite restaurant on Mother’s Day and go through the list. However, you might want the list to last and to be something she can share with her friends, so have it inscribed on an acrylic heart (personalizationmall.com) or lasered and colored into cherrywood (plaquemaker.com). Custom calligraphy (joyful-jane.com or beautifulcalligraphy.com) makes for a lovely, lasting presentation. Don’t forget the frame so your mom can hang it proudly on a wall.
If you’re electronically adept, there are various slideshow makers. Just google “electronic slideshow” and find the one that works best for you. The advantage of an electronic slideshow is your mom can share it far and wide. You won’t have photos that captured all your moments worthy of lasting gratitude, so just pluck generic ones from the internet. Interspersed with your childhood photos, they’ll still feel personal.
Speaking of gifts that last, a tree is a terrific way to say “thank you” again and again. A big perk is that trees, unlike most gifts, grow grander every year. Bigger. Plusher. Lovelier. Pick a tree that makes a point. For example, a Ginkgo is a “one of a kind” tree, as it has no relatives and no equals; it dates back 200 million years. It endures, for it survived the asteroid or comet that killed the dinosaurs. So, it’s a one-of-a-kind, lasting tree, just like your love and gratitude.
Another great choice in trees is an evergreen, which expresses your evergreen gratitude. Arborvitae means “tree of life” and what better way to thank the person who gave you your life? Plus, they’re pretty! Other great choices are sturdy blue spruces, which chuckle at Wisconsin’s winters and offer compact varieties, which can be tucked into any landscape. The Fat Albert Blue Spruce and the Globe Blue Spruce are two of my favorites. If you want to go whole-hog in gratitude, include an outdoor plaque with the tree, which can concisely convey your feelings. Allstarbronze.com is one of many companies customizing such plaques.
A third way to give thanks takes some time. Simply listen to your mom over the course of each year. At some point, she’ll tip her hand and you’ll see what she really, really wants. Then, when you buy that item for her Mother’s Day gift, you can say without words that you truly listen to her words, and few things convey gratitude so well.
If words aren’t your forte, then communicate the primacy of your mother with numbers. Google “chathamplace,” which will take you to an Etsy artist who prints and frames dates on burlap, but not just any dates. They could be your mother’s birthdate and the date of her marriage and the birthdates of her children and even grandchildren. At the bottom in a lovely, flowing font will be “What a difference a day makes.” Framed and matted, the total cost is only 70 to 80 bucks, depending upon your options, and it will be a conversation piece and point of pride in her home.
Etsy abounds with poignant gifts, such as custom bracelets. The artist, IMESILVER, creates a few choice, cursive words that wrap around her wrist in either gold or silver. Starting at only $16.50, the seller MignonandMignon of amazon.com, makes lettered birthstones of your mom’s children or grandchildren that hang from a necklace.
What all these gifts have in common is that they’re specific to your mom, unlike a “World’s Best Mom” t-shirt. They’re all about her, which is the whole point of Mother’s Day.
