Happy Mother's Day! all you Mothers!!

My mother would have been 85 years old today if Parkinson's hadn't taken her away at the age of 77. But while she lived my mother was a thoroughly modern woman. Born in 1923, the second of 4 children and the only girl, she had an independent spirit and a gift for drawing, painting and writing. Growing up during the depression with only a mother she dropped out of school in Gr. 10 to work in the local broom factory. Times were tough yet photo after photo show her impeccably turned out in a wide array of flattering outfits - how she did it I'll never know.

Somehow she also managed to clothe and feed her five active and always hungry children, including me, pictured above in a pretty snazzy outfit for a 2 year old. Note my mother's stylish coat, coordinated head scarf and of course spotless white gloves. You'd think we were quite well off by appearances. And you know, we were, in the things that counted.

Today I'd like to thank my mother for a simple gift she gave me, which I enjoyed to the full today. The gift of artful puttering. My mother loved to putter, indeed, she lived to putter. There was nothing she loved more than to putter around the house in the morning - sorting through the accumulation of stuff on the dining room table, a little dusting, writing a few lists, putting misplaced items back where they belong, moving around a few pieces of furniture, trying on a new blouse or two, pruning a few houseplants, reading a few snippets from the newspaper, magazines and a half dozen books, sweeping the kitchen floor (a task she did so often we called her The Grim Sweeper!), and a myriad other little odd jobs.

While I puttered around my trailer today, inside and out, I thought fondly of our "ma". How she would have loved it at the trailer I thought as I vacuumed, dusted and arranged several new storage ottomans. "Just the ticket" she would say, "so handy - you can sit on them, you can store extra linens etc in them and flip over the top and it becomes a tray to hold cups of tea and cookies!" As I raked leaves I could envision her sitting on a lounge chair with her favourite book in hand and the inevitable cup of tea on a side table.

And as I swept my large front porch I wished she was there with me, because then SHE would have been sweeping instead of ME!