Mother's Day
Celebrating our Moms
Farm Life

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Dear Lovely Ladies out there!

The month of May has always been a special time in my life. Not only is it Mother’s Day but my mother’s birthday is also in May. I am fortunate to still have my mother with us.

As a farm kid, my Saturday ritual was to ride my bike the whole 3.5 miles to town and visit my grampa Schaefer. There I would fill up on cookies, pop and home-made potato chips. Oh boy! My grampa was like the original Ms. Vickies. Everyone knew him for those delicious chips. I still have an addiction for potato chips. After all that great snacks, I would be to be too tired to drive my bike home, so grampa would toss my bike into the back of his truck and give me a ride back to the farm, toting a bag of chips for the rest of my siblings.

Anyway, back to the story. On one of those Saturday morning, I rode my bike past a local store and saw, what I thought, was the most beautiful candy dish ever. It was probably something that was made in China.
But as I remember it was shaped like a maple leaf and it just glistened in the department store window. I thought that would make a great mother’s day gift. I don’t recall how much it cost as I didn’t have any idea about monetary value. It probably only a few dollars, but as a kid, that was a fortune to me.

I must have pestered my dad for several days or even weeks, as he finally agreed to buy that candy dish. On top of that, I also asked him to buy a bag of hard peppermints, to go into the dish, as that was my mom’s all time favourite.

On mother’s day I was able to present my mom with this wonderful token of love.

As the years went by, my mother always and still has a baggie of peppermints in her purse. On Sunday mornings us kids would pile into a church pew. We would often pretend to have a wee bit of a cough, and without looking she would reach into her purse and hand us a peppermint, as not to disturb the sermon. I think she was on to us.

All of her grandchildren knew that gramma always has peppermints in her purse. I would like to take credit for her fancy for the mints, but she tells a different story of how her gramma also had peppermints in her purse. So I guess it was passed down from generation to generation.

On this mother’s day, let’s celebrate all those lovely ladies who have made an impact on our lives. I certainly have been fortunate in that area.