Roses to a Nursing Home and Diamonds Down the Drain

Saturday is my mother's birthday, 82. I am wiser now---instead of buying a dozen roses for $120 plus fees in Seattle, I spend$2 on a call to where she is, Ft. Wayne, IN., and have a dozen sent with card for $49.95---"Your momma didn't raise no dummies," she used to say. Her name is Rose, hence the roses. In a nursing home it is all about the show.

My first memory of birthday gift-giving to Mom, was picking her yellow dandelions, which she LOVED and my brothers laughed and teased me about how dumb I was, those being weeds and all. Oh how I hated them. (They were 7 and 8 years older than me.)

But "the boys" could do no wrong and my funniest memory of Mom and gifts was when the middle brother's fiancee picked out diamond pierced earrings for Mom. She was so mad that she ran them down the sink! (She HAD no pierced ears!) If the brother had chosen them I'm sure she would have kept them.

Gifts were big in my family. Aunt Vi started it. I jumped in. As I grew older, so few of my peers were into it that I ended up buying gifts for strangers and hospital patients. But always, ALWAYS Mom, Aunt Vi, and I exchanged gifts. When Aunt Vi (Who ALWAYS said, "Don't waste your money on me!" and she meant it.) turned mid 70s, after I had moved to Seattle, I started sending her money in the amount of her age...never dreaming she would keep going into 100...I know Mom wanted THAT gift too, and she often got short changed, but I always figured her turn would come after...well, it never came, save one birthday before she got into a nursing home. Sigh.

I mention her birthday and when I asked her how old she was going to be she thought 55. "No, Mom, 82!"

"82?! That's old!"
"No, Aunt Vi is old, Mom. Over 100 is old." We laughed at that.