The answer could be very different for many of us just as we women can be very different.  I believe, however, the answer is more likely to be the same.

When I was a little girl I would go to the dime store (yes I said dime store) to get my mom a card, or some piece of costume jewelry, or a handkerchief. Of course I had no money of my own so I’m sure I got the money from her to buy the gifts. My brothers did the same thing, although some of them were old enough to have jobs and money of their own to buy her gifts. She saved many of those gifts.

Mom was bipolar. During one of her manic phases she cleaned out a great deal of the things she had saved over the years, and with six children she had saved a lot of things. She took large apple boxes and put our names on them and then put in them the gifts that we had given her, along with drawings we had made, school report cards, birthday cards, etc. Then she gave each of us our own box. So, now I have some of the Mother’s Day gifts that I gave my mom. My favorites are the little handkerchiefs. Many of them had embroidered scalloped edges; all of them had flowers on them. Mom loved flowers.

As an adult, deciding what to get her for Mother’s Day wasn’t as easy. Usually a card was in order, she liked getting cards. Sometimes I gave her a little trinket or a scarf or lipstick-she loved scarves and lipstick. Even though she didn’t always wear the scarves, she usually used the lipstick. The last Mother’s Day gift I gave her was a white rose lapel pin. I gave it to her when she was in the care home about a week before she died. That was 12 years ago.  I still have it, in the nightstand beside my bed.

Most Mother’s Days I went to see her. There were times when I wasn’t really thrilled about doing that. Mom and I often had different opinions, different ways. Then there were times when I just wanted to spend the day with my own children and sometimes I did that. She never said that it hurt her feelings when I didn’t go see her, but I’m sure that sometimes it did.

So were all those little gifts what she really wanted for Mother’s Day? Of course they were. They were signs that she was acknowledged, loved, and remembered. Isn’t that what all of us mothers want?  It’s not so much the gift as it is that your child took the time to choose a gift that they think you would like. It’s that they took the time to call you, to pick out a card and get it in the mail; it’s that they took some time out of their busy life to spend it with you.

We all know we aren’t perfect mothers, and Lord knows we have made and still make mistakes with our children.  Whether our children are young or adults, whether the gift is small or large, expensive or not; what we most likely want is to be acknowledged, loved, and remembered.

Happy Mother’s Day!