Where It's Christmas Every Day

What a beautiful day in central PA! Spring feels like it has finally arrived. What a great opportunity to get some laundry out on the line. One of these things is NOT like the others. Two weeks ago, my baby sister gave me a couple of boxes from Mom & Dad's house. Inside the one was something that brought me to my knees: my mom's colorful Snoopy Christmas apron.

How that woman loved Christmas! And I still can see/remember her wearing this apron (see extra photo from this blip), with a big grin on her face, as she rustled up The Good Stuff in the kitchen, happy as a clam, good smells all around, gifts tucked in every hidden corner of the house, her family all at home.

I have a picture of my mom wearing this apron, smiling a silly smile, with a huge Hershey's kiss sitting on top of her head. I think the large kiss was a gift from my big sister Barb. The back-story was how much my mom loved her Hershey's kisses. She'd line them up on the kitchen counter, call them "my little soldiers," then undress each chocolate kiss of its silver coat, and eat them, one by one.

Things I really miss about my mother in these troubled times that seem so full of meanness and wretchedness and pure evil these days (at least in America, where I live; have you been watching the NEWS of late?) were her calmness, her human decency, her kindness, her absolute insistence on truth-telling (as well as a total lack of tolerance for lies and liars), her commitment to equity and fair play, and her grace. 

She was never one who spoke ill of others; in fact, one of her favorite sayings was, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." We could learn a lot from her. I try every single day, Mom. I try to speak life. A love story is the only one I choose to tell; and I try to tell it every day, for I truly believe with all of my heart that the greatest of these is love.

I look out the window today and I see my mother's colorful, happy Christmas apron blowing in the breeze. Mom is in a place now where time doesn't matter, so it can be Christmas every single day if she wants it to be. 

Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas! 
I love you and miss you, Mom!

My soundtrack is Dolly Parton, with a song of encouragement and hope and faith: I Still Believe.