That was the moment when I finally understood what being a grandma is all about. Travis was no longer a photograph. He was a wonderful, bright and beautiful boy.
I brought a toy piano to the birthday party two days later. Sure, it was a grandma gift. I wasn’t going to be around to hear Travis pound away at two some morning.
He loved it. It makes lots of noise.
Guests at the party all talked about family. Most had left relatives on the mainland. “I don’t like L.A.,” one guest said. “I hate to go there, but I sure do miss my family at birthdays and Christmas.”
The next day, Tom drove me to the Haleakala Crater for sunrise and along the fifty-three-mile Hana Highway, past waterfalls and sacred pools. He made a point of helping me down the moss-covered stairs leading to the ocean. It was comforting to have a guide who is 6 feet 5 inches tall and built like a rock.
The water is crystal clear. It’s impossible to hide here. We healed somewhere among the 617 turns and 56 single-lane bridges on the Hana Highway that day. We healed without talking about the past. Instead, we talked about the future, his plans and dreams and ambitions for himself and his family.
Travis is walking now, circling the backyard in Makawao.
At the art gallery in the Grand Hotel, I got into a conversation with the saleswoman. She moved to Hawaii a few years ago from Laguna Beach. “Maui is a wonderful place to raise children,” she said. “They are safe here.”
My son says he will never let the family tie break again.
“I missed you, Mom,” he said.
I wanted to ask, “Why didn’t you call months ago?” I wanted to ask, but I didn’t.
Life’s too short.
Jane Glenn Haas
The Mother’s Day Gift
It was a beautiful spring day in early May when I picked up my two little daughters from my mother’s house. I was a single working mother and Mom was kind enough to babysit for me. Putting a roof over my children’s heads and food on the table were major expenses and ones I worked very hard to cover. The bare essentials were the focus of my paycheck.
Clothes, gas money and an occasional repair of our car left little for discretionary spending. Thankfully, I had a wonderful mother who was always there for us.
As we were driving home Debbie, my six-year-old kindergartner, asked if we could go shopping for a Mother’s Day present for Grandma. I was tired and had many things to do at home, so I told her I’d think about it, and maybe in the morning we would. Both Debbie and her four-year-old sister, Cindy, decided that was a definite plan, and they were very excited about it.
After putting the girls to bed that night, I sat down and went over my budget. Putting money aside for the rent, gas for the car and new shoes Cindy needed, I had fifteen dollars for food till the next payday in two weeks. Grandma’s present would have to come out of the food money.
The girls were up bright and early the next morning and willingly helped me clean and dust—the usual Saturday chores. The talk centered on what gift we should get for Gram. I tried to explain that we didn’t have much money to spend, so we would have to shop carefully, but Cindy was so excited she had a list a mile long.
After lunch we drove to town. I had decided that the only place we might find something I could afford was at the five-and-dime. Of course, this being Debbie and Cindy’s favorite store, I immediately made a hit with them. We walked through the store, carefully going up each aisle looking at anything that might be appropriate. Cindy thought Grandma might like a pair of shoes too, (we’d found her a pair of blue tennies for $1.99) but Debbie saw a white straw handbag she said would be, “Just perfect for Grandma to take to church!” Again I explained that we only had a few dollars to spend, so we would have to look further.
After going past most of the counters, we came to the back of the store and were ready to turn down the last aisle when Debbie stopped and pulled me over to a display of small potted plants. “Mom,” she said, tugging on my arm. “Look, we could get Grandma a plant!” Cindy started to jump up and down with excitement. “Can we?” she asked. “Grandma loves flowers!” They were right. Mom had a beautiful flower garden and had vases of cut flowers in the house all summer. There was a large selection of plants in 2” pots for fifty cents. We could even pick out a pretty, little pot and some potting soil and plant it for her. That decision made, we now had to select just the right one. They finally settled on one with shiny green leaves with white variegations—a philodendron.
That was a special Mother’s Day. Both the girls helped repot the little plant and eagerly told their grandmother all about it. Grandma was pleased and placed it on her kitchen windowsill over her sink, “Where I can watch it grow while I do the dishes!” she told them.
The little plant thrived under Mom’s caring hands, and my sister and I got many a cutting from it over the years. Time sped by, and the girls grew up to be lovely young women, married and had babies of their own.
One day when Debbie and Cindy stopped by to visit, Deb spotted my philodendron that was hanging and twining all around my kitchen window. “Mom, is that plant new?” she asked. Both girls wanted to know what kind of plant it was and where I bought it. I explained that you just had to break off a short stem from one and place it in a glass of water and let it root. Grandma always had several glasses with philodendron rooting in them, sitting on her kitchen windowsill. Didn’t they remember that they had given Grandma that philodendron for Mother’s Day all those years ago?
“You’re kidding,” they both said in wide-eyed wonder. “You mean this is all from that same little plant?” I assured them it was and suggested they go ask Grandma for some cuttings and start their own plants.
Later that day, Cindy called to let me know she and Debbie had gone to visit Grandma, and both of them now had several pots with philodendron planted in them. “Grandma had loads of them, most of them with real long roots,” she said. “And Mom, did you know that she still has the original plant Debbie and I gave her for that Mother’s Day when we were little?”
It was just a little Mother’s Day gift—a very inexpensive gift at that—but now forty years later, we see the beauty of it. A philodendron is like a human family. You break off a little stem from the mother plant and reroot it somewhere else. And it grows and spreads in its own unique pattern that still somehow resembles the plant from which it came. As our family goes its different ways, the philodendron we all have has become a symbol for us of how connected we all are. Through its silent daily reminders, the philodendron has brought us closer together as a family.
Mom and dad presently live in a Care Center close to me. The largest remnant of that philodendron plant now graces my front entry, and yes it is still giving of itself. I always have a vase with snippets of its rooting in my kitchen for the homes of my granddaughters. These plant snips are the descendants of that one little plant bought from the Five and Dime by two children for a long-ago Mother’s Day gift.
Joan Sutula
The Quilt
Every seaside cottage and summer cabin should have indestructible leather couches and a quilt. Only the former will do for wet bathing suits, sandy bottoms and little feet with pine needles stuck to them. Only the latter will do for the goose-bumped and almost blue little bodies that duck into the house for a breather late in the day, shivering and shaking because the sun has dipped behind a cloud, but not quite ready to give up the idea of one last round of cannonballs off the pier.
For years, the hunched little forms of my children would line up on the old leather couch at our summer home on those late afternoons, wrapped in damp beach towels, catching a quick cartoon while they took a warm-up break from the endless outdoor activities that all seemed to center around cold water. In the evenings, the same band of four would drag blankets from nearby beds and share a huddle on the couch as the North Woods night chill crept through the wooden cabin. When it was time for lights-out, beds and blankets always ended up in tumbles as damp as the children’s suits.
Then I made the quilt.
I must have been in my Suzy Homemaker stage of motherhood, before career responsibilities later fast-tracked our lives. That one lazy summer—the same summer when we made dandelion wine and learned to waterski on canoe paddles—I took the pile of old jeans, too beat up to be handed down one more time, and a scrap of crimson calico and made a patchwork quilt for the couch.
These were special jeans I just hadn’t been able to let go of. Jeans with memories. Some were stained with droplets of khaki-grey paint from the year we had tried to match the cabin color to the surrounding pine-tree trunks—and the munchkins had all insisted on helping us paint. Some jeans had silly patches on them that had once seemed funny but were now embarrassing: “Don’t swim in lumpy water.” Some had been accidentally tie-dyed with too much bleach and were now beyond fashionably funky even for kindergartners. But I still loved them all.
With the old Singer that had come with the cabin and the old pinking shears, over many quiet nights after the children were in bed, I cut and pieced together those squares that had meaning for me. Randi’s back pocket; Mike’s torn knee piece from the time he fell off his bike on the gravel; Kelly’s embroidered old favorites that had backed into a wet paintbrush; Eric’s favorite hippie jeans, ruined for school forever by the oil stain near the crotch.
The quilt, when it finally came together, was perfect. The patches were worn and soft, like old jeans always are. But impervious. The sand flicked off in the mornings with a quick flap against the porch rail, and any dampness the quilt might have acquired was burned off by the sun before it was needed again late in the day. For almost twenty years the quilt hung waiting each summer afternoon for cold, wet kids to come cuddling.
Of course, the children grew. The quilt was big, but it would only cover one teen adequately. And even though they professed to hate each other for a while and would share nothing else under the sun, I’d catch them on occasion, two, even three big kids, squeezed together watching a rerun, warming up beneath the quilt for half an hour, turf wars forgotten.
But families change. Ours did. A divorce happened, the children’s father got the cabin, and years later it was sold, all furnishings included.
I had long since moved on and made my peace with the cabin’s loss. The lifestyle we had there was indelible and everlasting, and so there was no loss, not really, not with such good memories. I wondered about the fate of the quilt, but only as you wonder nostalgically about a dear old friend you’ve lost touch with.
Fast-forward to Mother’s Day this year. Two thousand miles to the south, another indestructible leather couch holds a huddle of children. The Baja beach where I now live is nothing but sand waiting to cling to everything. Wet bathing suits are now salty from the Pacific, not just damp from the fresh inland waters of Wisconsin. Little pieces of seaweed instead of pine needles stick to feet. But the lifestyle is much the same. And now grandchildren snuggle on the couch, warming up for a few moments while watching SpongeBob—wrapped in the quilt.
Where did it come from?
My children missed it. One of them drove four hundred miles to see if it was still there, at the cabin someone else now owns, to ask if they could have it back, and to bring it home.
It was a surprise, my gift this Mother’s Day. And on the crimson calico squares, between the denim, one of them had written, in black Magic Marker that will stay forever:
Dear Mom,
You will never know
how much I
remember and treasure
all that you did
and all that
you taught me
as I grew up.
I love you forever.
The signature is on a favorite denim square with a little dancing frog stitched on—a frog that once frolicked on the jeans of a six-year-old. Of course it has a paint stain.
Paula McDonald
More Chicken Soup?
Many of the stories and poems you have read in this book were submitted by readers like you who had read earlier Chicken Soup for the Soul books. We publish at least five or six Chicken Soup for the Soul books every year. We invite you to contribute a story to one of these future volumes.
Stories may be up to twelve hundred words and must uplift or inspire. You may submit an original piece, something you have read or your favorite quotation on your refrigerator door.
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Supporting Mothers and
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In the spirit of supporting mothers and children of the world, the publisher and coauthors of Chicken Soup for Every Mom’s Soul will donate a portion of the proceeds from this book to:
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233 Carlton Street
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Phone: 416-925-5894
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Free the Children is an international children’s charity founded in 1995 by the international child rights activist, Craig Kielburger, when he was twelve years old. Today, Free the Children is the largest youth empowerment organization having impacted the lives of millions of youth around the world. Their mission is to free children from poverty and exploitation and the idea that they are powerless to affect positive change in the world, and to improve their lives and those of their peers. Free the Children was nominated for the 2002, 2003 and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
Here are some highlights of Free the Children’s remarkable record of achievement:
• Provided direct leadership training and spoke to youth groups comprising over 1.25 million young people across North America and around the world.
• Built over 400 primary schools in 15 developing
countries, providing education to over 35,000 children every single day.
• Distributed over 200,000 school and health kits to children in need.
• Shipped over $8 million worth of medical supplies and built primary health care centers directly impacting the lives of over 500,000 people in 40 countries.
• Empowered poor women to be economically self-sufficient by providing them with productive resources, such as milking animals, small machines and arable land, allowing them to remove their children from dangerous working conditions and send them to school.
Please contact them directly for more information. We invite you to join us in supporting this extraordinary organization.
Who Is Jack Canfield?
Jack Canfield is one of America’s leading experts in the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. He is both a dynamic, entertaining speaker and a highly sought-after trainer. Jack has a wonderful ability to inform and inspire audiences toward increased levels of self-esteem and peak performance. Jack most recently released a book for success entitled The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.
He is the author and narrator of several bestselling audio- and videocassette programs, including Self-Esteem and Peak Performance, How to Build High Self-Esteem, Self-Esteem in the Classroom and Chicken Soup for the Soul—Live. He is regularly seen on television shows such as Good Morning America, 20/20 and NBC Nightly News. Jack has coauthored numerous books, including the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Dare to Win and The Aladdin Factor (all with Mark Victor Hansen), 100 Ways to Build Self-Concept in the Classroom (with Harold C. Wells), Heart at Work (with Jacqueline Miller) and The Power of Focus (with
Les Hewitt and Mark Victor Hansen).
Jack is a regularly featured speaker for professional associations, school districts, government agencies, churches, hospitals, sales organizations and corporations. His clients have included the American Dental Association, the American Management Association, AT&T, Campbell’s Soup, Clairol, Domino’s Pizza, GE, Hartford Insurance, ITT, Johnson & Johnson, the Million Dollar Roundtable, NCR, New England Telephone, Re/Max, Scott Paper, TRW and Virgin Records. Jack has taught on the faculty of Income Builders International, a school for entrepreneurs.
Jack conducts an annual seven-day training called Breakthrough to Success. It attracts entrepreneurs, educators, counselors, parenting trainers, corporate trainers, professional speakers, ministers and others interested in improving their lives and lives of others.
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Who Is Mark Victor Hansen?
In the area of human potential, no one is more respected than Mark Victor Hansen. For more than thirty years, Mark has focused solely on helping people from all walks of life reshape their personal vision of what’s possible. His powerful messages of possibility, opportunity and action have created powerful change in thousands of organizations and millions of individuals worldwide.
He is a sought-after keynote speaker, bestselling author and marketing maven. Mark’s credentials include a lifetime of entrepreneurial success and an extensive academic background. He is a prolific writer with many bestselling books, such as The One Minute Millionaire, The Power of Focus, The Aladdin Factor and Dare to Win, in addition to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Mark has made a profound influence through his library of audios, videos and articles in the areas of big thinking, sales achievement, wealth building, publishing success, and personal and professional development.
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