Keeping up with Santa

Simply Wonderful Toys has - you guessed it - a comprehensive selection of toys for the young ones eagerly waiting Christmas Eve.

In the party isle stands a girl, barely 4. She whines her desperation of having to make a choice between a tea set and a princess dress. The mother brings a smile on the other browsers’ faces when she says: “Welcome to real life, darling.”

Somehow I got stuck with the T-bird convertible in which Thelma and Louise flown off the cliff. On the rack are Monster Trucks, Lighting McQueen, Thomas and Disney Toys.  Boys must have an inborn knowledge of what they want or in the case of Justin turning 3 what he apparently needs.     I snatch the last John Deere tractor with big wheels, hook and trailer and tick that off my list. Done.

Not necessarily inept, the second child gets to play with the firstborn’s toys and she might by default ends up pursuing a career in the vehicle industry if Santa doesn’t provide relief.

  

To pick a doll for Emily’s first Christmas is more of a challenge than I would like to admit. Boxed in the Orphan Isle are dolls waiting upon adoption. They can swim, eat, and cry, talk and they need motherly girls to take them home.

The one as cute as the other, but since Emily is fairy-like tiny the doll in the bathing suit matches her profile.

Dolls with names can swim, eat, and cry, talk and they need motherly girls to take them home.

This time of the year is also a time known for stories. The Gingerbread Man, Elf on the Shelf, Rudolph the red nose Reindeer --

When the toys are unwrapped and the hourglass of 2014 runs empty the Barefoot Book of Mother & Daughter Tales by Josephine Evetts-Secker and illustrated by Helen Cann a timeless treasure.

Happy Holidays to All

White Carnations for Mother's Day Century Celebration

May 10, 1914 US President Woodrow Wilson officially set aside the second Sunday of every May to celebrate Mother’s day in North America. The day was founded for mothers grieving the loss of fallen soldiers, to promote worldwide peace, to advocate for lowering childbirth mortality and to improve sanitary conditions of women in the workplace.

The founder of Mother’s day never had children of her own. A church in West Virginia now renamed International Mother’s Day Shrine brings honor to Anna Jarvis's championing work. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140508-mothers-day-nation-gifts-facts-culture-moms/)

Anna objected the path Mother’s day celebrations took after 1914. The day was according to her not meant to be a commercial gold mine. She gave up everything to protect Mother’s day as a day to rethink the hardships of women, but instead got arrested for allegedly disturbing the peace and in 1948 she died penniless in Philadelphia’s Marshall Square Sanitarium.

Winning and loosing, two sides of the same coin. We’re living in a world that rapidly changes, with some things replicated. In a recent case 200 schoolgirls from Nigeria have been kidnapped. Soldiers are deployed. Millions of people die of HIV/Aids, malaria and cancer to name a few.

But the winning side is that when in need of a mother they can be found everywhere. They are in front of the stove, behind the desk, they volunteer and humor, nurse and care. Mothers know where to find lost items, how to stretch a meal, listen to everyday realizations and share secrets on mending a broken heart.

To the late Anna Jarvis and her mother initiating this day that has been celebrated a hundred times! Thank you. Women around the world will wear the white carnation to cry out their losses, but they’ll also celebrate their gains. 

Mothers gladly accept the gifts loaded with admiration and praise, knowing the bliss to be a woman, whatever it takes.