I Love you Mom!!

     With Mother's Day around the corner, I find myself thinking of and missing Mom more than ever.  We lost her in 1995 to cancer, but it just seems like yesterday sometimes. Mom and I were best friends and we could talk about anything together! When Saturday Night Live first started, we would stay up and watch it together.  We would laugh until we cried and then poor Dad would come down the hall and ask us what in the world we were laughing about and we could never explain to him because we were still laughing and gasping for breath.  Dad would finally just walk away, shaking his head and would mumble, "You two are just having too much fun!"
     Mom was great about letting me have my independence.  The first time I wanted to bake cookies by myself, she gave me the bag of chocolate drops that had the recipe on the back of it.  She set out all the ingredients for me and told me to just follow the instructions on the bag.  I was doing great until I came to the salt.  I thought the instructions called for too much, but Mom assured me the recipe was tried and true and that I just needed to do what it said.  I shrugged and said, "OK" and proceeded to add in ONE FULL CUP OF SALT!!!! The bag had crinkled and it folded over the instructions so it looked like the line said one cup of salt...it was supposed to be sugar!!  Mom happened to love raw cookie dough, so before I baked the cookies she walked by the table and grabbed a handful of dough and put it in her mouth.  Well, I never knew my mother could run that fast!  First to the trash can and then to her bedroom to wash her mouth out!  I cried at the time for my "failure", but Mom of course helped me make a new batch of cookies that came out just fine!  That incident became a family threat.  If anyone did something wrong, I would always say, "You better be good or I will make you cookies!!!!"
     Mom was up and out of the house for work before I would get up for school. She knew that I always had a cup of tea in the morning and when I got up she would have a tea cup on the counter for me with a tea bag inside and two cubes of sugar.  Many times there was a note on a napkin underneath that said, "I love you" or some other greeting.  Now I wish I would have saved all those napkins.  I did save the tea cup, it has a special place of honor in my curio cabinet.
     So, for this Mother's Day and for every other holiday and birthday, I will keep Mom in my heart and will share the memories with my family and friends that knew her.  For those of you who never met Mom, be sure to look her up when you get to Heaven.  You won't ever meet a sweeter soul than hers!
I love you Mom and miss you everyday!!!!