Mother's Day gifts

A pleasant, though cloudy, Mother's Day -- we are supposed to have rain, but so far just a sprinkle or two. The twins and I went out for fancy coffees at Starbucks as a Mother's Day treat (more a treat for them, but it's OK). I also spent time reading a mystery, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, and talking on the phone to Rocket Boy and Aunt Nonny. I'm going to get off the computer and make popovers for a light dinner soon.

This is our third Mother's Day with Rocket Boy off in Missouri, and once again it's absolutely fine. I really wonder now what it will be like when we celebrate it together again someday. Will I revert to being crabby and feeling unloved? Or will it stay absolutely fine? I suspect the latter, because I've enjoyed all the holidays we've managed to spend together since he's been gone. The separation has caused a bit of mellowing. Maybe it was just what our marriage needed.

Of course, it was nice that he thought to send a present -- a big box arrived on Thursday and we opened it today. I figured it would just be chocolate, though surely he wouldn't sent THAT much chocolate, and why was the box marked "fragile"? And yes, there was a box of chocolate in there, but there were all these other things as well, like fancy soap and a deck of "Garden Birds" playing cards, and a funny Mother's Day card. The most special gift was a photo of the boos when they were three or four, at Red Rocks State Park outside Ridgecrest, that he had FedEx Office make into sort of a box print, for hanging. I love it, and I love that he thought to do that. I have many photos I might like to do that with. 

I was just thinking the other day that I'm tired of staring at a drawing of Rocket Boy's dad when he was in the Army and a small painting that we think could be of his grandfather, or maybe just some random German peasant. They're on the wall facing our bed. Why do I have to look at them when I wake up in the morning? The answer is, I don't, I could put something else there. Maybe I'll think about that. Anyway, I've felt very well remembered today.

But I also bought myself some gifts. This past week, home sick, I started thinking about my wedding china. I don't know why -- something must have triggered it, but I don't remember what. Anyway, I've always been slightly embarrassed about my wedding china, like maybe I didn't exercise truly good taste when I chose it. My china is Butterfly Meadow by Lenox, a very popular pattern in the early 2000s when we got married, and still in production today. I liked it because it had flowers and butterflies, and the plates had different pictures, and there were whimsical touches like a bee inside the teacups. Also, it wasn't too expensive (I was thinking of the wedding guests' pocketbooks).

Rocket Boy was fine with my choice (he had never heard of wedding china and would have approved of absolutely anything I chose), but my mother, of all people, was a little unsure. She (very gently) tried to steer me toward another china pattern that had flowers but was less cutesy: the Botanic Garden pattern by Portmeirion. I had noticed it when I was first looking at china -- it was on my list -- and I looked at it again after my mother nudged me in that direction, but it didn't make the final cut. I went for cutesy, and that has always bothered me, even though I still love all the cutesy touches. There is a part of me that feels that someone with a PhD should not have Butterfly Meadow china. So I decided to look at the Portmeirion china again, to poke that little wound once more. I found the china on replacements.com and studied it, and then I remembered why I didn't like it. That green leaf ring around the edges of all the plates. It bothered me, for some reason. Still does. But then I saw something that I'd forgotten: one of the plates had sweet peas! Oh, I wanted it! But then... that green leaf border... hmm.

While trying to remember the name of the Portmeirion china, I looked on a few different websites, and on one I found some of the loveliest china I'd ever seen. It was by a French company I hadn't heard of, Bernardaud, and the pattern is called Jardin Indien, with reproductions of pictures of flowers from a botanical garden in Mumbai "that no longer exists." The flowers are so delicate, so understated, so lovely. I thought, oh, that's what I would choose now.

Then I looked a little closer. One dinner plate costs $86. Seriously!

So, no, that wouldn't have been my choice 19 years ago, even if it had existed then. Too expensive for the wedding guests. Also, I'm sure I would never have been able to buy extra pieces on replacements.com, which has pages and pages and pages and pages of Butterfly Meadow china (and Butterfly Meadow tablecloths, and Butterfly Meadow soap dishes, and Butterfly Meadow bed linen and Butterfly Meadow everything you can imagine -- and what would that be like, if you were newly married and your entire home ended up being Butterfly Meadow? A nightmare!).

And no, I didn't buy myself a place setting of Jardin Indien as a Mother's Day gift. Though I'd love to meet someone who has that china, and eat a meal at their house where I could enjoy looking at it.

Instead, I looked on replacements.com for Butterfly Meadow Leaf -- a pale green version of Butterfly Meadow that I've always liked too. I have a few pieces of it mixed in with the colorful dishes: four pasta bowls and a couple of big serving bowls. Apparently no one has ever liked it but me, because it's really hard to come by now. When I looked on replacements.com they had almost nothing. But there were two "luncheon plates," only $5 each because they were used and had some damage. I decided they would be fine, especially since I do not actually have any luncheon plates in my pattern. We never finished the set. So I ordered the two plates and they are on their way.

That was my first present to myself.

On Thursday, the morning paper included a separate Macy's ad, full of pictures of gift ideas for Mom. I looked through it mostly for amusement, sure that I wouldn't like anything Macy's thought I would. And then I stopped -- there was something I liked. It was a colored glass pin, flowers and a little bee, something that would fit right in with my large collection of pins (and reminiscent of my wedding china). 

Oh, I loved it! I loved it enough to go on the Macy's website and see what else they had (the paper ad had done its job). And there on the website was something I liked even better -- a maybasket pin! 

I wanted that pin. I clicked deeper -- I was going to buy it -- but it was no longer available. So, I got off that website -- sorry, Macy's, you almost had a customer -- and went searching for it elsewhere. I found it on Etsy, on the page of a seller of "vintage pins" (which I guess just means used? a pin very recently for sale on the Macy's website can't really be considered vintage, can it?). Of course I had to look at her other pins too and I found another maybasket pin! Even cuter than the first. So what can I say? I bought them both. (The seller combined shipping. The total cost was about what the twins and I pay for takeout on Saturday nights.)

Two little plates and two lovely maybasket pins are at this moment winging their way towards me. I am so pleased with myself. 

But there remains that problem of taste. I want to have good taste. I admire people who have good taste -- well, up to a point. The real truth might be that I admire people who have good taste but aren't confined by it, who also feel free to go beyond it into whimsy. I fear, though, that I tend to bypass good taste altogether and go straight for whimsy, and beyond that into cutesiness. 

And messiness. One might even say squalor. But we won't say that, because it is Mother's Day and I'm trying to be nice to myself.

My taste is mine. I like what I like. Someday, I may learn to live with that.

Meanwhile, in the Butterfly Meadow section of the replacements.com website I noticed something I'd never seen before -- Butterfly Meadow holiday china! There are actually two versions of it -- a newer, rather loud version with poinsettias and holly (and butterflies), and the one I like, a more delicate pattern, with butterflies decorating a little Christmas tree. (Butterflies and bees at Christmas. Maybe it is supposed to be taking place in Australia.) But I love it! Sadly, it is out of stock and not available anywhere. I can only watch and wait for it to appear on eBay or Etsy. Someone, somewhere must have bought it at some point and would like to sell it to me now.

I'm not going to post a list of resolutions for the week, because I can mostly just use last week's. We were sick all week! What an awful illness this has been! Today was the first time in EIGHT DAYS that my temperature was normal. That's crazy. Teen B stayed home all week except Friday, so I didn't have much time to myself. I'm still coughing a little, he's still coughing a little. Teen A is completely back to normal, but since he came down with it on April 23rd, that's not saying much. Oh, and we all got covid tests and they all came back negative. Just a cold. Just a virus. Good grief.

There are three weeks left of school. I can't do much in three weeks, but I'll do what I can. Maybe now at least we'll be healthy. There's nothing special on the schedule for this coming week, but that just means it has yet to be revealed. I'm hoping it won't be anything bad, but whatever it is, we'll try to roll with it. We're supposed to get a lot of rain, and that will green things up even more. Still no onions in bloom, and I haven't seen any lilacs, nor has a hummingbird stopped by our feeder. Maybe by next weekend. And then it will finally be time to plant some annuals, and pretty soon summer will be here.