Thank You Mom!

It’s pretty common knowledge that this Sunday is Mother’s Day.  Therefore I would be remiss if I didn’t write something this week about my mom and mothers.  Now this seemed like a simple task when I first thought of it, because I’ve known my mom my whole life, so how hard could this be?  Well it was way more difficult than you could imagine because that’s a life time of thankfulness, funny moments, and memories I would have to narrow down into a blog post.  Where would I even start?  Now don’t worry Dad, your day is coming too, so don’t feel slighted.  In order to address my writing dilemma, I decided to pen an open letter to moms while weaving in my own experiences with my mom throughout it. 

Dear Mom,

Let me start out by saying thank you for teaching me the alphabet and how to read and write so that I could write this letter to you.  You’d read me bedtime stories and sometimes I’d read along, or I’d put in a request for enough books and glasses of water to delay bedtime as much as possible.  You always knew what I was up to, but you were willing to add in a couple of stories anyway.  When I didn’t read along, there were only two bears in the Goldilocks story because you were tired, but I made sure to read next time so that there were all three.  Thanks for letting me keep you up to practice my reading when you had already had a full day at work.  Look it’s paying off because now you’re in my blog!

I’d also like to say thank you for the life lessons that skinned knees do heal.  I never really got it at the time, but when I fell off my bike into that thorn bush while trying to hang with the older kids in the neighborhood, you meticulously picked out the thorns that were stuck and said it’ll be ok, you’ll heal.  You were always there to pick me back up, clean and bandage my skinned knees, take the grass stains out of my soccer jerseys, wash the mud off my hands after I picked the flowers you told me not to pick, and said it’ll be ok.  Through all of this I learned, that sometimes stuff happens, but tomorrow is coming and everything will be ok.   

Thanks for having patience with me, even when I couldn’t follow directions the first time, and things would go awry.  You would give me the look that said I told you so, and explain why you told me so, but you were always there to make sure I was alright.  Your support was always unwavering and helped me to learn from the hard knocks in life, even if I was too hard headed to listen the first time.

Thanks for being my biggest cheerleader too.  You would wear those big pinned on buttons to my basketball and soccer games with my picture on them, and dress in the school colors.  You wore those pins with such pride even though my gangly, adolescent, awkward looking self was on them and I always felt like an MVP when you did.  I used to be embarrassed and ask you to stop when you’d brag to your friends that I scored a goal, but deep down I actually really enjoyed it because I was proud too.  Even my friends enjoyed hearing you clear across the gym or the field losing your voice yelling “Go Ed Go!”

That’s what you were always good at though, making me feel special even if I didn’t believe it about myself at the time.  There were days when my test in school didn’t go the way I planned, or when I lost that game on a free throw in 7^th grade, and you still said, “I think you’re great, and you’ll get it next time.”  It rebuilt my confidence and I knew I could face the world again, stronger and tougher than I was before.

The reality is Mom, I could keep writing paragraph after paragraph saying thank you and reminiscing about the things we’ve been through, and the fun that we’ve had.  I know Dad was there too, but today’s your day so I’m talking to you, he can wait until June.  We may not have always seen eye to eye on everything, and I know it would break your heart to say no to that toy, or the ice cream cone, or whatever else as I got older.  The one thing I could always count on was that you were always there for me, with my best interest at heart, and I’m grateful for that.

You’ve sacrificed a lot throughout the years to make sure that I had a happy childhood, a good education and a good life.  There really isn’t any amount of money that can repay you for what you’ve done for me, but I’m forever indebted for the things you’ve done because you always found a way to make the impossible happen.  Thanks Mom!

Love,
 Your son

Happy Mother’s Day to all of my friends who are moms and most importantly for me,

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom.

(yes, this is a pic of  my mom and I on my first birthday)

Gifts of the Season

This time of year tends to be a time when many of us are caught up in the intoxicating consumerism that comes with the holidays.  The popular song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ would force you to spend $27,393 on your true love this year if you used the song as a shopping list (Reuters 2013).  Rest assured that I won’t be doing any finger pointing here, because in the past I have been an active participant during the holiday season partaking in traditional spendthrift tendencies. 

With the plethora of buying and gift giving that occurs, sometimes we can get lost in the hustle and bustle to get the latest and greatest gifts to bring the biggest smiles.  There’s a cliché we are all familiar with that says ‘It’s the thought that counts’.  Now this cliché is usually used in instances where people don’t like their gift, or it’s not what they expected, so they use the saying as a scapegoat.  But what would happen if we lead with that as our premise for gifts for family, friends, coworkers, and our employees?  In reflecting about this I began to think about what types of gifts we might see more of, tangible and intangible, and how gift giving could change.  There were two things that came to mind that I’d like to focus on here, and that I hope to give more of during Christmas this year, as well as in the near future.

Having been a supervisor of employees there is always the dilemma of what to give them as gifts, whether it’s for birthdays, milestone achievements but especially around the holidays.  After a conversation with a former colleague about gifting to employees, I saw how time could be a very important gift in the workplace.  This type of gift makes a lot of sense because time is such a precious entity.  Time is so precious that we have placed value on it by the hour when creating wages.  Therefore why not give time as a gift?  Once those minutes in life have gone by they cannot be replaced, which makes them so precious.  The gift of time can manifest in multiple different ways, but I would suggest that time in the form of a day off would be the most beneficial.  As the conversation progressed, it became very clear that vacation time is seen as a free-time where employees were free to do with it as they choose.  The converse of this, would be time with coworkers or with their supervisor in a non-work environment such as a retreat.  This is beneficial for team building, but when it comes to a gift for an employee whose day is typically structured by the organization they work for, a vacation day is that much more of a precious commodity.   

Gifting time is not only something that is important in the workplace, but also in one’s personal life.  Spending time with those that we love and care about is something that is very important to many of us.  However when you spend time with those that are close to you, it is very much appreciated by those you are spending that time with making it special.  Another form of gifting time in one’s personal life can come via volunteering it to a cause that you are interested in.  Following the idea that time is valuable and precious, using your personal time to share a talent, or help a cause, can be a great gift to that cause.

The second gift I thought of, could have tangible elements to it.  The gift of thanks can be given by a handwritten personal note, which in our age of technology can mean so much more.  If technology is necessary, making it personal instead of a standard thank you goes a very long way.  It may also come in the form of a token of appreciation where something is given that has a lot of thought put into it, but may not necessarily be the most expensive item.  This is a place where the cliché mentioned above ‘it’s the thought that counts’ really plays a significant role, because the cliché is used as the motivation to give rather than an excuse to give just anything.

             During this holiday season I hope to share more gifts like those mentioned here.  It may be too late for Christmas Day or other holiday’s that you might have done some shopping for but maybe you will consider some of the thoughts here when doing your own gift giving in the future. 

In Works Cited Section:

Jenkins, Colleen. (December 2013). Cost of “Twelve Days of Christmas” gifts leaps in 2013. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/02/us-usa-christmas-gifts-idUSBRE9B10O320131202.