Ponderings brought about by a Cabbage Patch doll

I hadn't talked to my daughter for a few days when she called me on my cell phone yesterday. I was just getting ready to leave for campus to pick her brother up and normally I don't talk while driving. This time I did (but I was very, very careful). Since it was bumper to bumper traffic from the main road into campus, I couldn't go very fast, anyway. It was fun talking to her. I miss her a great deal and mothers of small children have to call when they have opportunity!

Today a package arrived from said daughter (and son-in-law). I opened it first, even though I knew it contained her father's birthday presents (I shut it again...honest). For inside were a couple of books from brother-in-law to Christopher (good books about society, politics, and such). Also inside was something I had been waiting for...my mother's Cabbage Patch doll. Yes, you heard right...my mother's doll!

For at the same time she had ordered a couple for her (then) little granddaughter, she liked them so much that she ordered one for herself. For years that doll sat on her bed, or on a chair in her house. My mother had passed it on to Stephanie as she became bedridden and could no longer keep her house in order.

I took it out of the box and I hugged it to me, shedding tears for missing mothers and little girls who are now grown. Oh, if we only know how precious those times are when we are living through them...how quickly time goes and the three generations of ladies become two...the two become separated by many miles. Good memories...

I had to smile when I saw the package of gorgeous napkins my daughter had told me she included in the package. She knew I'd love them and yes...they are so pretty. Small pictures of sixteen various garden items, geraniums, herbs, a floral heart, a birdhouse...all in reds and greens on a white background. I love beautiful paper napkins! Hmmm...perhaps I'll look up how to do napkin decoupage again. :)

My daughter studied to be an interior designer even though people told her she was "wasting her brains". Since she lived at home for three of her four college years (and returned after graduation until her wedding), I learned a lot along with her. I was smiling tonight as I put a couple of pretty ice tea spoons in the cut-glass creamer with the regular spoons. As I placed the spoons in with their smaller versions, I was thinking how they would create a vertical element. (One of the interior design terms I picked up vicariously.)

There was a lot of my southern grandmother in my own mom. I'm certain my daughter will be watching her two girls and see something of me come out once in awhile. I hope it's only good stuff. I wish I'd inherited my mother's sense of humor but sometimes when I look into Faith's eyes...I see that twinkle! Grandmothers, mothers, daughters, granddaughters, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law...generations of women.

I was just reading an article this week how "experts" have replaced mothers and grandmothers in today's families. I hope within all of us there is a desire to march to a different drummer than the experts in today's major women's magazines and popular books. I think we were a lot better off when we listened to wise women who were the real experts about living...experts in aprons.

Picking Daisies by Herman Seeger, Allposters.com