Snapdragons for Moms

From yesterday's trip to Home Depot

Yesterday Chef and I were at several garden centers (as has been our Saturday ritual for the last couple of weeks). We were looking at some colorful plants and I was continually drawn to pink gerbera daisies. There's just something about them that makes me think HAPPY. Maybe it's because I always wanted one of those dancing daisies that would sway to music. Remember those? They were so fun as a kid and were the true trailblazers for Big Mouth Billy Bass. I'm fairly certain that time will tell those dancing daisies were the jumping off point for artificial intelligence.

Anyway, amid the beautiful plants were snapdragons. My mom used to plant them in just about every garden we had because my brother picked them out as a kid and that just stuck with her. And then when it was just the two of us, mom and I used to pull the blooms off and make chains of them and decorate our necks and wrists with them. I used to pretend that I was Hawaiian and I would hand them out to my little friends as leis.

The snapdragons were just a little thing that reminded me of my mom. There are literally tons of them every year; little things that remind me of my mom. One of my twitter friends told me it was her first Mother's Day without her mom. "Does it get any easier?"  she tweeted. My reply was that it does. Mother's Day, her birthday, major holidays all get easier. You prepare for them and have a moment when things are sad, but generally you're able to move on.

What doesn't get easier and is always lovely and horrifyingly sad are those snapdragon moments. Random Tuesdays when you'll see any episode of "The Big C" that makes you bawl or smell her perfume on a stranger and realize you may be following that person around Lowe's on a way that's bordering on stalking.

Here's to mothers, here and gone, and those snapdragon moments and memories.