It's all about Mom

Today we celebrated my moms and my nieces birthday. They were born exactly 50 years apart on the same day and today they celebrated their 9th birthday connection. Now that I have completely embarrassed my mom for revealing her true age, and she doesn't look 59 by the way, let me just tell you how great is my mom. And if you are one of my readers who is now wondering what this has to do with beads, hang in there.

My mom was Super Mom. She had two boys, didn't have kids for 9 years then had me and my little brother. To her it was like have another family all over again. She home-schooled us, kept the house in pristine condition and still dragged us to all of our extra curricular activities. She made sure we were clean, well fed and always looked nice. We went to church every Sunday and AWANA that night. We went to museums, art galleries and aquariums. If we we’re interested in a subject that we we’re learning at the time (for me it was all about Egypt in 4th grade) she let us study it all we wanted, got us more materials and took us anywhere we needed to go until we where absolutely sick of the subject. (I still like Egypt, but only in small quantities now). She believed that if you were interested in learning something it meant that you should learn as much as you can about it. No restrictions when it came to learning. She must have been a good teacher because I made mostly A’s and a couple B’s in college and graduated with highest honors. My mom instilled the love of learning in me. To this day I still would rather watch Discovery Channel or TLC than anything else.

Now this is where is relates to beads. My mom was the one who introduced me to beading. It was just supposed to be something to keep me busy until the baby came. She didn’t realize that this subject was suddenly like Egypt was back in 4th grade. For the next year I wanted to try it all. Stringing (got that down easy), bead weaving (My FAVORITE! So many stitches), Polymer clay bead making (interesting) and Lampworking (haven’t tried yet but love the outcome). I have bead magazines coming out of my ears and still can’t wait for the next one to come out in the next quarter. I have dog-eared so many pages in my bead books that the books should be barking.

Here’s the other connection that I saw today. I had made my mom a necklace, bead woven out of hundreds of tiny seed beads, for Christmas. I took me three days to complete. I didn’t realize that she didn’t have any clothes that matched the colors in the necklace. (It was dark blue and cream!) But she became Super Mom again. She went out to buy an outfit for her birthday to match the necklace. She wore it proudly today at the restaurant. She may not even realize that because of her instilling that love of learning, the patience to continue until the project was done, and introducing me to beading in the first place she would have been wearing something else today. That necklace never would have been made, she never would have known the pattern ever existed and that silent thank-you-for-being-my-mom-and-making-my-life-better-because-you-cared-so-much-about-me-and-my-future wouldn’t have been shared in such a beady way.

Thanks mom for being my mom. I love you.