There was a drawer in our kitchen that housed the dish towels and the used and folded pieces of aluminum foil (something that, for some reason, really bothered me, so I vowed there would be no small pieces of foil being saved in my home - ever.)
She rarely purchased "store-bought cookies," but if a recipe she was using called for just the yolk of an egg, then Mom saved the white until she had the time to make meringue. Then she'd put small spoon fulls of the meringue on top of saltine crackers, broil them for just a minute and that would be our afternoon treat. The opposite was also true of the yolk. If that was left over, she'd fry it up, put it between two pieces of bread, smother it in ketchup and send it to school with me as my lunch. Just plain horrible.
If she had any icing left over from one of her famous cakes, she'd smear it over a graham cracker, put another graham cracker over that and - voilà! - we'd have her version of sandwich cookies.
For the sake of being thrifty, my birthday was celebrated with my father's (I was born the day before his birthday), and since it was so close to Halloween, the decorations were never ordinary birthday hats and balloons - they were orange and black things that could be used, again, for Halloween.
So, although after living with us for more than 10-years she grew to understand my antics and - I think - oftentimes enjoyed them, I'm not sure how she'd take this whole idea of celebrating my birthday for 30-days. (Which, by the way, ends tomorrow.)
I'm not fond of the idea of turning 60. Yes, I know how lucky I am to be on this side of the ground, and yes, I know how blessed I am to have family and friends surrounding me everyday. But this is the year I've faced my mortality, and - well - you know.
So I came up with this fabulous idea of celebrating the slide into 60 for the 30-days prior. What fun it's been.
My dream of a husband has gone out of his way to think of me everyday for the past 29-days, bringing me everything from a package of Pop Rocks to a giant pumpkin that's so large and heavy I can't lift it to renting a limousine so my girl friends and I could go on a Girls' Night Out and more.
I'm not so sure Mother would approve of the expenditure; she'd have probably lifted an eyebrow. But, I also can't say that I care or that I'm regretful for the exuberance my husband has shown or even the over-indulgence of the past month. One thing I do know, Mom celebrated my birthday every year with just as much love in her heart for me as I have in mine for her. So maybe she would have enjoyed this, as well. Maybe she wouldn't have seen it as being wasteful.
I faintly remember my husband and some friends having a dinner party for me on my birthday last year -- just three weeks after Mother had passed away. But I was in a state of not being able to think for myself, and if you held a gun to my head today, I wouldn't be able to tell you who was there.
This year, things are different. I'm working hard to embrace my age, embrace the changes in my life, and embrace the memories. With that in mind, the countdown to turning 60 has actually been a year-long journey. It's not just been fun things that either I've done for myself or that my husband has done for me - it's been about the time we've spent together, talking, laughing and appreciating one another.
While my mother's extreme frugal ways did not rub off on me, some of her talent and her love for family did.
"Mother, thank you for having me. I miss sending you flowers on this day. Happy birthday!"
