Mother's Day Mayday

"A Beautiful Garden," courtesy of Seattlest Flickr Pool member Jonathan Hanlon

Mother’s Day is in some respects a “mayday, mayday.” How do we express our appreciation to our mother on Mother’s Day, and how do we so for the mother who has, if not everything, then everything she needs? “Oh, I don’t need anything more,” she always says. “Just more things cluttering up the house.” We have never purchased flowers for our mother; as much as we love flowers (especially receiving them), we prefer to express our affection in a unique and useful manner. Brunch? “Oh, if it is a nice Sunday morning, I really need to work in the yard,” our mother says.

We recall that our mother had hyperventilated, along with the rest of the country, last summer about the dangers of plastic water bottles, and yet, she had not purchased an approved water container. We examined the Sigg one liter bottles ($25) in Whole Foods (1026 NE 64th Street) and tried to decide which style best suited her. Lace? Geometric shapes? We decided to continue the hunt.

Beauty products! An excellent Mother’s Day choice. We breathed in deep inside Lush Cosmetics (Westlake Center 400 Pine Street) and pondered our choices. We doubted we could coax her to change her shampoo, much less convert to a shampoo bar, and we know better than to mess with a woman’s facial routine (facial skin is very sensitive; never mess with a woman’s regime). Our mother does not take baths, but she does bathe. Soap! Those gleaming rounds of soap filled with herbs, spices, fruits, and minerals that promised to relax, rejuvenate, and reinvigorate the body and soul were so pretty, we wanted to take home one of each.

However, our mother has approximately fifty bars of soap and is in the process of shuffling them off onto others before her will is read. Still… honey and white chocolate, honey and milk chocolate, marshmallow... We were getting very hungry. We contented ourselves with the spicy, cinnamony Wiccy Magic Muscles Massage Bar ($8.75) for ourselves before going for a pick-me-up at Dilettante Café (Westlake Center 400 Pine Street).