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 Texas : Features : Columns : "The Girl Detective's Theory of Everything"

My Funny Valentine

by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal

I have received some wonderful gifts from my children over the years. I have received many different things, necklaces, bracelets, fairies, angels, boys and girls, made out of macaroni. I have received glazed and fired clay elephants, rhinos, fairies, angels, boys and girls. Once David found a big heavy "gold" chain with a gigantic "diamond" encrusted dollar sign pendant in the street near the high school and it had only been run over a few times. He said that I looked beautiful in it and he agreed with me that I should only ever wear it in our house because it was so fancy and valuable that it would be a terrible, terrible shame to lose it.

Once, while I was in nursing school and Katrina was in kindergarten she made me a beautiful card. On the front it said, "I no, I no, I no" and on the inside it said, "I no things has been ruf." I will never get a better card than that one!

One Mother’s Day I had to work. The children met me in the driveway that evening and made me close my eyes while they led me into the backyard for my present. It was quite a journey being dragged as I was in four just slightly different variations of the same direction and trying hard not to step on any little bitty feet. Getting through the gate as a cluster was a little difficult since none of them wanted to let go of me, leaving me to be led (wrongly) by any of the others. Which just goes to show you that control freaks are born and not bred. When we finally got through the gate and after Katrina punched David for dragging me into a hanging cedar branch and I had to briefly open my eyes to catch David in mid-air as he launched himself at Katrina to defend the honor of his leadership abilities (he was quite a jumper, that David) and we all settled down again they led me a few more feet into the yard and then shouted for me to open my eyes.

I opened my eyes and scanned around quickly trying to see what they were trying to show me. I couldn’t see anything – just the usual backyard debris – toys and bikes, lawn chairs piled into a fort or cave or something. It is a good thing that children think grown-ups are stupid, or I might have inadvertently hurt their feelings. "Look, Mama! It’s a dinosaur world!" And right there, how could I have missed it, was a ring of rocks delineating Dinosaur World. There was Pile of Mud Volcano, the desolate wasteland of Will Ruin the Lawnmower Rock Desert. There were huts made out of cut grass and there were all kinds of dinosaurs everywhere. It was amazing. They had obviously gone to a lot of trouble and MORE SURPRISINGLY had worked together to make it. David and Andy immediately dropped to their knees to animate the dinosaurs and the show was on! It was one dinosaur battle after another interrupted only by the girls showing me which dinosaurs were herbivores and liked to eat dandelions and then demonstrating this. It was very sweet, a very touching moment you know, which actually turned into a touching forty-five moments before it was dark enough that I had to insist we all go inside for supper.

But I wanted to tell you about my best Valentine. Andy, my youngest, came home from school one day when he was in the fourth grade. He got all the money that he had been saving up – much of it in coins – and then risked getting in Big Trouble by walking to the neighborhood drug store. It was only two blocks away, but he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere after school if I wasn’t home and he wasn’t allowed to go to the store alone. But he did, with his pockets jingling. He bought two small heart shaped boxes of chocolate and a gigantic floppy white toy dog. And I mean it was huge. At least half as big as he was. You know that he spent what was to him an absolute fortune. Then he walked home and put the big white doggy on the end of my bed and one box of chocolate on my pillow and one on Daddy’s pillow.

That doggy stayed on my bed as long as we lived in that house and is now here in the office with me on the day bed. He is a little less white than he used to be and I know that over the years he will get grubbier and grubbier as my future grandchildren enjoy him. And I can imagine that someday the kids will be clearing out our house and one of the girls will say, "Gross! Why do you think Mama saved this nasty old thing?" If Andy is there he will know why Mama saved it and I hope he remembers exactly how he felt choosing it, the best one in the whole store, paying for it with his very own money, and carrying it proudly home. My very best Valentine.

© Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
"The Girl Detective's Theory of Everything" February 7, 2009 Column
Related Topics: Mothers | Love & Marriage | Texas Escapes Online Magazine | Columns |

 
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