The Best Mother's Day Gift May Be...

By: Ann Burnside Love

Since my four children’s father died while they were still very young, over the years they’ve found some special ways to celebrate Mother’s Day, ranging from seriously thoughtful to downright funny and beyond.

One of my best ever Mother’s Day gifts happened several years ago, when one son made it my gift to plant all the annual flowers I had just bought when I had a big yard and suddenly could no longer do all the gardening myself. For the last few years it has become a tradition. So now he visits me at my retirement community toting a huge bag of potting soil, trailed by one of my beloved teenage grandsons toting tools. They plant new flowers on my balcony in my favorite containers — and refresh my indoor plants. (I do everything I can to prevent Vanessa the cat from munching on the greenery, but …)

Flower planting definitely comes under the category “gifts of time.” These have become far more important to me now than material gifts. So let’s think of what “gifts of time” may be best for retired seniors at Mother’s Day — and all year!

• Visits from them and invitations to visit them. There may be all sorts of distances involved the way families are scattered these days, especially with time, mobility and financial considerations. Many of us, however, have chosen retirement communities accessible to our children or other relatives, as I have. If you get along well with your kids, this may work really well. If you don’t, a little distance (or a lot!) may be more beneficial. 

• At retirement communities, they celebrate Mother’s Day in a big way. At ours there’s magic going on in those big kitchens. The buffet menu is staggering and many residents invite family, so the dining room is filled with babes in arms and toddlers on up through all ages to us, the actual residents. I like to invite family, but on the actual day, naturally some are visiting spouses’ families or grown children’s families — mine included. So my pared down group has a tradition of inviting a few residents not expecting guests to join us at our table. We have such good conversation that staff has to suggest we leave the dining room after (only) two hours.

• On Mother’s Day being taken for a ride to see springtime in action, the colors, the fragrances, the vistas, the hanging baskets downtown in small cities. Actually, my retired son-in-law often calls whenever the seasons are changing or something interesting in nature is going on.

• Special events. Some of my favorite “gifts of time”are lunch or dinner dates, theater tickets, grandchildren’s ballgames, school plays, concerts, graduations at every level, weddings. For years I’ve watched many residents of my community being picked up at the door for any number of these occasions, just as my family does — returning us home exhausted but full of wonderful memories!

• And don’t forget mothers who are seniors still laboring in the same homes they’ve occupied for decades, now often alone, who would benefit enormously from a move into a retirement community. There’s no place like a retirement community for mothers to enjoy the ultimate “gifts of free time” to socialize or read or paint or just put their feet up — while other people are happy to do the work! 

So there it is: The “gift of time” may well be the best gift for us retired mothers. You might even say we’ve earned it! Carry on!


Ann’s new blog appears every Thursday. Comments and senior-related topic suggestions are welcome!