Five Things I Got From My Mother

In honor of Mother’s Day coming up this next weekend, I thought I’d write a blog about five of my favorite things, which I learned to love because my Mother loved them:

Birds! And adding new birds to my Life List, and feeding the birds…

Beatrix Potter! Such charming tales, with the most wonderful illustrations…here are a few of the figurines from my collection (yes, perhaps some Brambly Hedge and Bunnykins have crept in but there’s room for all…) My Mother’s favorite character was Mrs. Tiggywinkle, the hedgehog laundress. Mine would probably be one of the Cats (or maybe Lady Mouse) BUT my favorite figurine is Timmie Willie Sleeping, which you can see at the front of photo. My mother got her love of Beatrix Potter from her mother, my oh-so-stern Gramma Lucy, who must have had her lighter moments, as she and her sister were affectionately known as Flopsy and Mopsy as children. Hmm, that means my greatgrandmother must have enjoyed Ms. Potter’s Tales as well.

Cats! Which doesn’t always go so well with my love of birds and other small creatures…

Tea! Actually my mother was the Compleat Anglophile and loved all things English. British? I think if you’d given her the chance to go back in time and live, she’d have thought herself in Paradise if she could have lived in the Victorian Age and been married to a Duke (waltzing optional). (Yes, that is the Queen Mother on my tea cup, not my actual Mother, just to clear up any confusion LOL.)

Tap Dancing! Which extended to a love of all movie musicals on my part…somehow I never got her adoration of “Gone With The Wind” or Dr. Zhivago. I require an ironclad Happily Ever After to love a movie. Here are the links to three of my all time favorite tap dancing sequences, from Fred Astaire the Master (he and Eleanor Powell appear at :56), Gene Kelly (song starts at 1:09), and the incomparable Sutton Foster with a stage full of sexy sailors (need I say more LOL?)…