Mom’s Tray

I am not going to make this a sappy post. I told my best friend, Ann earlier today that I wouldn’t so I will keep my word on that.

Tomorrow, October 3rd, is the four year anniversary of my Mother’s death. As I was thinking about this earlier in the week I first sort of relived her last weeks on this earth, and more specifically, her last two days.

I told you I wasn’t going to make this sappy, so I’m not going to share all the rememberings with you. Instead, I’ll share with you that as I spent some time reflecting, I walked around my house and looked at some of the things that were either once hers or had been given to me by her.

One item in particular that I stopped and beheld was this wooden tray.

My mother loved to cross-stitch when I was younger

I’ve shared with y’all before the Christmas ornaments she made for my cousins, brother and me when we were all little. Her thing was cross-stitching. She even took the time to teach me as a little girl, and I found joy in it just as she did.

I have to say that I don’t really remember anything about this tray. When she stitched it, or where it would have ‘lived’ in our house growing up, or even how I came to acquire it – other than I must have asked for it after she passed.

The tray sat for a while on the bookshelves in our den, not really in a place where it was seen, or where you could admire her handiwork…the details of the fruits. Some might would say that it’s dated or ‘old’ looking…but not me. It holds too much meaning to me now. I always loved how she signed her initials on the pieces she stitched.

The tray got put in a closet sometime last year when I was rearranging the decor on the bookshelves, maybe at Christmas, and sadly it never got put back out. Just a few weeks ago I got tired of all the clutter that somehow amasses on my kitchen counter {anyone else?} and was looking for something to corral the necessary items. After I had tried a few other trays that just didn’t seem to work how I wanted them to, I remembered this special tray that was just waiting in the upstairs closet.

I don’t pride myself on being a decorator…

My style is sometimes yet to be determined, but I like a mix of old and new, classic and whimsy. I added the few things that I wanted to be on the counter {not the papers, receipts or magazines!} to the tray and arranged them in a way that you could see most of the cross-stitch design. Every morning as I go to turn on that little candlestick lamp {which burned me just now by-the-way}, I take a glimpse of that design and smile. I have to ponder of her, as she sat and stitched that pattern so many years ago, did she ever wonder where her little tray would end up. Whose counter it would sit on and the trinkets it would contain…even a photo of her youngest grandson, whom she was never able to hold…

Thanks for the tray, Mom…it sure is special, just as you were.

“You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.” F. Scott Fitzgerald