Saturday, January 1, 2011

Tom's Christmas Sweater

Our mom had an unusual sense of style and wore REALLY colorful clothing—green checked polyester pants with red flowered tops—you get the idea.

She was a writer. . . a bit quirky—she had cats and there was cat hair on everything! She never quite got the hang of housecleaning so when we would stop by for a visit we had to move books and brush cat hair off of the chairs in order to sit. It was charming as well as amusing. We were watching a home movie once and peered closely and then burst out laughing as we realized the floaters across the screen was cat hair floating through the air. I wonder if that is why I had trouble breathing at times:)

Every year we would get together at my sister Ramona’s house (Ramona had no cats and kept an immaculate house) for a Christmas gathering and even after by brother Tom and I moved to Arizona we’d go back to Iowa to play in the snow and to celebrate Christmas.

Mom loved Christmas and passed that love on to all of us. She bought us interesting and unusual gifts which we always opened with a bit of trepidation:)

One year she could hardly wait for Tom to open a gift she had for him. She let him open it early so he could wear it to our Christmas party.

Tom was shocked to be blessed with a used, woman’s sweater—covered in cat hair! Mom sat smiling proudly as Tom petted the sweater and thanked her. He graciously pulled the sweater over his head and tried to pull the too short sleeves to his wrists.

He actually wore the sweater throughout the entire evening much to our amazement and to Mom’s delight. I had a new admiration for Tom after that:)

Oh. How I miss her and those wonderful days filled with laughter.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Extra points for TOM! and he even allowed a picture of himself to be taken in the sweater. I love it! What a great man.