Taking a hint on Mother’s Day

My mother is the heart of our family, the one with the big picture view who keeps us all informed of what’s up in each other’s lives --daughters and grandchildren and those close to us.

She is a food queen, cooking and baking, leaving delightful surprises in our fridges or kitchen counters while we’re out --literally dishing out her love.

She’s a gardener, starting lily bulbs indoors as soon as spring is in sight, readying stalks for the sunflowers that grow as high as 10 feet in her award-winning apartment block garden. Birds feed and water on her patio; it’s a safe space.

One day I was telling her I’d bought a well for my friends through the Oxfam Unwrapped gift program. At Unwrapped.ca online or by phone you can buy seeds, garden tools, a goat, donkey, chickens or a beehive, a water pump, training courses and lots of other useful things for people who have so little in countries where Oxfam works

Known as ‘the gift that gives twice,’ because you buy them for a friend or family member, they go to help someone in Africa or Asia or Latin America.

“I don’t have a goat,” Mom hinted. That made my mind up for a Mother’s Day gift. Then I started looking through Oxfam’s archives from the last few years to find mothers who had received a goat or benefitted from an Oxfam program paid through Unwrapped funds.

I hope you enjoy my favourites.