My Mom
Today I'm thinking of Mami because it is Mother's Day but also I have been thinking about her since I read Lisa Call's My Creative Heritage blog post. Mami is where I got all this creativity from. She is a florist and makes amazingly beautiful flower arrangements. When I was little she had her own flower arrangement business out of our home then after her divorce from my dad, she worked as a secretary full-time and with other florists part-time and now even tho she is retired, people still ask her to make arrangements.
As a quilter, I always hear stories of quilters that remember being under the quilt frame while their moms or grandmothers quilted. What I remember is being between buckets of flowers watching my mom with her trusty knife blade cutting flowers (on the diagonal! always on the diagonal!) and sticking them in wet green foam blocks. I would gather the scraps that fell on the ground and make my own baby arrangements. I remember seeing countless wedding decorations and taking notes for what I wanted in my own wedding.
That was her job. She loved doing it but when she really got creative was at Christmas. She loves Christmas! Every year getting the Christmas tree was a big event. We lived in Puerto Rico and as you may know, not many pine trees grow there. Therefore Christmas trees are brought in by ship and distributed all around the island. Which makes me think, why don't we have Christmas palm trees instead? Anyway, I digress... We didn't have a lot of money and because Christmas trees are shipped in, they are extra expensive. Mami is a very frugal person. She had to be raising 2 girls in private school in a secretary salary. The Christmas tree was the only thing she would allow herself to splurge on. Every year we would go to the San Juan port where the Christmas trees are dropped off. They always had the best and freshest trees. We would do several trips because Mami had to find the best tree at the best price. Even tho she would haggle with the salespeople, I remember paying $80 for a tree which in the 90's was a lot of money (I don't buy trees so I have no idea what they cost now).
The Christmas preparation started months before December, at least in our minds. Every year we would have a different theme for the decoration of the tree. We would come up with a theme and then Mami would go on a scavenger hunt to find the decorations at a reasonable price. There were carnavale trees, Puerto Rican trees, Japan trees and when we got a cat we had a cat tree.
So yes, that's were I get the creative genes from. Thanks Mami for the gift and Happy Mother's Day!