I was eight-years-old and living in College Greens, a subdivision of Sacramento.   Mother’s Day was rapidly looming.  Dad continually postponed our shopping excursion, so I had awakened early Saturday morning with a fistful of dollars I had saved from babysitting, (can you imagine hiring an 8 year old to babysit today?)  I took the city transit to K Street, Downtown Sacramento; with many transfers.  I spent hours perusing beautiful silk scarves, crystal vases, etc., Mom was not a practical woman.  I wanted to buy her something luxurious with my $18.00!  I stepped into a  Llardro boutique, clueless that I couldn’t afford an ashtray.  The proprietor was a stooped, elderly man with the countenance of a child.  I told him I had been saving my babysitting money for six months to buy my mother an extraordinary gift for Mother’s Day. I held out my crumpled $18.00 as if I were extending a Faberge Egg.  That kind soul reached up to the top shelf and handed me this beautiful Llardro figurine in such exquisite porcelain and in hues so perfectly harmonious with our living room, I was struck by an unexpected attack of delicious.  I peeked discreetly at the price tag: $300.00.  Big fat tears rolled down my cheeks, it was just so perfectly my mother and she was my polestar.  That kind man removed the price tag and said, “the first girl who walks into my boutique today in patent leather Mary Jane shoes  receives the sale price of $15.00. 
 
I held my treasure as if it were the Holy Grail, made the many bus transfers, returning to College Greens and into my house at 9:00 pm.  My mother was beside herself with worry and was scolding me incessantly.  I sat quietly on the sofa, sucking my thumb while twirling my hair through my pinky finger and said, “Mom, you are ruining one of the most magical days and they number so few.”   I think she was struck mute by her conundrum of a daughter.  A girl who ventures solo 25 miles from home by bus and then curls up to suck her thumb so she can hold that day in her mind’s eye.  The day she learned there are people who place a much higher value on a child’s unwavering love than the monetary gain of a piece of porcelain.  I never relinquished my secret, I held it to my heart to serve as a talisman.  Mom never knew how I came to purchase a Llardro figurine, I think she assumed Dad gave me the money.
 
I learned a valuable lesson that day:  Love is noisy, it spills itself out onto the streets and enters even the most callous of hearts…not one of us is impervious to its charms.  Nothing compares to pure, sweet, unadulterated love.  My mother is no longer Earthbound, but I am still smitten with her~