The Christmas Stool, Revisited

For several years I have used a bar stool as my Christmas "tree". This year Dallin and I decided to use the stool again. It is always a special time for me to bring out the Christmas ornaments and decorate, mostly because the great majority of my ornaments are handmade by my mom. She started a tradition of making each child an ornament every Christmas. By the time I moved out, I had a box full of beautiful creations, one for every year of my life. I love her for this gift of time and talent.I am my mother's daughter and have been realizing more and more that so many of the things that I love I gleaned from her. Why should I now take an interest in sewing, except that I saw my mom sewing often as a young girl? Why I should enjoy scrapbooking, except that she became an expert at it and spent many hours putting random pictures into a coherent history of our family? Why should I care about family history work except that I accompanied my mom often to the Salt Lake City Family History Library on Friday nights for evenings of microfilm searching together. Why should I have a desire to preserve family memories in written form, except that my mom first started the pattern of oral history recording with my great-grandmother when I was just a baby? And why should I now find delight in creative endeavors of a dozen varieties except that she did, and does now, love using her hands to create?
Our Christmas stool is full of her homemade ornaments, I have her homemade dolls and bunnies, I have her paintings, I have the book of remembrance she organized that gives voice to ancestors long since past, and I have her creative spirit that needs avenues for expression.
Recently, I discovered that my mom was much-in-demand as a tole painting instructor in Houston when I was in elementary school. Despite her notoriety and acclaim, she ultimately decided to put what could have been a career as a gifted artist aside, in order to be a fully-invested mother. Perhaps there were students who could have gained much from her tole painting teaching in a studio setting. But, how grateful I am that her teaching instead focused on home and family where her young children-pupils were quietly absorbing by example. And there was so much to absorb! My mom has an insatiable appetite for learning and then doing all things that are "virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy." How grateful I am for her.

In Jane verbiage, this is me, and I have big shoes to fill.