One gathers their treasures anywhere they can, nuggets of silver and gold to line the spirit and the heart. To bolster the ego as needed at time, too. Especially when one is feeling waterboarded by ‘stuff’ 🙁

Remarks to relish: spontaneous, unaffectedly spoken, and uncontrived. Do you have any that linger, locked into memory, to brighten your life? I have several to savor, when others have linked me directly to my mother’s best attributes.

1. “I can hear your mother saying that! You’re just like her: in the moment!” uttered by a joyful, spontaneous cousin at a recent meal we shared.

2. The neighbor, accompanied in her frailty by her son, who lived around the corner from my folks, who Mother visited faithfully for years, with a meal and conversation, while she was a longterm invalid, “You have your mother’s smile.” A very soothing remark at my mother’s funeral.

3. My sister-in-law’s spoken connection, surreptitious and only to her son, when I retrieved my tiny ‘health-and-beauty’ clinic, a small bag in my purse, “Just like your Grandmother Jackson” (my mom).

Because I look nothing like my mother (would love to have her ability to tan) on the exterior and have the impish, outgoing personality of my father (all good – I love my spunky self), it’s reassuring that my humanitarianism has roots akin to her selfless soul. It’s in the genes, visible to everyone who elects to notice. I cherish the ones who choose to remark, to share this validation with me.

These compliments give me the audacity of hope, with energy revitalized to cope with the everlasting, egregious vagaries of life. I hold them dear as gigantic erasers for nastiness that gets spilled. Spoilers who aspire to nail one’s spirit to a cross.

What about you, Constant Reader? What stokes your self-esteem? On whom can you count to restore your treasured self to full measure?

To be and do as one’s revered mother effortlessly, noticeably and to live gene’s truth: priceless.

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