Love Your Mother

Celebrate your mother today by making her feel special and loved by taking her out to lunch or a mani/pedi. For your friends who may have lost their mother, check in with them as this day may be difficult. Mother’s Day is all about love, so spread irt around far and wide.

Give Someone’s Grandfather or Great Aunt What They Always Wanted

I was talking to a Swedish gentleman the other day and he mentioned, "America has forgotten about the old people. There is so much to be learned from our elders. That is a big mistake." He is right!

 

So, start learning and spend time with these wise ones. Also, what can you offer them in return?

Grant a Wish to a Senior Citizen. Volunteers for the Twilight Wish Foundation grant wishes by donating items (like a home computer requested by a grandmother who wanted to e-mail her grandkids) or by contributing their time. Learn all about it at www.twilightwish.org  Some wishes—like one from a retired postman who wanted to go over his old route one last time—require planning instead of money, and volunteers tend to choose items or actions that most speak to them.

Operation Gratitude: Those Who Serve

Giving and gratitude go hand in hand; what can offer that will make someone's day?

I learned about his from my mom whose church regularly sends cards letters and care packages overseas to the armed forces. My mom and her fellow church ladies bake some of the best cookies in the world so they gather up all kinds of goodies and treats and send them overseas where the taste of “down home” surely brings many smiles of satisfaction. Those who are less gifted in the baking department, such as ME, can make $15 donation to Operation Gratitude, which pays for one care package for one serviceperson. Operation Gratitude has end over a million of these kindness kits around the world!

A Lesson I Learned From My Mom for Mother's Day

 I witnessed my mother tithe at church when I was a child and noted she did so with pride. I was also not unaware that she “did without” and did not get herself new purses or clothes or anything so she could take care of my sisters and me and be able to give her little bit of extra pocket money to the church. I learned about self-sacrifice and also about living from your values in this way. Experiment with tithing. There is a universal law of tenfold return. This means that when you give freely, your return is tenfold. You don’t give to get the return; you give freely, and what you give flows back to you tenfold. Particularly in terms of money, many of us think the law of attraction doesn’t apply. It does. Money is simply energy, and when you allow the energy of abundance to flow through you, then money and other resources continue to flow to you. When you stop the flow of abundance out of fear, anxiety, and worry, the flow of money stops. During the next six months, experiment. Whenever you get money, before you pay any bill, take 10 percent and give it to something you believe in. What is most important is that you give with an open heart.

Just like my mother's open heart. 

Pass on the Wisdom of Grandmothers to Children Today

Rich, my beloved, was raised by his grandmother, whom he titled GM. She had been the wife of the head of the village and clan in Southern China until the Japanese Occupation when war devastated the community at a great cost of many lives.  She felt very “fook sing” (lucky) to have made it to America with her only son and they rebuilt their lives from scratch. She ran a Chinese laundry, which I have no doubt was the finest in all of Flushing, Queens, and while working and taking care of her grandchildren, she told stories of the homeland, including the hardest times of having to eat insects and anything they could during drought and war, famine and pestilence. She relayed all this with no bitterness, only a sense of great good fortune in getting to live in the land of plenty in America. Day by day, story-by-story, she instilled values of excellence- gratitude, hard work, keeping a positive attitude no matter what. GM’s actions also demonstrated this to her young charges. As a very petite older Chinese woman who spoke NO English, she faced prejudice but never let it faze her or embitter her.

 When Rich and his younger brother Jimmy went to public school in Queens, they made lots of friends in that melting pot metropolis including a young African American adolescent boy who was really tall for his age and came from a family that had a hard time putting enough food on the table.  One day, he came home after school with the grandsons. It took GM about two seconds to assess the situation and she told them to bring him by everyday and he could eat with the family and she made extra for their new fast-growing buddy. Having faced severe hunger during the war, GM was not going to let anybody in her circle go hungry. Every day in ways large and small, she showed her family how to do the right thing- stand on the bus so others can sit, be polite even if others are rude and, above all, “take care of your clan.”