When my siblings and I were around ages 6-10, we gathered up all the coins we had saved up and went to the store to buy our mom a gift for mother's day. We had around $5 and found what we thought was a really cute ceramic cat painted with large pink flowers. Yes, it was one of those useless items that you put on a shelf and it looks nice and then you forget about it. But we thought it was nice and wanted to buy it for our mom.

We presented it to our mom who laughed at it and us and asked "why would you buy something like this?" She did not thank us or express any appreciation for our efforts. I remember feeling really hurt and sad. We really thought she would like it but she clearly was disappointed in us. I think my sister, who was the eldest, kept it instead. I still vividly remember this ceramic cat.

My stepmom raised me. She and Dad married when I was 3. Before she showed up, Daddy was doing the best he could as a single parent in the early 1960's, when hardly any fathers were single parents.

Apparently when my stepmom showed up, all my clothes and shoes were too small. So she made me clothes. I would go to bed and in the morning there would be a new dress in my closet. I thought it was magic! I saw that sometimes before I went to bed she would have fabric and tissue paper spread out all over the kitchen table. And in the morning that piece of fabric had magically become a new dress.

One night I snuck a piece of tissue paper with me when I went to bed to see if it became a dress in the morning. But the piece of tissue paper was still there and didn't transform into a new dress overnight. So the next night I snuck a scrap of fabric, and a piece of tissue paper, and stuck them together with a stolen pin and put it in a corner of my closet overnight.

In the morning, there it was -- another new dress! Magic!

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Another story -- she sewed lots of my clothes while I was growing up. When I got married, as a wedding gift she gave me (us) a quilt that she made out of scraps of all the fabric she had used to make me all those clothes while I was growing up. I had no idea she had saved all those scraps. We have been married 40 years now and still use that quilt.

Thank you OP for suggesting this topic.

Thank you also to all who posted. Just about every post seems heartfelt and real.

Happy Mother's day to all of you!