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Mother’s Day 2022: “The older you get, the more it matters.”
By
Published: May 01, 2022
Category:
Holiday
The older you get, the more it matters. What is “it?” Everything. Priorities are personal, but as I see people I know falling ill or leaving the planet, health seems inarguably #1. Is financial security #2? For some, no doubt; anxiety about money can’t be good for your health. But maybe security in general is #2 — a safe city, a relatively clean environment, distance from crazy people with guns. More and more, my ever-increasing priority is… people. Relationships. Closeness. Intimacy. Connectedness. And the ultimate affirmation: partnership.
But enough about us. Happiness, we know, is most satisfying when we actively care for others. In small, everyday ways. And more: people in need. On Mother’s Day, I think of mothers who struggle to provide for their children’s most basic needs. My domestic charity is No Kid Hungry. My foreign charity is World Central Kitchen, which does great work in Ukraine. Consider yourselves encouraged.
Gifts that are things are, for me, less about the objects than about the feeling that led me to choose them. Most of these are small and inexpensive. I think of them as condensed forms of love.
HEALTH: THE #1 PRIORITY
Vitamin C
Most of the Vitamin C in pills or capsules — that is, Vitamin C in the form you probably take — never reaches the bloodstream. Estimates of its absorption rate are less than 50%. Lypo-Spheric Vitamin C has a 90% absorption rate. And that’s just the start of the good things liposomes do.
Pulse Oximeter
It’s not over yet. Not nearly. Putting it bluntly, if your mother doesn’t have one and you don’t give her one.. how much do you really care? Reader review: “C— is coming home from the hospital. If he hadn’t checked himself every day with the oximeter…”
Forehead Thermometer
The forehead thermometer completes your survival kit.
SELF-CARE
Clarins Beauty Flash Balm
“It’s like eight hours of sleep in a tube.”
Hot Springs Clear Bath Salts
15 individual foil-sealed powders featuring 5 different clear Japanese hot spring spa experiences. Not perfumed. No bubbles. Simply: Japanese refreshment for the body and soul.
Egyptian Magic
If there’s a skin problem this stuff can’t deal with, I can’t name it. Burns, scrapes, skin irritations, diaper rash, sunburns, eczema, psoriasis — it’s the go-to cream.
The Head Butler Guide to Great Coffee
BOOKS
Tina Brown: The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil
This is a brilliant anthropological saga — the story of a tribe (the royal family) with a single goal (survival) and a willingness to eat any creature that threatens it (including its young). With hundreds of dishy stories you’ve seen nowhere else.
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
This 128 page book is 100 pen-and-ink drawings that occasionally look like blotches and a text of short conversations. “The boy is full of questions, the mole is greedy for cake, the fox is mainly silent and wary because he’s been hurt by life. The horse is the biggest thing they’ve ever encountered, and also the gentlest.” So the book is a talisman. A shield against a wedge of humanity that seems to know no other feelings but resentment, anger and hate. A reminder of who we are at our best. A message to share and pass on to our children.
Colette: Break of Day
In this love letter to her mother, Colette asks a remarkable question: Who obsesses a woman most — her mother or her man?
What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most
Elizabeth Benedict collected essays from women not inclined to platitudes. A strong, smart, complex anthology.
Thich Nhat Hanh: Teachings on Love
A celibate monk. What can he know of love? This: Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love…. In true love, there’s no more separation or discrimination. His happiness is your happiness. Your suffering is his suffering. You can no longer say, “That’s your problem.”
Devotions: Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver was the most popular — that is, bestselling — poet in America. If you read poetry, her style and message immediately identify the poet for you. Even if you’re only an occasional reader of poetry, you probably know that conversational voice, because it’s almost impossible to be unfamiliar with her most famous line: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”
Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts
It’s exhausting to be witty on cue. On the other hand, it sharpens the mind to read several hundred pages of great repartee — which Mark Twain defined as “something we think of twenty four hours too late.”
JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story
The New York Times: “a breezy, tantalizing view of the woman who, through wiles and a complete lack of scruples, briefly transcended the role of presidential mistress — and may have paid for it with her life.”
Georgia: A novel of Georgia O’Keeffe
O’Keeffe was the most famous female American artist of the last century — and the most written about. This is a fresh take: It starts with the importance of a good story and a killer bod. To a degree that may shock purists, this is a book about Branding and Marketing, the first two commandments of success in the art world and our world. And then it’s a book about a talent so fierce it crushed pretty much everything in its path — a rare story of artistic triumph. And about learning to love yourself first.
Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created “Sunday in the Park with George
In 2017, James Lapine is watching a revival of “Sunday in the Park” when “a voice in my head” asks some questions: Who wrote this? How did they write it? That led to interviews and conversations with 40 people, almost everyone involved in the production. The book is chronological, which is both its strength and its drama — if you didn’t know the happy ending, you’d say this is the story of a disaster-in-the-making.
Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives
The female contributors to this collection are passionately committed to the female country stars they profile — these 27 singers and songwriters are crucial to them, both culturally and personally.
PRACTICAL BUT STYLISH
Timex Easy Reader Watch
Esquire Magazine: “The simple retro face looks cooler than some watches that cost six times as much.” Spend what you save on something excessive.
MORE THAN PRACTICAL
Cell phone stand
This why-didn’t-they-invent-this years-ago cell phone stand is weighted so it doesn’t slide around. Every other part is adjustable: the height, the angle, the direction. There’s a slot in back so you can charge your phone. Compatible with all cell phones. Just $15.
Palomino Pencils
Blackwing pencils look gorgeous. But it’s what’s beneath the Blackwing’s sleek exterior that makes hearts beat fast in the creative community — a graphite core, fortified with a little wax. Seriously. Those Who Know swear by this pencil. It is, they say, “the best pencil ever made.”
INDULGENCES
Diptyque candles
Janis Joplin said, “What you settle for is who you are.” Her implicit point: Don’t settle. The Diptyque candle, though not cheap, lasts much longer than most other candles — between 50-60 hours. Once it fills a room with scent, you can blow it out and the room will continue to be gently perfumed for hours. And when it’s burned out, you’ve got a vase for short-stemmed flowers.
Lesser luxury: Thymes Frasier Fir Candle
The Thymes Frasier Fir candle in a dark green glass won’t quite convince you that there’s a fir tree in the corner, but it proposes the idea. The smell is of “crisp Siberian Fir needles, heartening cedar wood and relaxing sandalwood.” In simple English, this candle defines fresh.
Himalayan Glow Salt Lamp
This Himalayan salt lamp gives off a pretty pink glow. Woo-woo mothers will appreciate its alleged mood-boosting benefits. Bonus points for the dimmer, which is definitely mood lighting in the boudoir.
Manuka Honey
Manuka honey comes from New Zealand, where it’s made by bees that feed on the nectar of the manuka tree. Their honey is dark and thick. Its aroma has been described as “damp earth, heather, aromatic.” But the benefits!
Lao Gan Ma Chili Crisp Sauce
Sam Sifton, in the Times: “It’s magical: a boon to noodle soups and kitchen-sink stir-fries, to eggs and cucumbers, to plain steamed fish.”
Smart Snark: Anne Taintor coffee mugs & more
Samples: “Parenting… When Messing Up Your Own Life Just Isn’t Enough” and “She Was Comforted By The Knowledge That They Were Helpless Without Her”
Quattro Parole Italian Notecards and Envelopes
Louise Fili’s box of a dozen note cards and envelopes that are just as distinctive. “Quattro Parole Italiane” is the idea. Four Italian words: ciao (hello), auguri (greetings), grazie (thank you) and prego (with pleasure). Why are these cards so striking? It’s not the words, which are refreshingly ordinary, but the typography, which is dramatic and different and, at the same time, nostalgic and familiar, taking you back to visits to small towns in Italy.
Claridge’s: The Cookbook
Claridge’s opened in 1853. The snootiest hotel in London produced its first quietly gorgeous cookbook 164 years later. The long-secret recipe for chicken pot pie fills pages. The tea sandwiches — “To keep the sandwich neat and even, slice the loaf of bread into long rectangular slices, rather than vertically” — are not beyond you.
Nespresso Milk Frother
A friend served coffee topped with frothed milk thick as shaving cream. I am a coffee snob. I bought this immediately. It is the simplest device I’ve ever used. Use fresh cold whole milk, nothing else. Press one to froth for hot beverages. Press twice for cold drinks. Walk away. Pour half a cup of coffee. In a minute, the frother light will go out. Off you go.
PRACTICAL
Zojirushi Vacuum Drink Mug
What is astonishing about the Zojirushi is how long hot stays hot and how long cold stays cold. Fill it with 16 ounces of steaming coffee in the morning, and six hours later, you can still burn your lips. Put ice cubes in a cold drink, and, six hours later, there’s still ice. Stylish? It’s sleek. At 9.5 inches, it’s just the right size for a tote.
MUSIC
Big Mama Thornton She lived in Houston, performing in clubs, learning to play drums and harmonica, drinking gin and milk, and being open about her sexuality decades before it was cool to be a lesbian. “My singing comes from my experience…my own experience,” she said. “I never had no one teach me nothin’. I never went to school for music or nothin’. I taught myself to sing and to blow harmonica and even to play drums by watchin’ other people! I can’t read music, but I know what I’m singing!”
Ann Peebles
Imagine if Al Green were female, and you have Ann Peebles. Just about every song on “I Can’t Stand the Rain” is a classic — for other singers. Her career was so unheralded that she barely has a cult. Discover her now.
