Theme Thursday: Gifts

What price a gift?

The icing of a wedding cake by a dear friend and mentor.



A housewarming gift made by her own hands.

A 'bunny rug', also handmade, which still rests, neatly folded now, by the pillow of that not so little girl.

Yesterday we lost a dear friend. Far too soon as is always the way. We'd been praying for miracles but finally the only blessing was that the very end was brief and hopefully peaceful.

I once got to give her a gift.


We were living in the Australian Alps, the Snowy Mountains, back in 1992 when the BA's dad proposed. Away from family we began planning our wedding; themes, colours, flowers.....the whole catastrophe*. She had already adopted us, put up with our histrionics and gathered us into the bosom her her close knit family. With her myriad creative gifts she was called upon as a style consultant and of course, quickly offered her services when we needed a personal touch.

Her first contribution was handpainting the invitations. She followed this by handpainting the orders of service and creating the cake.

And she loved ducks.

She had ducks, real ones, and she had longed for a cast iron weathervane in the shape of a mother duck and her ducklings which she had seen in a magazine. It was made in England.
I made a call to Mum.

My lovely mother carried that cast iron weathervane in the bottom of her suitcase all the way from the UK so we could present it to our beloved friend at our wedding. There may have been issues with excess weight :-) but she carried it. On many occasions after that I would feel a twinge of delight as I saw the dark silouhettes of the mallard family shivering in the Alpine wind.

And now she's gone. I'll never hear her calm voice on the end of the phone again; her delighted laugh at my erratic intensity or her gentle wisdom. There'll be no more quilts now.

But what a gift she gave us while she was here.




To see what other Gifts there are to share: check out Theme Thursday at Cheese Party.