Category Archives: Mother

Beautiful Simplicity 9825…

21 Thursday May 2026

Posted by in Crafts, Fashion, Mother, Poetry, Sewing

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© Joan Currie – My mother’s sewing room with her Elna sewing machine.


Simplicity 9825 by Joan Currie

I taught myself to sew
in my teenage years,
on my mother’s Elna machine
in a corner of our basement.

The sewing room was a hodgepodge
of fabric and notions
left there for the taking.

Abandoned pattern pieces
lay scattered across the big
Formica counter
beside boxes of straight pins,
thimbles, pinking shears,
measuring tapes.

Three deep drawers held
a jumble of thread spools,
button and snap cards, lace,
sequins in narrow tubes,
bits of tailor’s chalk.

The cupboards were crammed
with tweeds from the woolen mills,
velvets, tulle, corduroy,
and raw silk from her travels.

On Saturday afternoons
I slipped downstairs
with a Simplicity pattern
and my transistor radio,

and entered
that pulsing, glorious world
where a flat piece of cloth
became my prom dress.

Beautiful Mother’s Day Tulips…

08 Friday May 2026

Posted by in beautiful, Flowers, Love, Mother, Mother-Child, Poetry, Reflections, Relationships

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© Joan Currie – Watercolor of pale pink tulips in my mother’s Delft vase.


Mother’s Tulips by Joan Currie

My mother loved flowers–
tulips most of all.

I never asked why.
It was in her Dutch blood,
her Calvinistic sense of simplicity–
upright, unadorned.

On Mother’s Day
there were always tulips:
pale pink,
set in her Delft vase,
its blue-and-white surfaces
catching the light,
holding it quietly
beneath the stems.

I tried, sometimes,
to improve upon them–
those lavish arrangements–
variegated tulips,
blue hydrangea, white roses,
small bright globes of yellow–
but she would only smile,
as if to say:
not this.

She wanted the tulips alone.

Now, after many years
and other flowers–
peonies, lilies, anemones,
even the careful making
of paper petals–

I pass a market stall
and stop.

I bring home tulips,
pale pink,
and set them in her vase.

In the quiet of the room
they open,
and she is there.


For my mother.

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers!

Beautiful Valentine…

12 Thursday Feb 2026

Posted by in Art, beautiful, Daily Life, Family, Love, Mother, Mother-Child, Poetry, Reflections, Relationships, Valentine's Day

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Mary Cassatt, The Child’s Bath, c. 1880. Los Angeles County Museum of Art

My Valentine by Joan Currie

Years now
from sleepless nights–

hands testing the warmth
of foreheads
and bath water,

kisses pressed
to crowns
after unsteady tumbles,

singing rhymes,
reciting ABCs,
pushing the swing
higher–higher–

and somehow,
by grace or miracle
they arrived at adulthood.

Even now,
my youngest daughter hands me a brush,
turns her back,

asks for a French braid,
a twist in her long chestnut hair–

as if I am still
the only one
who can do it just right.

Sometimes she asks me
to redo it.

Not because it is wrong.

But because she likes
the slow drawing of bristles,
the deep, patient strokes through
her thick hair,
the quiet nearness–

to have her hair brushed
by her mother
one more time.

Happy Valentines Day!

Beautiful Surprises From the Other Side…

08 Sunday Jan 2023

Posted by in Coronavirus pandemic, Grief, Lovve, Mother, Photography, Reflections, Relationships

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© Joan Currie

Come to me in my dreams
so I can see you smile,
take me back to yesterday
even if only for a while…

I missed my mother desperately in the weeks before the holidays. She passed during Covid when I wasn’t allowed to visit her in the hospital. “Passed” isn’t the right word – more like “vanished, ” “disappeared” – “pouf” and she’s gone. Really gone.

My Mom had been the touchstone for my entire life. After she died, a deep grief, way beyond tears, burrowed into my marrow and appeared to be settling in for the duration. When suddenly, several days before Christmas, I started to find in the most unexpected places: photos of us together, her beautiful calligraphy-scripted book inscriptions, loving letters, birthday cards, and postcards from her world travels. These sweet and precious little Easter eggs were hidden away to be found when I needed her the most – when I needed the reassurance that she was not gone, departed, but very much with me still. Thank you, Mom!