Moms Tip Money

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
~Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French

It was a sweltering day in Michigan and I was trying to escape the heat and yet continue to be productive. Our boys were both in high school and our daughter was in college. They all had jobs and were working, so there were many loads of clothes to wash and some ironing to do.

It was wonderful to have a basement to work in. There were two rooms in addition to a recreation room and office. In the laundry room was a washer/dryer, washtub, a place for folding and ironing clothes, walls lined with jars of homemade jams, fruits, vegetables, as well as other storage. The sun came in through a couple of small windows, but the concrete floors and older foundation allowed for a cool, comfortable place to work.

As the day progressed, however, I was ironing clothes and began to feel a bit overheated. I grabbed a nearby cloth to remove the perspiration from my brow and face. When our older son came in from work, he saw me ironing and seemed concerned.

"Mom, your face is red and you look hot," he said.

"It happens. I'm ironing, after all." I smiled.

"Don't you want a fan or something, Mom?" he asked.

"No, it has been fairly cool. I'll be done soon," I said, taking a drink of water from a nearby glass, removing some ice and cooling off my skin a bit.

He looked around at the clean, crisp clothes and, with a smile, left the room. An hour later when I had completed my task and was checking the freezer for something I could whip up for dinner, my son came back into the room.

"Mom, leave this right here on top of the dryer. I made this for you."

I saw an old shoe box which had paper glued to it and a picture of someone ironing. Inside the box were a dollar bill and a couple of quarters, and next to the picture, it read "Mom's Tip Money." I looked at the artwork and my son's face and realized how much he appreciated the little things I did―things that we often think go unnoticed or taken for granted. He had decided that my work was worthy of tip money and initiated a plan to make that happen. The box remained on the dryer until we moved a few years later.

During the days that followed, the kids gladly contributed dollars, quarters and spare change, and my hubby threw in some bills to round things off. It had always been a clear understanding that Mom had dibs on any money found in jeans, pants pockets or shirts, and anywhere else it tended to collect. But this box meant the world to me, not because of the change, but because it reminded me how much they all appreciated the small, everyday things I did.

Recently, when our son came to visit us in South Carolina, I did a few loads of laundry and washed his clothes. Our laundry room is very small now, and we no longer live in an area with large basements. After he left, I was striping the bedding and starting on some more laundry when my eyes caught sight of something on the dryer. It was a small piece of notepaper with a couple of dollars and some change on top. My eyes grew moist as I remembered a summer day over fifteen years before. His note was a reminder of that very special time. It read, simply, "Mom's Tip Money."