When I was a little girl, my Dad would give me and my brothers some money to buy Christmas presents for my mom and him. It was never much but just enough to find something we could wrap and present to them.

I remember the year I picked out two coffee mugs for them. It was probably 1972, and my Mom had a Mug Tree on our gold counter top in the kitchen with the orange beads hanging as curtains above the sink! The mugs weren’t expensive; they weren’t the height of mug fashion either! But, they weren’t tacky, and they were purchased with thoughtfulness, and I used everything my Dad gave me to buy them for him and my mom.