Sappy Saturday Stories - Licking the Cow to get the Calf

As a teenager I didn't think my mother was particularly pretty.  In fact I thought she was rather plain.  My mother was not vain like me.  I start each morning washing and moisturizing my face followed by makeup hoping to achieve the "healthy glow" advertised.  My mother had no self-esteem problems.  What you saw is what you got and as I look back she looked pretty darn good just the way she was, short bobbed grey hair, freshly washed face, a wonderful personality and loved by all.  Mostly by my father, her husband until her death January 10, 1980.

My mother and father met one fall evening while on a hayride.  Mom and Dad both told me one look at each other surrounded by noisy friends riding along on a horse pulled trailer covered in scratchy hay.  Mom said she leaned over to her girlfriend and pointed him out to her saying she just knew he was the one for her. 

Dad thought Mom was the most beautiful girl in the world and from looking at her high school pictures I have to agree.  (I may be a wee bit prejudice.)  She was quite a looker.  When Dad was in the army during the Korean War he entered a picture of her in a beauty contest.  She did not win.  She didn't even get an honorable mention.  My father was furious that the judges could be so blind to her beauty and swore the judges must have been bribed or coerced in some manner.  My mother laughed when she told me the story and had a starry look in her eyes as she thought back upon his reaction.  I loved that look.  It told volumes about their love for one another.

Dad would have done anything to win the hand of his beloved and that is saying something because Mom always said he was very romantic.  (But she was.  She kept all his love letters to her while he was in the army tied up with string in an old cedar chest.  I wonder what ever happened to those letters after she died.)  One evening before taking my mother out on a date, gave my grandmother a small wrapped package.  On opening the package my grandmother found a little wooden plague with a hand carved wooden bird attached to it.  Grandma Nina laughingly said "licking the cow to get the calf".  That plague was always displayed proudly in my grandmothers home.  After he death it found a new home in my parent's house and after my mother's death it once again found a new home in my little Magic Cottage.  I realize that little plague probably has no value in the real world but if I were to take an inventory of every object in my home, Licking The Cow To Get The Calf, as it is now fondly called, would be right there on top of the list of valuables.