DIY Idea
A Handmade Gift for Your Mum or Mom — Ten Things She Said That Stuck
Ten handmade cards for your mum or mom, each holding one thing she said or did that stuck with you. For Mother's Day, her birthday or no reason, and the same for a stepmum, a grandmother or whoever mothered you. A weekend to make: an hour remembering, an evening writing, twenty minutes to bind.
Materials
- Ten blank cards, 3 × 5 in or A7: postcards, index cards or watercolour paper cut to size, heavier than printer paper
- One extra card for the front, with her name and a plain title
- A fine felt-tip or gel pen that won't bleed through to the back
- A sheet of scrap paper for the long list and the drafts
- One way to keep them together: a single-hole punch and a 1 in binder ring, a length of ribbon, or a small box (pick one)
- Optional: one printed photo of the two of you, from the years one of the cards is about
The words were hers first. You are only giving them back.
Instructions
- 01
Make the long list. An hour in one sitting, or ten minutes a day for a week. Write down everything of hers you still hear: the rules, the sayings, the one-off lines, what she said in a hard week. Add things she did, too; not every card needs a quote. Three questions help: What do I say to other people that is really hers? What did she say when I got something wrong? What do I do in a kitchen, a car or a crisis because she did? Aim for twenty. You will keep ten.
- 02
Pick ten and check the words. Twenty minutes. Choose for range: a few funny, a few steady, one from a hard time, one from your adult life. If you can't remember the exact words, don't put quotation marks around a guess. Write Something like: before it, or describe what she did instead. She may correct you, and that conversation is part of the gift.
- 03
Write the cards. An evening. Draft each one on scrap first, then copy it clean. On the front, her words and when she said them. On the back, one line on what it changed for you, and no more than one. Plain handwriting is better than decoration. Number each card in a back corner.
- 04
Put them in order and make the front card. Ten minutes. Start light, put the one that matters most second to last, and finish on something that makes her smile. Write the front card from the script below. If you have the photo, it goes at the back.
- 05
Bind them. Twenty minutes. Punch one hole in the top-left corner of every card, the photo too, and close them on the ring. Or stack them and tie the ribbon round once, or lay them in the box. Whichever you pick, she should be able to leave it on a shelf with the cards still in your order.
What to write inside
The front card: For [Mum / Mom / what you call her]. Things you said that stuck. Ten of them, written down, so you know which ones. — [your name]
Four examples, front and back:
Front: "You don't have to like everyone. You do have to be kind to them." — Most school mornings, when I was about nine.
Back: I said this to someone at work last month. Word for word.
Front: "Ring me when you get there." — Every time I left, from seventeen until now.
Back: I make my friends text me when they get home. I didn't know that was you until I wrote this.
Front: Something like: "Nobody's watching you as closely as you think." — The night before my first day at the new school.
Back: I still think it before I walk into a room full of strangers.
Front: You sat in the car outside my first interview and didn't ask how it went until I was ready to say.
Back: That's how I wait for people now.
Sign the front card however you sign to her. On the back of the last card, write the date and what it was for.
Pro Tips
- Give it when she has time to read it. Not in the middle of the present-opening with everyone watching. Before the meal, the morning after, or on a quiet visit. Some mothers read all ten at once; some read one and put the rest away for later. Both are fine.
- For a mum who isn't sentimental. Pick her rules and her funny lines, and keep the backs short and dry: Still do this. You were right. Took me fifteen years. Give it a plain title, like Your Rules, Written Down, and hold the cards with a bulldog clip instead of a ribbon.
- If you live far apart. Mother's Day falls in March in the UK and Ireland and in May in the US, Canada and Australia, so go by the date she keeps. Post the cards in a stiff envelope a week ahead within the same country, or two to three weeks ahead across borders. Then call on the day and ask her which card she read first.
- If things with your mother are complicated. You don't owe her ten cards, or a closeness you don't feel. One true card is enough, and so is none. Some people write theirs for the person who mothered them instead.