My wonderful mother

My mother is wonderful. She is selfless, thoughtful, kind and generous. And I don't just mean with family, but with friends and even strangers, as well.

What is she not? She is perhaps not the world's best housekeeper. (This is not a big secret.)

I usually make sure I have everything I need when I go to visit my parents, but on this last visit, I'd run out of soap. So after scouring all the usual places (my drawers and closet - soap keeps clothes smelling fresh, medicine cabinet, various bathroom drawers and chests) and coming up empty-handed, I asked my mom where I could find some. She told me to look in her bathroom, which I already had, to no avail. I continued my avid search, until she brought me a half-used small bit of a hotel-sized soap. It was so small, I'd overlooked it.*


"How can you not have any soap?!?" I asked her.

"Well...," she replied, "I haven't seen any when I've been to the supermarket!" (Now, this may not be North America, but believe me, we do have soap in our supermarkets.)

I looked at her in complete disbelief. She looked at me and laughed.

I ended up using the block of Savon de Marseille, a pretty keepsake wedding favour from my brother's wedding. (I'm not super sentimental, but it was one of the rare keepsakes I'd kept on a shelf in my room for the past 7 years. Still good, though.) 

* Lest I appear to be casting aspersions upon my parents' hygiene, please allow me to explain: Upon further investigation, I discovered that my parents themselves prefer to utilize tiny hotel bottles of liquid body soap (they've been to a lot of hotels), which they seem to be stockpiling. I'm more a bar soap kind of girl, myself.