“Is there anything else you need, honey？” my dad asked   me as he put three twenty­dollar bills in my hand. I was traveling   back home from a family visit, and after treating me to breakfast   and filling my car with gas, it was obvious that my dad wanted   to make sure that I would be okay on the road.

“No, Dad. You've done so much already. Thank you！” I was overwhelmed once again by his kind acts of providing   everything I needed, despite the fact I just turned 40. Yet I realize that in my father's eyes, I will always be his little girl. He takes deep pleasure in knowing his children are all right.   Now that he has enough money, he loves to give whenever he   sees a need.

But this was not always the case.   Divorced from my mother when I was 11, my dad couldn't be around his kids as   often as he would have liked. Money was also tight; even weekend visits were rare. However, my dad stayed in constant   communication with us and made sure he was involved in our lives. Though he couldn't always be there in person, I knew   he was only a phone call away. I could always count on that.

Even now, almost 30 years later, I treasure knowing that I can pick up the phone and call Dad, and he'll be there for me. I have a wonderful husband, but that hasn't changed how     Dad sees me. I'm still his child and he loves to see that my     needs are met.

I remember a time when I was shopping in a hardware store(五金店)with Dad. I mentioned my plans to paint one wall in my house. Well, that's all it took for Dad to take     action. By the time I got to the checkout(结账) line, all the supplies I picked out were put out of my hands and placed with things he bought.

My husband is more a kid at heart. He insists we find gifts for the grandkids while on a trip to Savannah.

I can be a kid at heart, too, but I also can be a mathematician — and even cheap, ugly gifts add up quickly when you have 11 grandkids.

Children like gifts and they want them. So we are digging through piles of cheap key fobs (钥匙链), plastic sun hats, chocolate treats that will melt in the heat, and funny T-shirts, finding nothing.

We go with two hats for the boys but are still empty-handed for the nine girls. Then I spot small bracelets (手链) in a rainbow of colors. He turns one over a couple of times and says, “Nice.”

The bracelets are made of small balls shaped like starfish and turtles. They all look like rock candy, which can be eaten and was popular when we were kids. We buy nine and make a mental note: tell the girls not to eat them.

As the clerk wraps the bracelets, I remember a gift I had as a girl. Once we could choose one thing in a shop to remember our trip. What I selected was a blue plastic soapbox with the lid (盖子) and topped with a pink flamingo (火烈鸟). It was cheap and tacky (俗气的) and I believed it was the loveliest thing a girl could own. It was too beautiful to put soap inside, so it sat in a dresser drawer year after year, slowly aging, yellowing, as a reminder of a family trip long ago.

The girls are married and have families of their own, and those gifts are still in the dresser drawers in their old bedrooms, but I have came to realize that every gift may have its worth and value, saying we are together even though we were apart. That’s always a good deal.

Ever since I can remember my mom has always been growing things or talking about growing things. Unfortunately, I don’t exactly share her green thumb skills. She tells me it’s because I don’t give the plants the love they deserve. I won’t lie, that stings a little bit!

After a crazy few years of working my way through college and then the pandemic(大流行病), I felt I had this disconnection with my mom and her gardening. As a kid, I spent a lot of time with her in her garden. And those were some of the happiest moments of our lives. For Mother’s Day this year, I decided to get back in the garden to spend some quality time with her. Though we weren’t able to plant everything we wanted to, due to the weather, we had a good time.

My mom always makes sure to fertilize(施肥于) her garden with natural fertilizers. She doesn’t like using chemicals. It’s not good for pollinators(传粉者) and the chemicals can run off into the nearby river. Each year she designs her garden differently so that each section of the garden can have a variety of vegetables and later on, nutrients are added to the soil. “Where did you learn all of this?” I asked her. Growing up I was always under the impression that my mom just knew everything. It was not a wrong assumption, but I was curious. “Wisconsin Public Radio!” she said. “Each Friday it has Garden Talk where Larry Meiller interview s gardening experts about planting in Wisconsin.”

Besides a garden, my mom also grew a prairie, filled with tons of native Wisconsin flowers.   A pollinator paradise (乐园). This year, she planted sunflowers, purple coneflowers, and a variety of other wildflowers to help out the pollinators in the yard and give her garden the best chance to thrive(繁荣). At the end of the day, I was glad to have gotten my hands dirty with my mom, I learned a lot, and I felt that I had gotten closer to her.