Remembering Mother's Day and a cobalt blue teapot

In the main living area of our home is a wall lined with bookcases. The shelves are crammed with those special things we couldn't bear to let go when we went through a major downsizing a couple of years ago.

If you are a stranger, looking at the bookcases might give you a few clues about more than a half-century of our lives. But you wouldn't know why most of the items on display are of special significance to us.

Take the teapot on the next-to-highest shelf in second bookcase from the left. Its color is deep blue, almost cobalt. There is some gold scrollwork around the edge of the teapot's lid and a bit more around the top of the teapot itself. The gold, of course, is not really gold. There are hallmarks on the bottom of the pot. Two of them say "HALL." I just Googled for more information and discovered this is a popular teapot style produced by Hall China. It is the "Los Angeles" cobalt blue teapot with gilt trim. One of the online prices was $85.

Just think: That teapot was my mother's. I know, because I gave it to her more than 60 years ago. For Mother's Day. But to me the teapot was never a Hall "Los Angeles" cobalt blue teapot. Who had the Internet 60 years ago? The teapot was simply something pretty for my mother. And every time I see that teapot, which is several times a day, I am reminded of my mother.

I'll bet you have special things in your house that trigger wonderful memories, and I'll bet a lot of those memories are of your mother. If we were to put a price tag on all the things that remind us of our mothers, they would all say the same thing: "Priceless."

In the early 1950s, a Hall "Los Angeles" cobalt blue six-cup teapot could be purchased, from the Ben Franklin dime store in my favorite hometown in the Ozarks over yonder, for under $3.

At that time, I didn't have $3. Counting the dime in my pocket that my mother gave me every week to put in the Sunday school collection, I had a net worth of 85 cents.

So here is how, loaded with just 85 cents -- 75 cents available for a Mother's Day present for my mother -- I managed to purchase a Hall "Los Angeles" cobalt blue six-cup teapot.

I owe it all to my Aunt Vi. She and her family were visiting on Mother's Day weekend at our farmhouse on Killough Valley. My maternal grandmother had died several years before, so my mother and her sisters turned to each other for Mother's Day observances.

On the Saturday before Mother's Day, my Aunt Vi and Uncle Othal took me and her eldest son, John Lee, to town. We wound up at the Ben Franklin. My aunt asked me if I had any ideas about a gift for my mother. To be honest, I hadn't given it much thought. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something beautiful. There it was, simmering in its brilliant blue and gold: the Hall "Los Angeles" cobalt blue six-cup teapot.

Aunt Vi saw the look on my face. "Do you have enough money to buy it?" she asked. No, I said. I showed her the two quarters, one dime, two nickels and five pennies. "What about that other dime?" she asked. No, I said, that had to go in the Sunday-school offering. God would surely dispatch me to my eternal punishment if I even considered spending the offering money, even if went toward a special gift for my mother. God may have a soft spot for mothers, but he's pretty much a stickler for offerings. At least that's what I had learned in Sunday school.

Aunt Vi quickly sized up the situation. She saw how much I wanted to buy the teapot for my mother. Fortunately, she also thought it was beautiful.

"Tell you what. I'll give you the rest of the money to buy the teapot. Someday you'll have enough money to pay me back." And so that's how I was able to give my mother a Hall "Los Angeles" cobalt blue six-cup teapot for mother day in 1953 or 1954.

I never repaid my Aunt Vi. Although we never told my mother about the financial aspects of the teapot purchase, I'm guessing she figured it out straightaway and probably chastised my aunt a bit. Too late. There's the teapot, still glowing the same way it did under those dime-store lights so many years ago.

My mother didn't drink tea. That wasn't the point, was it?

But out of that first teapot gift came a lifetime collection of dozens and dozens of teapots given to my mother by me, her sisters and her nieces and nephews. She didn't have a wall of bookshelves on which to display them, so they occupied every nook and cranny of the kitchen, dining from, living room and bedrooms. They were everywhere.

There are so many treasures in our lives that have value only to us, thanks to the memories they kindle and the flames of a mother's love they fuel.

In my case, it's a Hall "Los Angeles" cobalt … .

You know the rest.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.