When she was a younger woman, my mother (like her mother before her) worked crossword puzzles. In her last years, she gave up crosswords in favor of Wordsearch Puzzles. For her eightieth birthday I made her this:



That was the cover. I printed off about twenty different versions and had them put together with a spiral binding and a firm back. Mommy loved it.

She died December 31, 2014. I'd had plans for her eighty-first birthday but life interfered and my plans for delayed. This calendar was one of the gifts I had intended for her. I gave it to family members after she died.


A tiny version of the 2015 calendar displaying some of my mom's paintings.