It was my wedding day, quite early in the morning.

I remember being in the little step-down bedroom where I’d spent my last few years as a teenager at home. The excitement I felt warred with the uncertainty and angst at what this day would bring. I was leaving my precious family to marry a young man I’d known scarcely more than a month.

We’d only had a scant six weeks to prepare, my Mama and I. While she never scolded me for the rush I was putting her in, I look back at that time with more understanding than I had then. I now realize that with the extremely limited resources available and little time to pull off a wedding, in the middle of winter no less, she was a miracle worker.

She sewed my satin wedding dress from the fabric we found on sale from the shop in the town down the road. The veil was simply some netting, hand sewn to a satin covered piece of cardboard. She helped me pick and choose what would be my wedding trousseau, such as it was, from the few things I’d made or bought in the year previous. It was sparse to say the least.

That morning, she came quietly into my little room. Holding a small object in her hand, she murmured a soft apology.

“Lynettie . . .  Dear, I totally forgot to get you a wedding gift for this special day. Anyway, I searched through my room and found this little pair of tweezers. It’s not much, but maybe they will be something you can use in the days and weeks ahead. I wish it was more, but this is all I have.”

There in her hand was a simple pair of eyebrow tweezers, ones such as I’d seen lying on her dresser for many years. They were brand new, still in the package, and were a gift I would come to cherish more than Mama could ever know.

The years passed, and each day as I would prepare for work, I’d grab those tweezers and pluck a eyebrow hair here or there. When my son was little, I pulled more than a few splinters from his fingers and hands with that pair of tweezers. My daughter laughingly borrowed them once, and I scolded her soundly for not returning them right away. She looked at me with her big round eyes, “But, Mama, they are just a pair of tweezers,” I remember hearing her say.

Ahhhhh but they were so much more. They were my wedding gift from my mother. They were a piece of her, given to me on a very special day. They were mine.

Once, my husband came rushing in, needing a pair of tweezers quick to do something on a vehicle he was working on. I caught him just as he grabbed my special tweezers. Holding out my hand I asked for them back. I explained that there were others lying about that he could use, but these were my special pair that no one could ever replace. He looked at me like I’d lost my marbles.

“It’s just a pair of tweezers,” said he.

Perhaps no one will ever truly understand the sacrifice and love that these simple little tweezers represent to me. Nor could they know the things that were going on in our family’s life just prior to my wedding day that made the gift even more precious. The fact that my little brother had been terribly hurt and Mama had been at the hospital hours on end with him, the hurry to pull together a wedding that no one was quite ready for, and the fact that even if there had been time to buy something extravagant, there was precious little money to do so. All of these things, and more, are what lend the value to my little gift.

And so, as the years have passed, more than forty-two of them now, this funny little pair of tweezers still serve me well. There has rarely been a day go by that I’ve not used them in some form or another, and always they remind me of her love for me. They are of untold value to me and I will treasure them until my time on earth is done. You see, they are a tiny little part of my Mama that no one can ever replace.

They were all she had to give.