Whitman's Sampler

Mother's Day. Do we really know the history behind Mother's Day—before Hallmark got into the picture? According to a National Geographic article ," It was founded for mourning women to remember fallen soldiers and work for peace."

It wasn't always roses and pretty cards? It's now about 133 million cards annually.

My father always bought my mother a box of Whitman's Chocolate Sampler—with a wide variety of possible choices—and a card. He purchased the box at our local pharmacy. This was an era before Whitmans sold light chocolates and Weight Watcher's Chocolates.

This was the same pharmacy we went to when something happened to the television.

My father put all the television tubes in a brown bag and we tested each tube on machine that was in the front of the store. When we found the bad tube we purchased a good tube and that usually fixed the problem. Occasionally the pins needed a cleaning.

If you got something in your eye—which always happened to me—the pharmacist took it out with a cue tip.

I once convinced my father to buy a small box of Godiva chocolates. My mother, reared on Whitmans, missed the Sampler Box.

You shouldn't tamper with what works. Mom, you're not here now, but I did love sharing that box with you. I recall how we figured out which chocolates contained the cherries, the coconut, the solid chocolate , the carmel. It didn't take us very long to go through a box.

But we only did that once a year. Happy Mother's Day.