We asked you to share stories of your mothers' and grandmothers' cherished items. Your stories about an antique clock, eyelash curlers and even a beloved pet are as priceless as the photographs you sent. Happy Mother's Day to all. Enjoy these ditties about those little items that meant so much to the women you loved.

Time kept and well

"It's been in housekeeping for 60 years!" Forty years ago my grandmother said that to me as she presented her Seth Thomas mantel clock as a wedding present to me. She herself had once received the clock, then new, as a wedding gift. She was very proud of that clock, even though its glass face piece, covering the hands and painted hour indicators, had long since broken. I know it meant a lot to her to give it to me. In later years she would occasionally ask me if the clock was still working, and I could honestly assure her that it was.

The clock has been carefully tended to and moved with me on my various perambulations around the country. In essence, it is a very simple clock and doesn't require a lot of care. To move it, one simply has to remove the back panel, held by a simple swing lock; remove the weight off the pendulum; take care not to lose the weight and the key used to wind the clock; and take it to its new location. The clock, a very common one in early 20th century homes and not particularly valuable by antique store values, is supposed to be a seven-day clock. However, as the years have gone on, it needs more frequent windings -- every three to four days -- to keep accurate time. In that respect it probably mimics me. I, too, need a bit more "winding" to keep me going on my daily routine.

The clock means a lot to me, just as it did to my grandmother. It's a tie to the past, to someone who had hopes for me and my marriage, who cared for me. When I wake up sometimes late at night and wonder what the hour is, where I am in my life, I hear it answer and toll out the hour. It consoles me as it fixes me in time, place and family.

Linda De Grand of Raleigh

A hard-earned treasure

For my mother, a 1930 bride, luxury items were nonexistent. Her weekly "household budget" simply didn't allow for expenditures beyond absolute necessities. That made things like fine China, glassware and sterling silver all the more precious in her eyes. She longed for a matched set of each so she could arrange a beautiful table and invite her friends to dinner.

During the following decade, when our country was at war, my dad was having trouble finding young men to help run his gas station. So Mom pitched in and joined the work force. Several times a week, she pumped gas, washed windshields, cleaned the office and balanced the books. With her meager monthly paycheck -- and without my dad's knowledge -- she paid a regular visit to a local department store to buy -- one piece at a time -- a set of Spode china, cranberry glassware and Gorham sterling silver flatware. By the end of the war, Mom could proudly set a handsome table for 12.

My dad must have been incredulous when he beheld the table for the first time!

Carolyn Schwartz of Pittsboro

Here's looking at you

My mom's father owned a department store in a small Indiana city. She was the only daughter, and he really instilled in her the importance of looking good. Consequently, among some of her peers, she was labeled a "princess." I think she embraced that, really. She has always had beautiful clothing and is still very striking.

As a little kid, I remember being fascinated by a vaguely sinister, clinical-looking steel device, which I later learned was an eyelash curler. In the top left drawer of her vanity was kept this metal thing that she clamped onto her eyelids every day. It was very mysterious to me. One day I asked her why she did that to her eyes and she said, "It helps me see better what naughty little boys are up to -- even when I'm not in the room!" Wow. (It wasn't too much later that I learned the real purpose.) This did go some way toward explaining her uncanny ability to shout, "Steve, what are you doing?" from another room, just as I was about to hit my brother or open a forbidden drawer.

I'm guessing she started using an eyelash curler in college in the late 1950s. She still uses one. Fifty years of daily eyelash curling is a routine which certainly reflects mom's devotion to a formal beauty regimen and princess persona.

About eight years ago, I was in Portugal and I saw a huge poster advertisement for Secret deodorant at a bus stop. It depicted a guy looking absolutely befuddled, incredulously examining an eyelash curler left on the sink counter by his girlfriend. The caption in Portuguese read: Há segredos que só as mulheres conhecem.

Roughly translated: "There are secrets that only women know."

The "secret" of that device is part of a daily routine that I've known my mother to do all her adult life. But early on, I believed it gave her special powers to "see" when I was misbehaving.

Steve Gruber of Raleigh

She played for us

My mother, Beverly Jean Halter, was a brilliant pianist.

Every evening, after putting all six of us children to bed, she ended her day by serenading us with an hour or two of passionate playing, from Bach and Beethoven to Burt Bacharach or the Beatles.

Sometimes several of us serenaded her back with bedtime whining. But she played on. She was a loving and devoted mother, yet this was her time to relax with her music.

She didn't have a piano in the early years of her marriage. It was something she wanted for a long time, and finally, she and my father were able to afford a high quality, secondhand piano.

It wasn't until years later that I realized her skills were at a professional level. Yet she never played for others, just for us.

She died, too young, more than 20 years ago. Whenever I happen to hear one of the many melodies she played, I can still see and hear her, in my mind, in the living room, playing that piano with the intensity and emotion of a true artist.

Lorilyn Bailey of Raleigh

The light still shines

This lamp was my mother's favorite thing since she received it from her fiance in 1920 as a gift. It always had a place of honor in her home as long as she lived, and I can certainly understand why she loved it so. The glass is marbled amber with copper metalwork. It has a light in the base and holds two bulbs under the shade. Although Mother is no longer with us it remains a favorite thing in our family. We have guarded it with loving care since she passed away in 1987. The story goes that the fiance gave the lamp to Mother while they were engaged. They became engaged on the front steps of her home, which remains today. They were never married and Mother went on to marry my father. The fiance also went on to marry someone else.

Grace Pennington of Fuquay-Varina

Miss Katie's pie safe

In the early '70s I moved with my husband and children to rural Harnett County. I became friends with Miss Katie. Miss Katie was considerably older than I, but we shared a passion for flower gardens. In one corner in Miss Katie's kitchen sat a dilapidated pie safe. She told me that the cupboard was the handiwork of her grandfather, who had been born a slave. He was a cooper, a barrel maker, and he took his surname from his trade.

Some years later Miss Katie's home was remodeled, and she would not have the old pie safe in her new kitchen. It was headed for the dump. I offered to buy it, but she refused payment. I promised that she would be first to view it when I could afford to get it redone. The broken cabinet went to my storage shed. By the time I finally got Miss Katie's pie safe restored, age and dementia had claimed her memory. She no longer recalled the pie safe nor recognized me. I went home and cried.

Miss Katie was not my mother, grandmother or blood relative, but her pie safe is one of my most treasured possessions. With punched tin inserts, and with sides, doors and drawer made from bits of walnut, pine, oak and poplar, all burnished to a satiny patina by decades of wear, it sits proudly a century or more from its construction.

So that the history of Neil Cooper's pie safe is not lost, I have affixed an information card to the inside of the drawer. When I look at Miss Katie's gift, I can picture her smiling from her flowers.

Juanita Frady Walker of Raleigh

Inheritance

As long as I can remember, the brown ceramic teapot that has images of "Rebekah at the Well" had always been on my parents' mantel. My mother said it had belonged to her Grandmother Mary Campbell when they lived in Harnett County. The story was told that when Barney Campbell made a trip to Raleigh around 1895, he bought the teapot as a gift for his wife. It was not until I was grown that I could appreciate the story about the brown teapot. I'm sure she must have loved it and used it for tea or coffee.

The teapot was passed on to my mother after the death of her grandparents. I don't remember it ever being used, but it remained on her mantel as a reminder of her grandparents. It was not until I was grown that I could appreciate the stories of the families we never knew.

After my mother died in 1995 and her estate was settled, my brother and sister found a slip of paper inside the teapot. It was a note from our mother saying that her oldest daughter should have the teapot. The teapot continues to remind me of my wonderful heritage and has become "My Favorite Thing."

Melba Golightly of Raleigh

A living legacy

Among the things my mother left us -- works of art, lovely crystal and so many books -- is something that to her and to us is an heirloom.

Please meet Lori. When we come home from work she runs out onto the balcony and yells at the neighborhood in the most unladylike fashion, and we have to haul her in before the neighbors take offense. In the evening she snuggles up next to me on the couch and I relax. She has her own routine and woe to the individual who upsets it, and she is the fussiest eater ever. She has never been alone in her life, and during the week while we're at work, she reigns over her day care. We drop her off in the morning and pick her up on the way home. Her full name is Lori Athena and she is a Scottish terrier in every sense of the breed -- stubborn, tenacious, protective, loyal -- very much like Mom. When Mother died five years ago, Lori was as devastated as my sister and I were. But you see, Lori was our Mother's favorite "thing" and she left behind not only Lori to love, but a deep love of Scotties. She had four during her lifetime, the first one, Waggles, a gift from her father to keep her company during a lonely childhood. After our Dad died in Cape Town, we returned to the States and settled in Raleigh, and it seemed right and good that she should have another Scottie. Mother's favorite "thing" keeps us company now. And it's strong, and loving and good. Like Mom, actually.

Judy Blaeske of Raleigh

Preserving the memory

My mother always said that the canning funnel was her most prized possession.

It first belonged to my grandmother, who was born in 1882 and married my grandfather in 1900. My grandfather was a rural mailman and the family with seven children lived on a farm near Salisbury where they raised vegetables and fruit and kept chickens and cows. Like their other neighbors, almost everything they ate came from their farm. Canning the vegetables harvested each summer preserved most of the food they ate all winter. I recall peeping into the room in the pump house where the colorful canned fruits and vegetables were kept on shelves reaching up to the ceiling. Though we had the run of the barn and other farm buildings, we grandchildren were always cautioned not to play in that room.

My mother was an excellent cook, and she and my dad kept a generous garden where we lived next door to the home where she grew up. Mother always canned fruits and vegetables, too. She continued to use her mother's canning funnel (though she had a newer one), and I always remember it being kept down in the cabinet with the sieve and pressure cooker and other canning items. After Mother's death in 2001, I brought the canning funnel to my home, and though I don't do any canning myself, I love to see it in the drawer where I keep it among my own cooking utensils. Each time I see it, I think of my mother and grandmother and the way they lovingly cared for their families.

Glenna Sears of Raleigh.

Guarding the past

My mother was Annie Adams Akins and her favorite possession, without a doubt, was her mother's wedding quilt! She took especially good care of it, putting it out to sun and air each spring, careful not to let it fade with its topside down. Then after sunning it, she would place it in a cedar chest for the summer to protect it from moths and other pests. This went on year after year as I was growing up. She not only cherished it, she guarded it and made sure its story was told to family and friends alike.

The material for the quilt had been hand-dyed from walnuts and other natural products. It was then painstakingly pieced together by my grandmother, Annie Blalock Adams, for her marriage, April 1, 1878 to John Q. Adams. The story goes that she was very selective about which family members and friends she invited to help with the actual quilting.

There was a custom at the time for quilt makers to "plan a flaw" into a special quilt to show that only "God was perfect -- man was not." It was my grandmother's way of showing her spirituality. This was to be a "keepsake" quilt and would no doubt be passed to future generations with a message.

My grandmother had used the quilt only when there were important occasions in the family -- wedding, births, funerals and anniversaries. Other times she, too, had neatly packed it away, but always recounting the reason why one flower in the stripping was turned the opposite way with her initial embroidered beside it. This was her "planned flaw."

At my grandmother's death, my mother was the only girl living to receive the quilt -- her brothers were not interested in quilts. It was her responsibility to continue the story about the quilt and its odd-placed flower that told a message.

In 1970 when my family and I moved into a new home, my mother gave the quilt to me as a housewarming present. Because I had three brothers, I was to be the one to carry on the tradition of caring for the quilt and telling the story of the flower that was sewn in the wrong direction.

My grandmother died when I was 9 years old, and my mother died in 1985. Yet, I have pleasant memories of them both as I look at the beautiful old quilt! It is a stark reminder that I am the one to pass on the message planned into the quilt so long ago. "Only God is perfect - man is not!"

Willa Akins Adcock of Fuquay-Varina