You Say "Majah" and I say "Minah"

A few weeks ago was my dear Mom’s 80th birthday, and true to form, she gave us some specific (and often impossible) birthday gift suggestions i.e. a stainless-steel pot big enough to boil 7 to 9 sweet potatoes and with a long handle (not side handles) and some Vinca Minor ground cover for her yard. Now every retail person told sister Jennifer and I that they simply did not make such pots with long handles, but they had said pots with side handles. They looked puzzled at our refusal. No, must have long handle! And is it large enough for up to nine sweet potatoes? That was a no go. Oh well, we’ve been defeated before. On to the Vinca Minor!

Now even Mom warned us that a nursery had informed her of a bad Vinca Minor crop this year. I can’t believe that wasn’t on headline news. Mind you, we had already fulfilled much of the rest of the list and then some but we had to have those Vinca Minor. We went to several nurseries and finally found two flats labeled Vinca. Oh frabjous day. Calooh, calay, we chortled in our joy! As we loaded the flats onto our cart, Jennifer asks, “How many does she want? Do we have enough?”

“What does it matter? We have all of them they have to offer,” I answer. Good point, (and an obvious one) I think.

Well, we’re taking her to dinner later, but we decide to give her this part of her gift early, so we drive over to her house, proudly place the plants in her garage and knock on the door. “Mom, we wanted to give one of your gifts to you now. Come and see!”

Mom dutifully walks over and looks at the plants and in her Southern lady accent simply says, “Oh no, guhls that’s not Vinca Minah; that’s Vinca Majah.”

“Damn it!”
“Sh--t!”

(We both said those words simultaneously.)

We load up the incorrect gift and head back to the nursery to return the plants. There we ask one of the employees if they happen to have any Vinca Minor that we overlooked. “I don’t know,” he replies. “Do you want me to find out?”

“No, we were just making conversation, as we are wont to do when covered in DIRT AND SWEAT!”

“Man no wonder Pike’s went bankrupt,” Jennifer muses.

Long story longer, we found the Vinca Minor at Home Depot. You would have thought we’d stumbled onto the Holy Grail. We were more excited than Mom, when she declared them appropriate Vinca Minahs. All’s right with the world! Until Mother’s Day.