this is a towel that hangs off of the oven door in my kitchen. it’s not a particularly useful towel -it’s not super absorbent and basically the opposite of soft. but i don’t care that it isn’t the most helpful tool for getting wet things dry, for me, this towel serves a higher purpose.

this towel was a “just because” gift my momma left for me on one of her drop-in visits to the condo. i came home and found it hanging there in my kitchen and was immediately overcome with emotion. no, not because i was in desperate need of a new dish towel, but because of how the towel read. the words that were transcribed across its cotton fibers.

you see, i started saying “i love you to the moon and back” to my mom one day as we were signing off gchat. i don’t remember what exactly possessed me to relay this phrase or even where i came up with it in the first place. i’ve heard others use it before, so i’m not claiming to have invented it myself, but for whatever reason, i wanted to quantify just how large my love for my mother spanned and seeing as the moon is pretty far away, it seemed like an adequate metaphor to display my affections. my momma typed the phrase back to me. and since that moment, we’ve used it nearly every time we sign off -whether it be on the phone, on the computer, or her now favorite -with the little heart and moon emoji via text.

my mom and i have a ton of inside jokes, things i could try to explain but there isn’t enough time in the world for that and chances are upon completion, you’d still be left scratching your head. we’ll be the first to tell you that we’re weird. we get it and frankly, we’re totally okay with it. she has nicknames for me that i’m still trying to figure out how they came into existence.

but this phrase, this simple little phrase we ping pong back and forth before we say goodbye or goodnight almost daily just might be my favorite little “just between you and me” things we’ve ever come up with.

because it’s so ridiculously true. i really do love her to the moon and back. and to the moon and back again. and when i’m having a bad day and just need a little reminding of the abundance of love in my life, i have this towel to come home to.

sometimes a towel isn’t just a thing to make wet stuff dry. it’s a reminder of how great your mother’s love spans and how you are the luckiest gal in the world to be on the receiving end of it.