GIFTS ONLY A MOTHER CAN LOVE.

Byline: Scott Maben The Register-Guard

Dianne Gilliand still has the delicate ceramic hand her son made for Mother's Day one year, and the heartfelt poem that came with it:

Here is my hand, so tiny I think,

To sit somewhere beside the sink;

To watch the years go flying by,

How they grow, my hand and I.

The gesture of love, molded two decades ago, supplies Mom with enduring memories. And Gilliand - a Eugene teacher - is keeping the tradition alive.

Last week, she helped her first- and second-graders at Westmoreland Elementary School complete art projects that are today's Mother's Day gifts - and will be tomorrow's treasures.

The students each made a "Hats off to Mom" booklet, a tribute to their mothers for all the wonderful things they do. On each page inside, they completed a sentence about what Mom does, then drew a picture to go along with it.

"My mom wears many hats in our family," it began. "My mom is a teacher. She taught me to ..."

"Go to the bathroom," one little boy wrote, then illustrated what he meant, just to be clear.

Others came up with "tie my shoes," "cut paper" and "cook eggs."

Indeed, Mom also is a cook: "I love it when she makes ..."

"Apple pie," "mac and cheese" and "big fat meatballs," students wrote.

And she's a magician. "She can always find lost things. Once she found ...'

"My pet snake," one said. "My homework," another offered .

The kids finished the booklets by drawing a portrait of their moms. Gilliand advised them to draw the eyes first, then the head, to make sure they leave enough room for the facial features.

And she coached them to put real effort into the drawings: "You want to make her cry on Mother's Day!"

The students had completed painted, glazed tiles that could hang on the wall or be used as hot plates. The pictures on them ranged from a camel to a van.

Kathleen Gray, a special education teacher at Eugene's Edgewood/Evergreen Elementary, has kept many of the handmade gifts that her three kids made in school over the years, including the decorated trinket box daughter Erin, now 15, made from a dried gourd when she was in Gilliand's class.

On a shelf in Gray's living room sits a little clay figure made by her son, Colin, now 20, when he was in grade school. And she still has the planter that Ian, 22, made her in Cub Scouts one year.

"We seem to have boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff they made," Gray said.

Whatever kids bring home, they're instant hits with Mom, sentimental souvenirs of childhood.

"It's fun to kind of look back, remember when they were so little, the cute things they did," Gray said. "I'm not really a pack rat, but I feel some things are important to keep."

Lisa Keener is just starting to accumulate keepsakes from her children - a daughter in kindergarten and a son in fourth grade. A teacher at Briggs Middle School in Springfield, Keener stows the paintings, cards and other projects in a "keeper box."

At Briggs, she led her sixth-graders in making an elaborate Mother's Day gift, combining biographical poems with watercolor paintings of flowers and framed photographs of the students.

"They ended up quite beautiful," she said. "And they're very personal. I know if my child brought that home, it would be a keeper."

A sampling of projects that children have made over the years at Eugene's Sheldon Community Center include picture frames decorated with rhinestones, jars of bath salts, candles and the ever-popular handprints in plaster of Paris.

The preschoolers there brought in family photos and, with the help of adults, wrote matching stories to present to Mom today.

"This gave the kids a chance to talk about their families," preschool teacher Kendra Brummett said. "Some wrote about the corndogs Mom cooks for them or where their pets sleep."

Donnie Marquess, a business and art teacher at Lowell middle and high schools, matted and hung drawings that her two daughters, now grown, made when in elementary school. And she proudly displays the rocks glued to wood and painted to resemble owls.

"My daughter goes, 'You still have those!' '' Marquess said. "But they've lived art all their lives. They think it's kind of neat that Mom still has it."

CAPTION(S):

Dusty Elliott is a picture of concentration as he carefully cuts out his Mother's Day card at Westmoreland Elementary School in Eugene. Mom: Handmade gifts are snapshots of childhood Continued from Page D1 Please turn to MOM, Page D4 Westmoreland students praised their moms in words and artwork. Westmoreland and this is light text and this is more light text M o t h e r ' s D a y