Butter Her Up.

Mother's Day is coming soon, and if our Mothers were still alive, we would be looking for a way to butter them up.

For me, this would be an easy thing, because as early as I can remember, my Mother was a fan of what we used to call hand cream. It was everywhere in our house, and she was forever lathering herself in hand creams -- usually by Jergens, because she read somewhere that Elizabeth Taylor said that was how she kept her skin beautiful.

Because my mother was a fan of hand cream, so am I. Far sooner than my skin needed hydration, I was hydrating like crazy. These days, hand creams are called lotions, usually hand and body lotions. And we have them in more than 18 different scents in our store Lanikai Bath and Body -- located in Kailua, on Oahu, and in outer space at www.lanikaibathandbody.com.

My business partner, Brook, whose Mother is also gone, loves our body butters. I am pretty sure when our mothers were alive there was no such thing as body butter -- there was hand cream and there was Nivea... the gooey greasy version of hand cream that could be a butter.

When my mother grew older and bored of sitting around during the cold Connecticut winters, she would lather up and stick her hands out -- so her dog Rion (named Orion after the consellation) could lick it off. As it turns out, Rion loved hand cream too.

Our body butters are light and lovely, creamy and smelling terrific. If my Mother were alive today, I would send her body butters ... in Hawaiian scents that she loved so much when she came to visit me in Hawaii: plumeria, first and foremost, anything with coconut (we have mango coconut, coconut lime verbena and pineapple coconut) and tahitian gardenia. Gardenia was my Mother's favorite flower.

Brook's mother, who was lucky enough to live in Hawaii, also loved gardenia. She would take fresh flowers and tuck them into her bra ... wafting her way in and out of everybody's day -- beautiful Hawaii.

So this Mother's Day, if our mothers were alive, we would butter them up. If you are lucky enough to still have your mother, we suggest you do the same.