What She Taught

Today is the 84th anniversary of our mother's birth. She always said she was named "Carol" because of the proximity of her birthday to Christmas. She did Christmas well, as I've described. But it was not only Christmas when she outdid herself.  I often recall how much work she did, and how she was always hustling and bustling about. But, I realized tonight, as I cleaned the sink and wiped down my counter tops, that she actually taught us how to live without her.

There were always chores to do. No one in our family would have ever sighed, "I'm bored..." to our mother. All that would get you is dustmop, or a can of bathroom cleaner, or a dishcloth, or a dustcloth. Time existed to attack dirt, dust, clutter and kitchen messes. Every single morning before school, it was someone's job to dust mop the living room linoleum. Another child's job was to dust all the surfaces in the living room. This, of course, was after you'd made your bed. Not making your bed would have been some type of felony.

It sounds harsh, huh? No, it was the only recourse to having ten people living in one house. If you didn't clean regularly, then it ...I don't know. We always cleaned regularly. It was a nice place to live, too. Oh, wait, I do know what happens. I know, because when I got married, I was smart! I wasn't going to spend all that time cleaning house. That was just for chumps. Except that really soon, even though there were only two of us, I realized that cleaning regularly was necessary or, very quickly, you were no longer living in a nice place.

Apparently I passed on this notion to my own children. I remember reading letters about the mission companions my son had who didn't know how to clean or cook. I remember one daughter telling me how annoying it was to have to go into her apartment kitchen and wipe off the counters and clean off the stove tops because no one taught her roommates that those jobs were all part of "doing the dishes."  Of course, I learned all this at my mother's side, and I'm pleased that they all learned it at their mother's side.

So, whenever I wipe off the counter tops and clean the stove top, as I conclude my dish washing (even if I am only loading the dishwasher) I remember being taught by my mother to do that or the job wasn't finished. Now, if only I'd internalized sweeping the kitchen floor in that same way...HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAMA!