The beauty of a mother.

The kind words that many of you offered up after reading Airing my {clean} Laundry inspired me to create a follow up. 


A lot of the time, thoughts begin as little seeds within my head.  I spend time nurturing them, getting them ready for the world outside.  They grow strong during the time of gentle love.  I water them and feed them riches.  Other times, the words tumble into my fingers and become something I never could have imagined.  I'll let you decide which this one is: 

The day that the Laundry blog was born, one of the places I was carried away to had black and white tiled kitchen floors, there was a  huge blackboards at the end of the stairs and the smell of dairy farm lingered--rich creamy heady fresh from the bulk tank.  Although I was quiet young when I played on the tree swing, jumped in piles of leaves, raced down the stairs, left my mark in chalk and gathered as family to give thanks in this particular house, I remember it.  Little snippets of love.  This was a house filled with generations of laundry airing women.  When I wrote that blog, I did not intend to pay homage to my mother, I was truly just reflecting on stories I had heard over the years from women who lived them.  Women who helped form who I am today.

The views of many help me see how this piece could be about my mother.  My mother was simple.  Nothing fancy.  She didn't wear make-up, have her nails done or wear the latest fashions.  She did not always say the right things and she did not always do the right things, either.  She was not perfect.  She was simply perfect.  Simply my mother.

She loved her family. She loved her friends.  She loved her work.  Her heart and soul were generous--some say made of gold.  She was loved by many.  Her temper was hot.  Her care for others grew to large.  She forgot herself.  She left too soon.

The beauty of a mother is not held in their abilities or their faults.  The beauty of a mother is deeper.  Its in the way she does things every day. Thanklessly.  Cook, clean, repeat.  Every action is watched.  One day those actions are picked up by those around her.  Sometimes changed.  They grow for next the generation to cultivate.  Sometimes forgotten.  Coming back when the time is right.

I was 27 years old when she left this world.  I was ripe with child.  My time with her was too short.  I still had a lot of skills to gain from her. Simple brilliance afforded her to leave knowing I was strong enough to find the women would take care of me.  The women who could help me learn and relearn those lessons she was not able to teach.  The beauty of a mother is that no matter how long they grace your life, whether a full rich life time or a quick moment, they give more than you know.  Knowledge that sticks with you, in those cobwebby spaces in your mind.

No matter how long they have been gone, be it two weeks, 10 years (has it almost been ten years already? nope, it's almost 11) or an adult lifetime, they are always your mother.  Always the person who cared for you when you were sick, the one who said "I love you" when you have screamed the opposite, the person who thought about you before themselves.  The one was willing to go without so you could go on.  The one that is always and forever proud, even when you are not trying to win it.

{and then there is Dad, but that's a whole other blog}

In memory of

Judith Ann (Herricks) Larson

August 6, 1945 to July 19, 2001

Airing my (clean) Laundry

The age-old house keeping method of hanging clothing on the line always has a huge impact on my thinking thoughts.  My reason for purchasing a umbrella style clothes line for my back yard was the same as all of my homemade, from scratch, back-to-basic ideas:   To be a little greener while saving a buck.  I did not realize that with every wooden pin I squeezed open, I would be stepping back in time.

The muscle memory of the women before me assist as I clumsily hang sheets on the taught and saggy lines of their lives. The visions of babies on skirt hems and flour sack dresses dancing in the breeze play through my head as I bend and stretch. The smell of sunshine captured delivers chicken pot pies to dinner tables dressed in linen cloths.  There is a sting of just pickled beets lingering in the air whiles jars of jams & jellies ping on counter tops. Bread baking in cook stove, Apple Brown Betty waited for the ladies of Circle and cheese melting in pots of fashionable colors on coffee tables in dens of new homes in developments. Mayonaise Sandwhiches.

Clipping sock after sock I slowly drift to an era when television sets had dials, games were played on boards, and corded phones with party lines sat on little tables in the family room.

Stretching shirts along the line thoughts of a roll top desk with paper and pen waiting to be folded and sent to Mary just to let her know that all is fine and the picnic was pleasant. The men are in from the  the fields. Glass bottles of Coke-a-Cola on a sunny afternoon.   Tires rolling on gravel as someone pulls in the driveway just to say "hi" while baby sleeps contently on a tired new mothers lap.

Hanging up blue jeans calls to mind the dish-pan hands that scrub with watching eyes through the window spy tree swings and climbing scab-kneed children from the window. Mud pies baking in the sun and not a bottle of hand sanitizer in sight. Cops and Robbers played with toy guns. Cowboys and Indians. Indian paintbrushes, dandelions, black eye-Susan's & buttercups meadows. Catch me if you can.

As I remove each wooden helper, I think about vinegar and baking soda and how these are the things that once were common agents used to clean home until something "better" came along. I think about how aprons were sewn for purpose not just style. I recall chickens roaming around farm yards and eggs were collected, beef was raised and slaughtered and no one was though of as superior for doing so.

While I'm folding clothes and placing them into the basket, I picture gardens of sun basking tomatoes, pole climbing beans, green carrot tops, tall cornstalks and ripe berries of every kind. Brown grocery bags hold boxes of Bisquick, Spam, smoked oysters and something called Hamburger helper. Milk came in glass bottles or warm from the barn and was served at every meal.  Lime Jello Molds with carrots and celery suspended in time. Bake sales with home baked goods.

I think about the fact that before stay-at-home moms there was just Mother. There were PTA's that were called PTA and Sock hops dances and one-piece gym suits and one-room school house where a single teacher managed an entire school. Door-to-Door salesmen sold everything from chocolates to vacuums. Nothing was open on Sundays. There were tough times. Lean times. War times and sons coming home. Pride, honor and despair. Children growing. Children going. Families gather and swell. Love. Dancing. Laughter rings again.

Believe it or not, there are so many other images that flitter through my head while hanging the fabrics of our life. I think about my own childhood and how I never understood why my mother spent the time and energy to hang our underwear for all the world to see when we had a perfectly good dryer right next to the washer. Surely it was just to embarrass me.  I did not enjoy the feeling of stiff towels and shirts. I swore I would never have a clothes line when I grew up.

I grew up and I do.  I get it. Now. I understand. Now.  When I see my children run towards my freshly laundered items, with their grubby hands racing to hide in the center of our umbrella of vanity, it becomes clear,  we do things because they are things we are meant to do. The calm-ness that overcomes me is worth the effort of lugging heavy wet clothes up the stairs and out into the backyard. This is my thing that I am meant to do. It does not make me more enviormently aware or old fashioned or richer or poorer or better than anyone else. It connects me to the things and times and the people that I need to feel even if I was not there to remember. What do you need to remember?

All this from hanging material stitched together to form something other than what it began as.