Nothing takes me back to my childhood quicker than thoughts of what my parents taught me. A stretch in the exercise class, which required us to part our knees, made me think of my mother, who always warned that good girls didn’t sit like that.
Of course, in that time, girls wore dresses or skirts, so it wouldn’t have been appropriate. However, in this place and time, with our stretchy exercise pants, it was a good and proper stretch.
Other warnings for boys and girls alike were to be sure to wear clean underwear before going somewhere. That way, if you are in an accident you won’t be embarrassed. I always wondered about that one, as I would think the biggest concern would be the injury, not the state of the underwear.
“A stitch in time saves nine” was a favorite of my mother’s. She spent a good deal of her time in patching clothes or sewing on buttons. It amazed me how she could take a worn-out adult coat and cut it down into a coat for a child, and all without a pattern, and sewed with a treadle sewing machine.
My mother lived the motto “Waste not, want not,” as she wasted nothing. Old clothing was cut apart and turned into rag rugs, a quilt or whatever was most in need at the time. An egg was not merely cracked into whatever she was cooking, she also took her finger and wiped out every part of the white that clung to the inside of the shell.
Another phrase that fits mother was “never put off until tomorrow, what you can do today.” When I think of her, I think of her hands always being busy, knitting, gardening or kneading bread; they were never still.
To us children, Pa always seemed to be running late. In fact, he stayed in the barn to finish the chores so we could go to the house and get ready for the party we were going to that night. Then he’d come rushing into the house, and we would moan and groan, because we had to wait for him to clean up and change.
That is when he would say, “I’ll be ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
We chimed back with, “But what if the lamb is dead?”
Of course, eventually we got on our way, presumably wearing our best underwear.
Pa used to joke that he was a “Jack of all trades, but a master of none.” Pa, who grew up in Milwaukee, became a farmer during the Depression. He milked cows, planted crops and carried huge bags of ground feed. I remember thinking that the feed bag was as big as he was, and yet he perched it on his shoulder and carried it to the feed bin.
He seemed invincible to me at that time, magical even; but the real magic came in the tales he would weave about his years of growing up in Milwaukee in the early 1900s. Silent movies for a nickel, a ghost in the bakery, and fishing for carp in the river.
Pa had an “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” attitude. He never minded taking some time off for fishing, or playing cards, or telling stories.
These days it seems that people are too busy playing on their phones or iPads to remember the wisdom in those sayings of old. Well, all I can say is “It’s never too late to mend your ways.”
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