For Mother's Day, some "Mom Math"

MOM MATH

“Nobody notices what I do…until I don’t do it.” (Anonymous)

Isn’t that the truth? I’m sure my mother thought so. I don’t remember thanking her very often for all the dust she dusted away, all the carpets she vacuumed, all the windows she washed, partly because I guess I was, like most kids, oblivious (it just “got done,” didn’t it?). But also, I guess, because my mom just about never didn’t do it.

I was looking through some old family photos the other day and wondered how many times she’d done the same things. Over and over, I looked at kids with birthday cakes and gifts, kids sitting by Christmas trees, kids with clean faces and shiny hair, kids who had been well fed and clothed.  And I knew that mom was responsible for much of it.

So, better late than ever and regardless of the fact that she’s been in heaven since August 2008, here’s a big “THANKS” to you, Mom, for:

--160 weeks, 1,120 days of water retention, nausea, weight gain, unknown hours of labor (we

didn’t talk about “those things”) and having to wear those simply horrendously unattractive voluminous 1950’s maternity clothes, all for your four.

--11, 680 baby bottles you washed and sterilized and all the formula you mixed up, assuming each kid ate every 3 hours or so for the first year of life; nursing, in my opinion, is easier, cheaper and better but it was not at all “in vogue” in the 50’s.

--The more than 72 birthday cakes you baked and yes, even for that white boiled icing that never really was my favorite (maybe it was yours?!). I don’t recall a “store-bought” cake ever coming into the house.

--2600 + grocery shopping trips (that’s a trip per week for the 50+ years of my parents’ marriage, and there were, of course, more), each one a search for bargains; each Friday night, after my dad got home with his paycheck we were off to “The Pig” (Piggly Wiggly) in Beloit; did you want green grapes – well, they’d better be less than 19¢ per pound or you weren’t getting any! What was purchased had to last the week, with only an occasional send-a-kid-to-the-corner-store-for-bread run.

--About 54,600 meals you prepared – that’s 3 meals per day for those same 50+ years! Wow, mom! All that cooking, fashioning something tasty out of not much – and you got kids to eat it (truth to tell, we did spend a lot of forced time after dinner, morosely stuck at the table staring down at something we found to be particularly distasteful). We ate mostly a meat and potatoes diet, with lots of corn and carrots, beans and peas and a few beets thrown in now and then. When money ran out before the days of the week we often supped on leftover gravy and bread – and never knew it was because we had to.

--How many Christmas trees? Let’s say a few more than 50. Thanks for letting us “help” hang the ornaments and “thanks” for each and every single, slender, solitary piece of that static electric shiny tinsel that had to be applied single file, strand by lonely, painstakingly applied strand; so many  “thanks“ that after 2 of my own Christmas trees following mom’s tinsel-y tradition, I decided to never, ever trim a tree w/tinsel ever again! Sorry, Mom!

--Keeping our house so clean, week after dirty week. While I didn’t grow up to be Mrs. Clean (when I tell people you washed out corners with a toothbrush, I am not fibbing, am I?!) you taught us the value of the clean, of all straightened up and put away.

--I was never good enough at arithmetic to calculate how many loads of laundry you did over your lifetime. With 4 kids and a husband who was always working in or outside, you had plenty of dirt to keep you running up and down those basement stairs. I’m not sure if we had a dryer when I was little, but though they have pretty much disappeared in today’s suburban neighborhoods, we always had an outside clothesline where the bed sheets blew in the breeze, the towels came in scratchy and the birds sometimes dropped a little “something extra” for you on those undies flapping in the wind. And, oh, my, did you fly to get that laundry off the line when the thunder cracks sounded and the raindrops threatened! After it all came in much of it went into the ironing baskets, a lot having to be “sprinkled” and put in the fridge before pressing (sometimes we had more clothing being cooled than food!). Ironing ended up to be a job for “the girls,” and to this day I cannot turn on the iron for just one item – my “rule” is at least four!

--How many dishes did you wash? By hand, mind you. More than I can possible count. You did raise 4 dishwashers, and the same number of dryers, for you could not be convinced that air drying was “proper” or more sanitary. You filled one sink with soapy water and the other with rinse water and could also not be convinced that the dishes were not truly being rinsed when the rinse water ended up being as soapy as the soapy water! Keeping the tap running over dishes was “wasteful” and that was just that.

--How many socks did you darn? As many as we wore. Your old light bulb would come out in the evening and you’d get out your needle and darn a way. Does anyone still do that? You’d darned up the holes until there were more holes than sock, and only then it could be discarded. Again, sorry, but I hated those darned socks, those thread bumps between your shoe & your foot. You never could understand my frivolity of buying new socks when I could have learned to practice the frugality of the darning needle.

Meryl Streep once said that “motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” Another truth, yes? Basic essentials of bathing children and then teaching them to clean themselves; teaching them to count and later to do their homework; making them say “please and thank you” and all the while teaching them to live each day in a “please and thank you” manner, even if others don’t. Mom, thank you for all those essentials you performed for me and for the family. Thank you for your tireless daily-ness, for the tasks you did over and over and over again even when you were plum tuckered out. Most of all, Mom, thank you for taking me to a Bible-believing church each and every week and for introducing me to Jesus. I will be eternally richer for it all.

“I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” --- Abraham Lincoln