Things My Mother Taught Me - BEFORE

Before breakfast you must make your bed.  Research now shows that bed-makers surpass non-bed-makers in accomplishments on a daily basis, as well as a lifetime basis.  A neat brain is an accomplished brain?

Before going out to PLAY you must change from your school clothes. This was a large part of her insistence on us looking presentable when we left the house to go to school, as well as SAVING on the replacement of “school clothes”  most of which were hand-me-downs from my cousin in Nebraska!

Before going to school you must brush your teeth and comb your hair.  Personal grooming was a life-skill before the term was invented!  My sister – 14 years younger - actually had perfect teeth, not one cavity until her adult years!  I only had a couple of fillings going into childbearing years, and one missing 12 year molar!  So My GUESS is genes and a Top Sergeant for a mother!

Before we get to PLAY, we must do our chores.   Mother grew a large garden and in the summer, we were garden SLAVES.  Pulling weeds, watering, and picking the fuzzy yellow caterpillars off the green beans were our lot during growing season, and picking was required if we wanted to eat all winter!  I still cannot eat a green bean without seeing those fuzzy caterpillars that I was required to toss into a can of Kerosene.

Mom also required that homework and chores be done BEFORE playing.  She had the plan in the summer that we would work like crazy for two days and then take a “sabbatical” / a day off to go to the library, the park, the tennis court, or the swimming pool.  We all learned to swim as she was never a great swimmer – good at dog paddling though!  AND Dad only learned to swim in our pool in San Jose.  He was deathly afraid of water, so he too approved and encouraged swim lessons.  THANK YOU Jewish Community Center of Greater Denver!!  The lessons must have been free there.

Before we went back to school after Christmas we had to write THANK YOU NOTES for any presents.  Just read yesterday that THOUSANDS of parcels are never received by the planned recipients as they are stolen from the porches of THOUSANDS of homes and apartment buildings where there is NO ONE at home during the day to receive packages!!  People wonder why they haven’t received a thank you?  It wasn’t rudeness but theft perhaps?  Even a text message that the package arrived in this day and age would calm a lot of fears, and hurt feelings.

So what prompted this reminiscence about Mom’s BEFORES.  I had the communion cloths waiting to be washed and ironed.  I thought beginning a new year on the first Sunday of January our church should have freshly washed and starched linen for the altar.   We only celebrate Communion on the first Sunday at our church.  So BEFORE I could starch and iron the extra long table cloth I had to mop the kitchen floor where I set up the ironing board on those VERY occasional ironing days.  Before I could mop the floor, I put the permanent press load in to wash.  Tidied up from breakfast, mopped and dried the floor.  But BEFORE the extra long table cloth I ironed my husband’s TWO shirts that, in my opinion, need ironed, and a handful of clean hand kerchiefs.  What a feeling of accomplishment!! 

THANKS MOM!