My Mom – The Irrepressible, Self-Confessed Klutz

Hey, she said it – I didn’t.  I don’t mean to be disrespectful; I’m just agreeing with her.

Oh Mom, I hope you knew all that you meant to me before you left this earth!  You didn’t just teach me about Jesus – you lived Him.  You loved so excellently and laughed so heartily.  That’s the way I know Jesus.

You lived John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  That’s what you did, Mom.  You gave of your life for others – your time, your energy, and mostly your love.  You relished being the object of a good laugh (and you certainly had a lot to laugh about!)  You never took yourself very seriously, being blessed with the genuine gift of being able to laugh at yourself, especially if it helped other people.  Yes, Mom, you gave me a lot to write about.

And so I present to you, dear reader, numerous, random vignettes of my mom and her antics.  Read on …

She was a pretty good cook; however, there were occasional “issues”.  One day she decided to make spaghetti for dinner.  However, always being in a hurry, she decided to cook it in the pressure cooker (and why anyone would use a pressure cooker to make spaghetti in is beyond me, but hey, that was Mom).  Anyway, as the pressure began to rise in the pot, the little pressure relief thingy began to rock back and forth, faster and faster – and faster and faster.  Being distracted by something other than the pressure cooker, she didn’t notice how fast that little thing was rocking – until it blew its top off.  Hearing the explosion, we ran into the kitchen, only to witness meatballs and red sauce imbedded in the ceiling, spaghetti noodles dangling from the point of impact, waving gently in the breeze.

Making toast was always a problem.  We had one of those old-fashioned toasters with the two compartments on either side.  You had to toast one side, then turn the bread over to toast the other side.  It was NOT automatic.  Many mornings our sink was filled with burned toast scrapings; most mornings our back porch was decorated with Mom’s burnt offerings – too burnt to be salvaged.  Our next door neighbor always knew whether we were home or not – by the presence or absence of burnt toast on our porch.

In the ‘50’s many of our vegetables came from a can and spinach was one of our favorites.  However, Mom, always in a hurry, often didn’t read the labels on the cans; her decisions were based on the pictures.  One night as we hungrily sat around the table, prayers of thanksgiving having been said, we were ready to dive into our dinner of meat loaf, mashed potatoes and … spinach!  As, one by one, we tasted the “spinach” we looked at each other in dismay.  This was NOT spinach.  Mom checked the empty can in the trash – she had bought mustard greens!  And so that dinner was eaten without vegetables, the mustard greens gratefully ending up in the trash, along with the empty can.  On the next grocery shopping trip, Mom read the labels.

One day Mom put some paraffin on the stove to melt.  However, she forgot about it because she remembered an errand she had to go on.  Grabbing her keys, she hurriedly drove away, leaving the paraffin on the stove.  A while later, our neighbor noticed smoke billowing from our kitchen window.  He heroically climbed through the window to put out the fire as his wife called the fire department.  As Mom drove into the driveway, she was greeted with a house filled with smoke, firemen and a neighbor with burns on his arm.

Mom also loved to sew and she especially loved to make dresses for my sister and me, using her old treadle sewing machine.  I loved to listen to its gentle, rhythmic hum as she sewed.  She had an old button box that contained hundreds of beautiful buttons that she let me play with as she sewed.

She would cut out the fabric by laying it on the floor, positioning the pattern just right over the fabric.  Then she would pin the pattern to the fabric, putting pins in her mouth for easy access.  One day I decided to help her.  So, doing just what Mommy did, I went to the pin cushion and proceeded to put pins in my mouth too.  I came over to her, announcing that I was ready to help.  Her face turned a sickly white as she tried to stay calm (a heroic feat for her).  She gently guided me onto a chair and proceeded to remove the pins from my mouth.  That day I learned what NOT to do and I think she learned a lesson too.  From then on, the pins stayed in the pin cushion.

The dresses she made were adorable.  However, nearly every time I wore my new frock the first day, as I sat down, I would be stabbed by a pin she had left in the hem.  Most of my dresses were decorated with tiny red dots, if you know what I mean.  After I grew up she taught me to sew too and I made her a dress.  Just for old time’s sake, I left a pin in the hem for her to discover when she sat down.

Mom was always losing things.  Sometimes, after long absences, her glasses would appear again, crushed in the phone book or in the refrigerator’s vegetable tray.  And her purse!  After leaving someplace, having driven miles down the road, she would discover that she had left her purse.  So Dad, with a slight roll of his eyes, would dutifully turn around, drive back and retrieve it.  Eventually, I learned to always make sure she had her purse before getting into the car, sometimes even carrying it myself to make sure it arrived safely.  When I grew up I vowed I would never lose my purse or keys and, for the most part, I’ve been successful.  (I think she made me slightly “OCD” in that regard.)

Shopping with Mom was an adventure.  We would shop from store to store to store, only to get back to the car and discover that she had lost her keys.  We would stand in the parking lot, next to our locked car while Mom frantically emptied all the contents of her purse onto the hood of the car.  No keys.  So, we had to retrace our steps, back to store to store to store, until we found the kind, chuckling salesperson who was holding her keys, just waiting for her to return.

And then one day Mom accidentally committed the crime of shoplifting.  She was shopping for a blouse and found one that she liked.  So she put it over her arm, hanger and price tag dangling in the air – and proceeded to walk out of the store.  She went into another store with the blouse still over her arm – and walked out of that store – and another store and another store.  When we got back to the car, she discovered the blouse still hanging over her arm.  She could not remember which store it came from so she just guiltily took it home – and wore it.  The first time she washed it, something faded on it and it was ruined.  She figured that served her right for committing that crime.  Justice was duly served.

One night Mom and Dad went out for the evening.  It began with a wonderful dinner and ended with a concert at the theater.  At the concert Mom felt uncomfortable, being so full from dinner, so she unbuttoned her skirt as she settled into her comfortable seat.  As the concert ended and the applause died down, they got up to leave.  However, Mom had forgotten to re-button her skirt.  As it began its descent toward the floor, she grabbed it just in time before it got all the way down, but not before it was witnessed by the other snickering concert-goers.

One day as I was being my bratty little self, we went to the dairy.  I was crying and carrying on so Mom decided to just leave me in the car.  She slammed the car door, and I started crying louder and louder.  As she was standing in line to pay for our milk, she could still hear me crying and decided to go back out to deal with me.  As she opened the car door, she realized she had accidentally slammed my thumb in the door.  (Being a mother myself, I can only imagine how she felt.)  It’s a miracle that I survived childhood with all my body parts intact but in retrospect, I suppose I deserved it.

We lived on a small hill so our driveway was built on an incline.  Our street was very wide and down the middle of our street there were “islands” with huge power poles.  There was a small, triangular shaped “island” where a house had been built and behind the house there was a pool.  One day Mom parked the car in our driveway but forgot to put it in park.  As she hurried toward the front door, she didn’t notice the car beginning to roll down the hill, gradually gaining speed.  As she turned around, to her horror, the car was heading straight toward the pool.  Thankfully, the curb stopped the car, just in time before it could have descended into the blue water.

Mom had always wanted to be an opera singer but marriage and motherhood had prevented that from happening.  She never regretted her choice and was very happy with her life.  However, that never stopped her from singing … every day … all the time.  Normally that would be a wonderful atmosphere to be living in, and it really was – that is, until warm summer days when all the neighbors’ windows were open and her voice could be heard two houses away where we were playing with friends.  We were mortified!

Our house was the center of fun for our entire neighborhood.  Everyone was welcome and messes were fine (as long as we cleaned them up).  We had a hallway in our house that, when all the doors were closed, could be transformed into the darkest, best haunted house ever.  Wet, peeled grapes became eyeballs and spaghetti noodles were the best brains to terrorize our friends with.  And our backyard could be transformed into a stage where spectacular theatrical productions were created.  Mom just knew that we and our friends were more important than a clean, orderly house and so we … had … FUN!  Our friends became part of our family and were always welcome to join us.

I LOVED mud!  I loved the way it squished through my fingers and toes.  I constructed wonderful roadways and tunnels and houses for bugs.  I even built a fort.  I dug a pit about 3 feet deep and large enough for about 3 kids (and countless bugs) to fit into.  I covered it with a big blanket supported by vertical sticks and that’s where I would go when I was upset.  I could pout and cry without any interference from anyone.  One day Mom was concerned about me and knew where I would be hiding.  She came outside, crawled into my fort and sat and talked with me until I felt better.  I’m sure she had to take a bath and wash bugs out of her hair afterward, but she showed me what love is.  I think that’s what Jesus does.  He “crawls” into our situation, right where we’re at (despite our “bugs”) and sits with us and loves us through our problems.  Thanks, Mom for showing Jesus to me this way.

In writing this, I sometimes wonder if Mom would be okay with me telling you all these things. But in knowing her, I think she would get a huge belly laugh, hoping you enjoyed it as much as she did.

Well, I think I had better wrap this up for now.  I’m not sure exactly how large blog posts are “supposed” to be, as I’m so new to this, but I’m sure this post exceeds the limit.  There is still so much more to tell about Mom, so I will write another post about her which will appear in a couple of weeks.  Stay tuned, dear reader – and thank you for joining me.