Why am I having goofy thoughts this morning about my long-deceased mother? She passed in 1979 at the young age of 61, so for the bulk of my life, I have been motherless.
She had a thing about bugs, most especially roaches, lice and bed bugs. She believed that having any of those critters in one's home was a clear sign of "white trash." (Note that I grew up in an area with very few non-WASPs.) Those bugs were a crisis to be avoided at all cost.
Dishwashers, Kleenex and margarine were Communist plots. Dishwashers wasted water, and who needed one when you had a daughter (me) perfectly capable of washing dishes? Kleenex were wasteful--use a handkerchief. And margarine--Good Heavens! Why would you use fake stuff when you had real butter?!!? I grew up in a family that worshiped butter, and I still do to this day!
Mom loved her roses and she had a bed of about a dozen bushes in the back yard. Japanese beetles were the bane of her existence. She was generally an organic gardener, but for her roses, no chemical was too strong to keep them thriving and bug-free. She raised and preserved, via canning or freezing, nearly all our fruits and vegetables.
Mom never drank alcohol. Dad drank enough for both of them, and I think not-drinking was her one truly self-righteous stance. She brought a bottle of champagne back from France around 1971, and never drank it. We found it when we cleaned out the house many years later.
Mom took me on trips to France, Italy, Canary Islands and Japan. She was always trying to sneak back home cuttings from exotic plants. She would certainly be "pulled aside" at airports these days!
Her favorite late night snack for watching Johnny Carson was to fry up a batch of chicken livers.
I would easily label Mom as a hypochondriac, and she spent hours poring over our two-volume medical encyclopedia (yes, actual books in those days!) trying to figure out what was wrong with her.
In hindsight, I'm amazed that I turned out even close to "normal."
Leta
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| Bird of Paradise, Mom's favorite non-rose flower |
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