I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker at Tales from a Gypsy Mama today to spend five minutes writing about What Mama Did. Unfortunately, I can’t get her clicky button to work, but you can still get there from here. I enjoyed doing this! You can join in if you like.
What Mama Did
She worked.
In my very earliest memory, I am two years old and it is Christmastime. I am standing in our dark living room gazing up at the lighted cedar, which our family had trooped across the farm’s fields to find and cut a few days before. We are going to open a present soon, one of those wrapped boxes arranged beneath the branches. I don’t know quite what this means, but I think I will like it. We will open a present as soon as my mother finishes cleaning the kitchen. She is in there now, putting away the food we didn’t eat and washing the dishes at the white, hard sink. She is singing.
My mother was always working during my growing up years. Out in the barn, at the sewing machine, cleaning the house, weeding the garden beds, snapping beans, folding clothes, baking a cake, taking a meal to someone. It was only as I got older that I understood what all that working really was: service. She is a helper, a servant. She served my dad’s agricultural and horticultural interests by feeding and weeding and planting and harvesting. She served her family’s interests by cooking and preserving and sewing. She served others’ interests by taking and teaching.
What mama did was serve. Always. Completely. And she was often singing.
Tell me something your mama did.
Follow
7 Comments