Lilly Sway

I remember as a child my mother worked tirelessly all of her life and always seemed to manage to get it all done. We, she and my sisters and I would stay up on (”movie night”) we called it that because it was really the night once a month that we waxed the floors and I mean all of the floors. Our home was all wood floors, and that meant work, to keep them looking decent, with the traffic that 8 children could impose on a home any home, I would have rather had just plain concrete for the work it took to keep our floors decent.

Of course I call myself a woman of today and I use a dust mop, vacuum, and regular mop. I would not be able to keep up with wood floors on any scale these days. On the Movie nights we would keep the television on all night until the broadcast signal went on every channel, and then we would turn on the record player and listen to Nat king Cole, Frank Sinatra, and the like for my mother she loved to sing to any music but these were her favorite. After a while when we were all tired and the floors were almost finished we would listen to our music I like to listen to Rock (now its called classic rock), my younger sister did not care what music was on she liked everything and my older sister would listen to the only record she had it was the Archie’s.

We usually finished right around time to fix breakfast and start laundry we washed every day except on Sunday and then my sisters and I would take a nap. I, these days wash every day, some of my older kids have started to keep up with their own laundry, because they have favorite things they like to wear so the laundry department is more under control. I remember that after a long night of doing the floors my mother never took a nap or a rest, she just kept on with her day as if not exhausted and  as I grew older and our routine change a little she just barreled through the regimen whether we were there or not. I prayed that I would have half of her tenacity  to get so much done.

One day as we were watching a movie on movie night I said to my mom in between the movie and waxing “hey mom don’t you get tired of working so hard everyone is asleep and if the floors aren’t perfect I don’t think anyone will mind”. I mean really. My mother said that “a man can work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done”. I laughed and said to her, “so that’s why you do it because you think you should never have idle moments”, “because of a rhyme”?. She said “no because we live here and any place that you live, and spend with those you love who love you should be a clean, healthy surrounding, I can only do what I can with what I have, so I give you my best of what that is. I want you all to have some good memories and come back to me when you leave, and you will. So a clean, sparkling home with all I cook, and everything I can teach you might just be enough to encourage you to come back once in a while”.

I helped her finish that night just she and I as our family had disintegrated down to just my parents, myself, and my younger brother. None of my other siblings were there anymore they found that they could run and they did. I did not run I studied hard went to school half of my day and worked two part time jobs. I felt as if I was abandoning my mother when I left and got married. Many many things transpired  through those last years when I was still home as a young person, but of all the memories (those that I care to remember) I remember learning, asking, crying, and absorbing what my mother had to offer.

I having had so wonderful a person in my life made the difference between leaving half cocked, or leaving fortified and capable, so that I may be in a position to see her when it stirred me to do so. I saw my mother every possible time I could and it meant seeing her along with my father, but I had grown to be strong, no longer afraid, and as such that my mother made me. I was able to take her away from him so that she could finally have peace in her very ill last years. My father was annoyed by her illness, and begged me to take her or put her away so I seized the chance and kept her as long as I could. I had more work and many more responsibilities than I contemplated, but I would do it all again given the chance even with the knowledge of what hard times my mother went through in her illness. I would not have it any other way. I do all of my chore as I know that they must be completed, but I do not ever think that cleaning can’t wait, I spend a lot of my time any spare moment with my children if they allow me to, because I know that the chores will always be there, but that they will have to leave sooner or later and they will, so I am glad to have tile or carpet rather than wood. I do though try to keep them to the best of my ability clean, but I hope that my children will come back often after they leave regardless.

Food For the Mind

Lilly”s Way   www.lillysway.com