In January 1989 my mother, Vallanee, came to stay with our kids at the farm south of Pigeon while Ed and his mother, Pauline, and I traveled to Hawaii and Singapore. My mom got to cleaning and organizing while she was with the kids.
For months after the trip, I found zip lock bags with various piles of mail and other paperwork in them. Each one would have a post-it note attached, listing "found on piano, Jan 20, 1989" so that I would be able to connect the pile to its purpose.
Well, I have become my mother. I use zip lock bags a lot. This week I stuffed the holiday cards and other assorted ephemera from December into none other than, yes, you guessed it, a zip lock bag.
Everytime I do this I think of my mother and how she loved to make things right. Her Saturday morning house cleaning used to drive me to distraction. I can remember my adolescent moments of crying because I had vacuum cleaner duty. You can see me, a thirteen year old with raging hormones, sobbing as I pushed a nasty floor sucking machine through yet another room in our parsonage home.
The zip-lock-bag-as-organizer thing is much more my style. I still hate to vacuum.
Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler
No comments:
Post a Comment