As Dad calls her, "Mother Earth."

Almost every childhood memory I have of my mother, she is in her brown apron, and in most of them, she is standing at the kitchen sink, doing dishes. It seemed like she was always doing dishes. And now that I am grown, I can attest that she was. She raised 6 children, I am number five. So there was always a lot of dishes.

She also did a lot of laundry. Every morning, she could be found, at the washing machine scrubbing clothes. She would have a shirt in one hand, and a toothbrush in the other. She kept her detergent in a squirt bottle. This way she could squirt on a little when she needed it. Most people would just dump in the clothes, add detergent, and leave. Not my mom. She scrubbed. She got out every stain. Next to the detergent, she also had bleach and a plastic cup, one she had saved from a restaurant or somewhere that gives out sturdy plastic cups. To this, she would add a little bleach. She would dilute the bleach with water, and she would scrub.

When my sister was a baby, mom used cloth diapers. These she would keep out in a pail on the porch untill it was time to wash them. Sometimes she would ask me to carry one out to the pail. I would hold the very tip of it with two fingers, carrying it out as far in front of me as I could.


My mother never yelled. She spanked me a total of three times in my life. I can’t remember why, or what I did to deserve it, but I’m sure it was something worthy.

Occasionally, I was told to stand in the corner. I don’t remember why. She would never leave me in there very long. She wouldn’t yell at me to go there. She would just casually say, "go stand in the corner," so there I would go.

Most of the time if I was acting up, or being energetic, she would tell me to go outside and run around the house 10 times, so I would run. I would come back in, and verything would be ok. That was that. Sometimes my sister was sent out with me. We would do it together - it was fun. We would run until we were out of breath.

Once she washed my mouth out with soap and water. I had said a bad word. I didn’t say bad words after that.

If I asked, my mom would put shaving cream on the kitchen table for me to play with. She let me play with in while she washed dishes.

Every day I would also draw pictures at the kitchen table. When I was done, I would show them to my mom. She would always stop what she was doing, and look at them. “That’s beautiful” she would say. I would draw some more. I soon moved onto paint. She would let me paint whenever I wanted. She never told me no, not now, or wait to later. She just let me paint. I started out with watercolors, the kind for kids. Mom saved every one of my painting, and drawings.

As I got older, and became more interested in art, she signed me up for an art class on Saturdays. She bought me canvas and acrylic paint. She took me to the class every Saturday at 9 am, and at noon she came to pick me up. I would always have to bring home my wet canvas. The teacher had to make room for the students in her other classes. Mom helped me find a safe place to store my canvas. When I finished a painting, she would find a place to hang it in the house. She showed them to everyone who came over.

After school, she would be there to open the door when I walked in. She would always greet me with a “hi” and a smile. She would ask me about my day. Then she would give me a snack, usually apples or something like that. Sometimes, if I asked for a cookie, she would get the box that was hidden in the hall behind the laundry room. I would be allowed to have a couple.

Mom didn’t keep junk food around the house. She did have a small jar of peanut M+M’s in the jar cabinet. Mom did not have Tupperware. What she did have was a collection of deli Containers that she saved every time we got cream cheese or potato salad, or anything from the deli. They were heavy plastic and came with lids. She used these to store things. She could not bear to throw anything useful away. This was in the days before recycling. It you went up to our attic, there was a collection of gallon milk containers that had been washed. She could not throw these away either. Lucky for us, and our house, the recycling program eventually came to our town.

20 years before it became the popular thing to do, Mom was bringing her own bags back to the store. She would save the plastic bags from shopping and take them with her the next time. When she got to the check out, she would give the cashier the bags to reuse. Sometimes it would embarrass me, like when we were clothes shopping and she would buy me something and then tell the cashier that we didn’t need a bag. I learned to tell ask before we went into the store, “can we get a bag today?” I was a teenager. I wanted to walk out of the store with my clothes in a bag.

One of mom’s favorite things to do was to shop at a tag sale. Anytime we were driving anywhere on a weekend, and we passed one, she would always slow down to look. Sometimes we would stop, and get out and have a real look. Sometimes it would be “just junk,” as she would say, but sometimes there was something good and we would buy it. No bag of course.

One day one of our neighbors down the street was having a tag sale. They had a big sign at the end of the street. Mom decided we were going to have a tag sale of our own. She started assembling stuff and put it out in the driveway. She put up a sign that said “Mini tag sale” and when people stopped she told them this was not the tag sale on the sign, but was our mini tag sale and to go to the other one also. We could have had ten more tag sales and our house would not have been empty, but my mom usually just gave stuff away.


There was a woman from the next town who mom always talked to at Grand Union,. She got to know her, and found out she had a daughter a little younger that my little sister. Mom also knew that she took the bus to work at the store. So, next time we went shopping, my mom brought all my sisters outgrown clothes and gave them to the bagger. I asked her why, and she said that she could use them.

Mom was friends with the baggers at all the grocery stores. Mom was not the type of person to make a list, and do her weekly shopping in one day. She usually went to one grocery store or another every day. I of course, went with her to the store. She knew to buy the milk at Finast, the meat a Grand Union, and other stuff a Walbaumbs. She always brought her coupons too. I knew the bagger at Walbaumbs, and he always talked to me. He was slightly mentally challenged, but he was nice, and my mom was always friendly to him. Sometimes he would pat me on the head or something, which I didn’t like, but I didn’t say anything, because he was my mom’s friend. Mom would make friends wherever she would go. Not just with the people you were supposed to be friends with, but the ones that most people overlook.