by Jan Meeus
My mother dispensed a number of axioms that I adhere to.
“Dress appropriately for the occasion. First impressions are lasting impressions. ”
“Start 0ut the way you want to end up. People aren’t too keen on changing in midstream.”
“Do a good job at whatever the task, even if it’s just sweeping the floor, or digging a ditch. Your ability to give your best speaks to your character.”
And then there were the ones that ever how well-meant, that defied understanding, seemed to say more about the people or person s speaking, where their priorities lay, that a fact of life.
“Wear good lingerie when you go out. You never know where you might land, like the hospital emergency room. You’d hate for the the doctors and nurses to see you in tattered lingerie.”
I’ve worked in a hospital. The last think on a ER doctors and nurses are concerned with are the state of your lingerie.
They would much rather have you clean, which is also something my mother always urged.
“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” she always said.
I don’t know that the Bible says this, but it felt right to me.
My mother hated chaos and filth.
Chaos does not bother me.
Filth, I too, will not tolerate.
My mother gave a lot of wisdom, many things of which I live by to this day.
I thank her for these words of guidance.
I would like to have said to her, “You are knowledgeable about many things and people. Thanks for sharing these things with me. And let what you know bring comfort. Let go of the doubt and trust yourself.”
Reading this last sentence I realize I’d like to say this to myself.
Are we, mother and daughter, that similar to each other?
In many ways, I suppose we are.
In fact why would we not be?
I’ve come from her blood.
She was the greatest influence on me for the first eighteen years of my life.
I would like to tell her that too.
Are there any ways in which you are like your mother, but are just now recognizing it?
If so, how?
And how do you feel about sharing this similarity with your mother?
As I read each one of your blogs the writer Jamaica Kincaid comes to mind. This is what is written about her on Wikipedia:
“Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson, in St. John’s, Antigua, in 1949. She grew up in relative poverty with her mother, a home-maker, and step-father, a carpenter. She was very close to her mother for her first nine years until the first of her three brothers were born in quick succession. After their births, Kincaid felt that she was neglected by her mother.
Kincaid was educated in the British colonial education system because Antigua gained its independence from England in 1981. Although she was intelligent and frequently tested at the top of her class, her mother removed Kincaid from school to help support the family when the third and last brother was born because her step-father was ill and could not provide for them any more. At age 17 in 1966, her mother sent her to Scarsdale, an upper-class suburb of New York City, to work as an au pair. However, Kincaid refused to send money home as well as open or respond to letters from home.”
Somehow the first of her writings that came to mind in response to this blog was Jamaica Kincaid’s Pose/Poem “Girl”
Girl
Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum on it, because that way it won’t hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn’t speak to wharf–rat boys, not even to give directions; don’t eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you; but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a button–hole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don’t squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s flowers—you might catch something; don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?
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