Memories That Last 1
Last Wednesday morning in our ladies Bible class, we read passages about being thankful. In between the readings, I asked each lady to share memories about things they were grateful for about 1) their mothers, 2) a teacher, and 3) a person with whom they went to church.
To be frank, it was an easy lesson to pull together during a week when Ray and I were preparing for our family Thanksgiving (which we celebrated yesterday) and trying (make that slaving!) to get the house back in order, while supervising many of the last details of The Project. Whew!
I was so touched by the ladies’ answers that I started madly jotting down notes so that I could share them with you. As you live each day with your children, I think you will appreciate knowing what they might remember decades from now. But, first, I want to begin with some thankful memories of my own.
Exactly seven weeks after our bathroom project began, I climbed into the antique claw-footed tub on Saturday for my first bath in our new bathroom.
My last bath in that tub was 46 years ago just before my parents bought their first (and only) house when I was almost fifteen–a two-bedroom ranch over a partially-finished basement.
I am grateful to have grown up from age four to fifteen in the wonderful old house we rented from my grandfather, and I am thankful to own the the claw-footed tub–the only piece of that house still in our family. Though the house is gone, the memories are still in my heart. Yes, the paint was peeling on the outside and the inside temperature was so cold one winter morning that we found the water in our goldfish’s bowl frozen, but it was a wonderful place to grow up.
I remember the back porch where Mother used a wringer washing machine to do the laundry every Monday morning before she hung it out on the clothes lines in the back yard. The old washtubs she used to rinse the laundry are now in our new laundry room.
I remember the pretty dark molding, doors, transoms, and staircase of my childhood home. Mother was always afraid we would get hurt sliding down the banister, but she always let us slide anyway. The day I banged my head on the door frame of the screen door on the back porch, Mother came running with our big striped beach towel, just sure that the screaming child she heard was one who had finally fallen off the banister. The striped beach towel went with us to the Ashland City clinic where I got twelve stitches above my eyebrow.
I was teased unmercifully at our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday for using a screen door for a bathroom door. A curtain is coming; and, besides, you can close the laundry room door, too! I wanted to complete the back porch look by using a screen door; and besides with real screen door hinges, when it slams, it sounds like the screen door on our childhood back porch–music to my ears!
Mother sometimes babysat in addition to taking in sewing. One of the children she kept was Brookie. I remember the day I kissed Brookie goodbye through the one missing pane in the beautiful French pocket doors that separated the living room from the bedroom I shared with my brother Steve (until I was twelve!). In my childish wisdom, I thought kissing from the other side of the doors might protect me from getting Brookie’s cold.
I remember the big bay window beside Mother’s sewing machine and the pretty, fringed bleached domestic curtains and tie backs she made and hung above its wide window ledges. We put our cedar Christmas tree there until the year I begged Mother to replace it with a modern aluminum one.
I remember walking across the wrap-around front porch, across the yard, and across the street to go to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, every night of the gospel meetings, and every morning of Vacation Bible School. I remember the picture of Steve sitting on our front steps, wrapped in a blanket and pretending he was Jesus. I remember how we played “the Lord’s Supper” with saltines and grape juice.
I am thankful for my childhood home and for my Daddy, Mama, and little brother Steve who made me happy to grow up there.
By wisdom a house is built,
And by understanding it is established;
And by knowledge the rooms are filled
With all precious and pleasant riches.
Proverbs 24:3-4