the last of a line
by bam
it was a wisp of a thought, really. it came as i stood there stripping leaves off the mint i’d just cut from the garden. i know–because someone once told me, and these are the bits that make up the compendium of all that we know, the vast storehouse of knowledge acquired through a lifetime of listening–that before dunking the stems in the water, i needed to pluck off the leaves at the bottom, or else, sooner than otherwise, the water there in the pitcher will be yuck, will be green verging toward goo, will stink like a not-so-nice pond.
and that very thought, the thought about stripping the leaves, leapt right to a thought that was not such a wisp, really.
it was the notion, the realizing, the gathering of so many wisps into one undeniable ball, that that bit of wisdom might well be lost, disappear, vanish when i do.
you see, i have no daughter. no girl standing right by my side, taking in all that i have maybe to teach her. just as i, over the years, have stood by my mother’s side. by her ironing board. by the place where she folded the clothes. by the edge of the mattress where she taught me the crisp edging and folding known in our house as the hospital corner.
i realized that, yes, i have boys to whom i can and i do teach many things. i teach them the bits that i know about feeding the birds, and catching the firefly. i teach them to look in the eye of each someone who asks for a dollar. i teach them to sit and to listen as long as it takes after dinner. i teach them to pray.
but there is a whole realm, a whole world that was passed from mother to daughter to daughter. and it’s not that i’m gender specific, or pre-disposed in some old-fashioned way.
it’s just that the fact of the matter is they, those two blessed boys, couldn’t care less.
one is trying to gather all the knowledge there is, from all the radical, not-so-conventional thinkers. the other is trying to master the punt.
neither one gives a hoot for the so many things that keep this house ticking, the invisible wad of things that i know, and things that i practice day after day.
for instance: the hospital fold; the rotation of foods in the fridge and the pantry, new to the back, old to the front; the sprinkling of water before ironing; the need to mop under the bed; the cleaning of hair from the hairbrush; the washing of blankets in spring; the keeping of napkins in rings.
and of course, old newspaper, not paper towel, when cleaning a mirror or a window.
these are things that i’d file, if i kept a big alphabetical drawer, under H for housekeeping. or maybe HE, for housekeeping esoterica.
not earth-shattering. not even essential. but not bad to know, and quite rather dear when you can hear in your head the instructor who taught you.
whole tomes, ones stuffed with so much they could break your big toe if they fell there, have been written of late–cheryl mendelson, martha stewart, to name only two–on the care and the tending of home.
perhaps it’s to fill in the holes and the tears in the sheets of a nation whose grownups were quite very busy and not so concerned with transferring knowledge on, say, how to get rid of popsicle when it melts in the rug, or know when the eggs have gone bad, or manage to walk out the door without looking as wrinkled as pants left in the dryer for, oh, close to a week.
it is, in the end, so much ephemera. it is here, and it’s gone. and no one will notice.
it’s not the loss, i suppose, of the knowledge, so much as it’s the end of a line. some of these bits, and some of these home-keeping legends, i’m sure, go back as many generations as there have been girls born to mothers.
in my house, i can trace it, i think, from a wood-sided house on brierhill road, to another, covered with ivy, on north cliff lane high in the hills of old cincinnati, and before that, still cincinnati, to a tall skinny brick place on ludlow.
before that, to a village somewhere in germany, i know nothing. but i’d not be surprised if somewhere, in the unspooling of my housekeeping day, there’s a trace of some hausfrau’s instruction in something i just always do. why? just because, it’s the way i was told that it’s done.
with me, though, it all ends. i’ve no niece. and no sister. and my one little girl, she didn’t make it out of my womb.
it’s the voices that swirl in my head, the ones who are whispering over my shoulder. that’s what will be gone.
there is so much that makes up the whole of our soul, and so many threads, some merely wisps, some fat silken cables, that weave through the self as it spins through a lifetime.
only we know how crowded the highway of thoughts that course through our days and our years and our one blessed crack at this game.
only we hear the chorus, the racket of so many instructors inside us.
and it’s just that as i stood there stripping those leaves i was struck by a thought that has nowhere to go. the last of a line. so many whispers silenced at last.
do you have odd bits of knowledge and wisdom and facts that dictate whole strings of your life? what are some of the things that you do, simply because some voice once told you? can you still hear the voice? or is much of your wisdom now marked, author unknown? i would be curious, because i always am, to hear your housekeeping esoterica. think of this: if we all say it here, it will never be lost. and if you’d like i can try to explain how to execute that hospital corner….
Oh my friend! It has been far too long since I pulled up a chair, and now that I have I am moved to tears by so many of your musings and I realize how very much I miss you indeed! I sit here in my flat next to my father’s framed family crests from 1886 (which actually is a more appropriately connected to last Friday’s post rather than today’s) knowing I have many ways of doing things because that’s just the way my mother, my grandmother did them — but also, dear one, my mother-in-law. You may not have a daughter yet love but I bet one day your daughter(s)-in-law will recognize not only their incredible good fortunes to be marrying one of your magical sons but also to marry into your majestic family and will treasure you as all who know you do, so fear not — all of the hospital corners (which incidentally I learned from my Dad) and newspaper for cleaning glass tips will carry on. I have no doubt of that. It’s so very late here so I must close now but how very glad I am to have joined you this evening! xoxox
the brilliance of this blog, this table where more and more scoot up and squeeze a chair ’round is that the line does continue. not in that lineage sort of way, but in an open, honest way. it’s what we reach for in families, but it’s often hard to grasp. so, yours is a legacy less of hospital corners and more of attentive, compassionate bedside manner. as an adopted sister of the chair lady, i can attest that wisdom is being gathered. with those two fine boys, there will be lovely girls yet to come and they will eagerly listen.
ahh, and that there is the miracle of this crazy screen that connects us all. over the pond, the long lost and much loved bgt, who is most likely turning old london on its ear. bless you for getting it, for understanding the point that hit me so hard, and that calls out for communion. for someone else saying, oh yes, i get that. i know what you mean about those bits of us that are so much a part of us that we barely stop to notice. and laura, you made me gulp, and swallow the making of a tear, or would that be a tear in the making. the ease and the elegance with which your thought flowed from hospital to bedside, it caught me, it did. since i’m nearly an old lady already, i have no idea if i’ll ever see my boys engaged with the loves of their lives (i pray i get to see from an earthly angle, not a high-up one). if i don’t, someone please remember to direct them to here, where i whispered a few of the long family secrets. bgt, you will be in charge of the hospital corner, and laura, you teach all the tricks with the newspaper……..both of you bless you for pulling up here today. you’ve been missed. so very missed. i couldn’t be more delighted to see you. xoxo
Barb, Regardless of whether or not daughters-in-law are open to your compendium of knowledge, your granddaughters will be!
yikes, you are TRULY an optimist….i have never even imagined a granddaughter. that is truly a breathtaking thought. when you find yourself in a delivery room at 43.6, in a kindergarten at 50, you don’t allow yourself the luxury, i suppose, of thinking that far down the road. but now that you’ve mentioned it, it is a thought that wholly tickles me and captivates me. i should get to work writing those girls some letters. may there be many (girls, that is, not letters), and may they be born to a world that we have improved mightily upon. as you are much closer to that possibility, the granddaughter possibility, than i, it must be incredibly sobering, and life-giving. second time in a row here you’ve taken my breath away…….(going back to the first, the god of the dance, to comment there as well…..)
Well this just makes me cry. Two reasons. First. My mother never passed any of this on to me, none of it, the keeping of the hearth and home stuff. The line ended in my family sometime before my mother. Hospital corners? Not likely. Rotating of the contents of the fridge? That was clearly a lesson I missed. My fridge looks like a game of Blockhead where the blocks are tupperwares filled with god knows what in various states of decomposition. Sprinkling the laundry before I iron? I iron? My poor little daughter, her poor little curly-locked four-year-old self, I can’t even braid her hair. She wants hairdo’s, see, and her short-haired mommy who always had a pixie cut her whole life cannot master the braid at this late juncture. What am I to do, what am I to pass on?Maybe I can tell her all about Reformation spirituality and ancient Christian monasticism, and this will give her all the practical knowledge she needs.Second. She just confided in me the other day, that little four-year-old, that she’s not quite ready to be a grown up yet. For instance, she said, I don’t know how to drive a car or to get to church by myself, mommy. Well, honey, I assured her, you have a long time until you’re a grown-up, and you will learn a lot along the way. For now, you’re still my little four-year-old. She paused. She asked. Mommy, when I’m sixteen, will you teach me everything I need to know about being a grown-up?May God give us mommys all the grace we need to usher our little ones into grown-up life.I must say, finally, bam, you may not have a little girl in your house to teach, but boy howdy do you have a lot of folks, women, men, all over everywhere that you pass on an awful lot of wisdom to. I think I’ve learned from you at this table, such as it is, nearly every day that you’ve written. I might have to consult a book, however, about fridge rotation as, thankfully, you’ve not fully explicated that here.
ahh, jcv, i reach across the table to dab at your tears. the thought of you in tears really does sadden me. and you cry for a reason so universal. the things we didn’t learn, the things that could not be taught by those in the position of teaching. i never learned what in the world mascara was. or hair goop. or how to care for my nails. i remember when my mama was thick in her long months of chemo, i did her toes. for the very first time. she’d never had anyone, never thought of it probably, doing her toes. i thought not too long ago about trying to teach her to do eyeliner. but we surrendered before starting. it’s sort of our joke. but maybe it has something to do with the chorus of little girls, fashion-aware girls, who always ask me, why don’t you change your chair? why do you wear the same shoes? hmm. i didn’t learn how to shop for shoes or clothes, really. and there are other things, other parts of me that i have learned on my own. some parts that matter deeply. and in the years of the struggle i think maybe the lesson is more of a triumph in the end. but isn’t it sad that we grow up so inept in so many ways? and so much of our growing old, growing wise, is the wrestling to learn or unlearn the lessons of long long ago. i love your story of your little wise child. it is priceless and deserving of being chiseled in marble. i’m not very good but i will try to teach you to braid. never mind the fridge trick. just throw out the stuff when it’s moldy. that’s a pretty good indicator. maybe you could teach me how to cut out a red bird from paper. or perhaps anything on the subject of early monasticism. i find it all utterly fascinating. just the other day i was researching, and fell deep, into the subject of matins. the early morning prayer of the nuns and the monks in the cloisters and the monasteries, which curiously i learned were modeled in some ways off the prayers of the jewish synagogue in the first century….but that is the story for another day. for today, here is my best lace linen hankie. xoxox