Summers at Our House
When I was
growing up nothing ever seemed to change at my house. After Daddy died Mama began
a rigid routine that she followed religiously for each of the four seasons.
Summer was dedicated to growing a large garden, harvesting the fruits of this
garden, and canning or freezing what was harvested along with doing the other
daily chores of running a household. Each week we repeated the same activities
of washing clothes, cooking three meals daily, canning beans, beets, berries,
and making pickles or freezing corn, strawberries, beans, apples, mustard
greens, and okra. Mama always appeared to be the happiest when she was
following her routines which varied little.
All summer long she was busy preparing food for the winter months and
doing other daily monotonous tasks.
Stability had become Mama's focus and my nemesis.
My focus,
however, was to make each day different and creative. I hated these routines
and sameness. I dreamed of daily variety; new foods, new chores, escape from
chores, some rare new event; trips away from the farm; and new people. While
Mama's theme was repeat, repeat, repeat; my focus was change, change, change. I
rarely voiced discontent about the sameness because I knew from past efforts to
make changes that nothing would change. I often felt trapped by our farm life.
My saving grace
each summer from this daily monotony was weekend visits from uncles, aunts and
cousins. Often they showed up unannounced and stayed as long as they wished
because there was fresh cooked food, a tidy house, and listening ears, namely
Mama, Daddy and me. Almost all of Mama's nine siblings were great humorists and
storytellers. Before Daddy's death at
age 64, he was right in the middle of these storytelling episodes. He loved a
good story. These stories were mostly about ourselves or people in our
communities. Aside from some exaggeration of a fact or two all the stories were
true, mostly focused on some mishap or embarrassment to the teller.
Occasionally there was a story involving a stranger or friend of the family.
These were stories that made us laugh at ourselves and our relatives, and they
were never mean spirited. At least once
or twice in the summer a visiting cousin from Texas or out of state would join
in these sessions. I basically grew up in the middle of humor stories.
Many years have
passed since the slide shows and the beginning of my adult life. I have kept my
promise to myself to travel as much as I could to see the US and other
countries. I am very pleased that I've been able to see what I have seen, but my
list is still long. I know I will not get it all seen, but all that matters to
me now is that I keep traveling until either my health, age, or both, became
prohibitive. I guess I should thank my Mama for creating an environment that
pushed me out of her safe routine world and into a larger world, but I don't think
this was what she planned.
