Published: May 09, 2009 12:22 am      

DAY: To Mother, with love

We have a day set aside to honor the link between God and us, and it is called “Mother’s Day.” That is our way of letting the world know that our mothers are among the most treasured of all people.

For this writer, in our family, it should have been Mother’s Day every day. She was the one who bonded with each of us for nine months while carrying out all the things that a family needs.

Our mother was a dark-haired brunette with pretty eyes, and she could hear us coming, it seems, from blocks away. She even had a great sense of smell. It didn’t take her long before she would tell us that we needed a bath. I laugh at that because taking a bath back in the days of old meant boiling water on the cook stove and then pouring it in a large wash tub – and then catching us and putting us in that tub. The water was never too hot, nor was it too cold. As you might say, it was just right.

Mom was also sharp in knowing whether we had our schoolwork done, as well as our chores. It really amazed me as to how she knew if we were getting into mischief, as if maybe she had eyes behind her head. And how about making the bed? Mom would sort of give us the eye as we would finish up, and then she would say, “You could do better next time.”

Mom was a lady in every sense of the word, and all our friends respected her because she seemed like she always had time to fix us up with popcorn balls and some Kool-Aid. And she, many times, took the time to sit at her piano and play her favorite songs and either hum or sing a little too.

As far as cooking was concerned, she was the boss in the kitchen and she was always teaching us to cook different meals. She taught us how to make some great coffee, and she could bake the best biscuits and some mouth-watering cornbread that could be eaten either with beans or sometimes with some of her homemade syrup or her canned jelly. She made her own fried mush, which is something I still do these days. You talk about fried potatoes being good enough to just make a sandwich smothered with the butter she made, that was really good.

Mom liked to use starch a lot in her wash. And sometimes she had to really water-down the clothes before she ironed them. You didn’t find a wrinkle in those clothes. Mom would hang the clothes out in all kinds of weather. She always seemed to know when it was going to rain, and she washed clothes accordingly. She had a long clothesline and it would be propped up with a long pole to keep the clothes from touching the ground. There were a few times when we would be running through the yard and that pole had not been propped up. You could get clothes-lined very fast.

Mom had her own grape barber and it always was full of good grapes in season. She had her own chicken yard, and she sent us out to get the eggs out of the roost. There were a few times when we were pecked at.

When Mom was going to fix chicken for her family, she would go out either with a hatchet and cut the head off or she would just wring that chicken’s neck until it would come off. You could see that head flopping around for several minutes. Needless to say, when she did these things, she always let us watch. I always thought that it was her way of saying that she could wring our necks if we were bad.

When Mom was around we were perfect angels. We were her angels. Bless that wonderful lady called Mother.

Ray “Uncle Ray” Day is a weekly contributor to the Kokomo Tribune. Contact him at (765) 457-3819 or uncleray@earthlink.net