A strong streak of perfectionism runs through the women in my family.
If you were to visit me and see my housekeeping you might be dubious when I tell you I am a perfectionist. It’s just that I don’t direct my perfectionism to being a perfect housekeeper. My grandmother was! It wasn’t hyperbole to say you could eat off her floor. You really could! But, of course, she would have been aghast at any food falling on her floor. My mother complained that Gram’s housekeeping came before everything else when she was a child, that when the family headed out the door for fun they often had to wait while Gram finished cleaning.
My mother rebelled before me. She went to college and to work. Although she told us she didn’t want to be like her mother, we cleaned the house every Saturday morning. She never had any reason to fear a drop-in visit from the minister, or anyone else for that matter. The unexpected guest was always greeted with a clean house. One afternoon Mrs. M__, who lived across the street, gossiped to my mother that another neighbor washed her kitchen floor but never washed her baseboards. My mother laughed thinking she didn’t wash hers either.
“Oh, but you work!” Mrs. M__ was quick to recover.
I saw my mother washing the baseboards after that.
Before my mother went back to work she stayed home, hung starched and ironed ruffled unbleached muslin curtains in the living room, refinished antique furniture and embroidered. She did a sampler in cross stitch when I was very young which hung over the small kitchen table where my family ate most of our meals all the years of my child hood and all the years of my children’s childhood.
Now she is moving out of the house where the sampler hung and whose baseboards she washed into a one bedroom apartment. She wants her daughters and grandchildren to take her things, hoping we will value the things she valued.
I read the embroidered words,
If you were to visit me and see my housekeeping you might be dubious when I tell you I am a perfectionist. It’s just that I don’t direct my perfectionism to being a perfect housekeeper. My grandmother was! It wasn’t hyperbole to say you could eat off her floor. You really could! But, of course, she would have been aghast at any food falling on her floor. My mother complained that Gram’s housekeeping came before everything else when she was a child, that when the family headed out the door for fun they often had to wait while Gram finished cleaning.
My mother rebelled before me. She went to college and to work. Although she told us she didn’t want to be like her mother, we cleaned the house every Saturday morning. She never had any reason to fear a drop-in visit from the minister, or anyone else for that matter. The unexpected guest was always greeted with a clean house. One afternoon Mrs. M__, who lived across the street, gossiped to my mother that another neighbor washed her kitchen floor but never washed her baseboards. My mother laughed thinking she didn’t wash hers either.
“Oh, but you work!” Mrs. M__ was quick to recover.
I saw my mother washing the baseboards after that.
Before my mother went back to work she stayed home, hung starched and ironed ruffled unbleached muslin curtains in the living room, refinished antique furniture and embroidered. She did a sampler in cross stitch when I was very young which hung over the small kitchen table where my family ate most of our meals all the years of my child hood and all the years of my children’s childhood.
Now she is moving out of the house where the sampler hung and whose baseboards she washed into a one bedroom apartment. She wants her daughters and grandchildren to take her things, hoping we will value the things she valued.
I read the embroidered words,
“Hearts are happy, health is good, where loving hands prepare the food"
I told her I had always liked it, that it was a warm memory from my childhood.“Here, take it now,” she handed it to me.
I held the wooded frame in my hands and looked at the stitching. It was not well stitched. I felt a moment of embarrassment for my mother. She had not known to carefully separate each of the plies of the embroidery floss before stitching with two or three to prevent the threads from twisting. Nor had she known to make sure all her stitches crossed in the same direction. The sampler had hung next to a beautifully stitched sampler a friend gave to her on her retirement. Had she known her own work was of an inferior quality? Did it bother her?
After she went back to work she decorated with the knick knacks, paintings and other souvenirs she collected on her travels rather than with things she had made. Those aren’t the things I want from her house. I want the sampler. That it was not well made did not make me value it less. It spoke to me of home, of a good time that is now gone. I took it for my son and daughter-in-law and now it hangs in their kitchen.
I wonder if my mother gave up hand work because she didn’t have the time or interest to do it better. I wonder if she felt that if it she couldn’t do it right, she shouldn’t do it at all.
I held the wooded frame in my hands and looked at the stitching. It was not well stitched. I felt a moment of embarrassment for my mother. She had not known to carefully separate each of the plies of the embroidery floss before stitching with two or three to prevent the threads from twisting. Nor had she known to make sure all her stitches crossed in the same direction. The sampler had hung next to a beautifully stitched sampler a friend gave to her on her retirement. Had she known her own work was of an inferior quality? Did it bother her?
After she went back to work she decorated with the knick knacks, paintings and other souvenirs she collected on her travels rather than with things she had made. Those aren’t the things I want from her house. I want the sampler. That it was not well made did not make me value it less. It spoke to me of home, of a good time that is now gone. I took it for my son and daughter-in-law and now it hangs in their kitchen.
I wonder if my mother gave up hand work because she didn’t have the time or interest to do it better. I wonder if she felt that if it she couldn’t do it right, she shouldn’t do it at all.
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