My calendar is confusing to me. Oh, I know it is May and usually can figure out what day of the week it is. However, each day on the calendar is written with some sort of code by me, which lets me know where I am supposed to be and at what time. However, I sometimes write something down that makes no sense.
On May 7, I had written, “sleep -12:30.” I don’t know what that meant, and since I didn’t go anywhere to sleep at that time, and no one called me to say I was late, I assume my brain and fingers were sleeping when I wrote that down. I was tired that day, and I must admit I napped from time to time.
Since this is Mother’s Day weekend, I naturally think of my own mother, and how I don’t remember her keeping a calendar. Oh, there was one hanging on a wall here and there, but she didn’t really write things down. The main reason for that is she seldom did anything except work.
Her work was at home, be it in the garden, the barn, or the house. When I think of my mother, I think of her hands buried deep in some task.
It didn’t matter if she was tending to fuzzy little baby chicks or checking on the progress of her raspberry patch, she always had the right touch for the job. My mother had no need of a pattern in order to sew a dress, nor did she need a recipe book to make countless tasty meals.
Probably the thing I remember best is the rising bread dough that was a twice-a-week ritual. Whatever else was going on in her world, she kept the family supplied with fresh baked bread, and usually some type of sweet rolls. Sometimes it would be caramel rolls, baked in a cast iron fry pan, other times cinnamon rolls, or thumb prints, with jelly filling the indent in the middle.
I recall sometimes she would start that dough, and then we would go to town to shop. Then, when we would get home, it would often be raised enough to start rolling over the side of the pan. That always upset her , but she would get straight to work in punching it down and getting it to the next step in the process.
Mom didn’t need a calendar to tell her what needed doing when. She had only to look at the state of our cupboards or our closets. Did she need to knit some more mittens or woolen socks? Was it time to bake bread or make one of her special angel food cakes?
I didn’t always appreciate my mother when I was growing up. Mothers do so many behind the scenes things that it is difficult to notice at times. Now that she has been gone for so many years, I can easily reminisce about the little things she would do that I hardly noticed.
While my life seems busy, rushing here and there, I often wonder if I could keep up to her pace, and I kind of doubt that I could. Maybe life without a calendar is a good thing?
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