Don’t Tell Mom

How many times has that been said from sibling to sibling through the ages? I’ll bet Neanderthal children kept secrets from their mothers!

My brother and I were no exception. Sometimes it was mischief. Sometimes it was a mishap.

Once we tried to knock a bird’s nest out of a tree. We weren’t trying to harm the birds. We were kids! We hadn’t thought it through. We just wanted the bird’s nest as a trophy. My older (by 18 months) brother had the brilliant idea to toss rocks straight up from the base of the tree to knock the nest loose. We hadn’t studied physics yet.

On about the third try, the rock returned to earth, making contact with my brother’s head along the way. As happens, his head immediately began to bleed profusely. I panicked and made ready to sprint for home. Curt placed his baseball cap firmly over his bleeding head, the blood making rivulets down his forehead, and yelled, “Don’t tell Mom!”

We had a club. Under the back porch. It was a great place for a clubhouse if you didn’t mind the spiders – and I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to be included with the boys.

There were no girls my age in our neighborhood. I had to play with boys. Kids play up. You never played with kids younger than you by more than 2 years – unless you took them to school for show and tell, but more about that later. The only girl close to my age was about 3 years older than me, and she was looking to play with the girls a year or two older than herself, so she wouldn’t have much to do with me. She had a younger brother, though, who was the same age as my brother, so I played with the boys. The boy who lived upstairs from us was a year or two younger than me, but Curt included him as well. So the three boys decided to form a club when our dad cleaned out the space under the porch. We were small, so the space seemed huge!

At first the boys didn’t want to let me join the club, but they needed a sign for the clubhouse, and I was the artist in the family. So, in exchange for painting a sign – that read “The Four Star Club” with a big star in the center – I became a member. We had a large trunk filled with comic books that we tried to read in the dim light filtering through the lattice that surrounded our space. I think we had a couple of old chairs or boxes to sit on too.

One day, bored with squinting at the comic books, we decided we needed an activity. Some purpose for our organization. Poisoning rival clubs sounded like a good idea. “Don’t tell Mom” we agreed.

We spent the next several weeks picking through our neighbor’s garbage cans that they kept conveniently near the alley that ran through the middle of our block. All the back yards opened on that alley. Most of the houses had garages there as well. We had to be very careful not to get caught with our heads in the garbage. Our moms would think it very unsanitary!

We searched for glass jars and bottles. Colored glass was particularly valued. We’d surreptitiously carry our finds back to the clubhouse, stopping only to clean them under the outside tap. Then we smashed them between two bricks and ground the glass to a fine powder. Our intention was to substitute the ground glass for sugar and feed it to our enemies. They would die a slow and agonizing death. We almost filled an empty soup can with the deadly stuff! What were we thinking? Don’t tell Mom!

My parents had friends from church who lived in the block behind us. They had a daughter about 2 years younger than me – Susie. She was cute like a little doll!

I took Susie to Kindergarten one day for Show and Tell. I can’t imagine now how our mothers or the school approved of this, but it happened! It turned sour, though, when it was time to sit on the rug for story time. All the other girls wanted to mother her and a scuffle broke out to see who would get to sit by her. I don’t remember who won, but I was miffed because I was the one who brought her so she should sit by me!

When we wanted to play together, Susie’s mother would send her with the postman on his rounds. When he got to our house, she came in and we spent the afternoon playing. I don’t remember how she got home, maybe her mother made the trip around the blocks, or through the back yards to pick her up.

When Susie and I got older, we had some great adventures together. We swung on her mother’s clothesline like acrobats until we caused a loose pole to fall over. We never told her mother! We pretended to be explorers, climbing the hills in the pasture by my house like mountains. We pitched a tent and spent the night out there. Once, we decided to explore the storm drains near her house. There was a large drainage basin in a creek bed near her house and we could walk into the storm drain opening from the basin. We secretly gathered flashlights and some rope for good measure and set off to explore. We walked for what we thought must be miles – until the tunnel became too small to navigate and the water was up to our ankles. We emerged through a storm drain blocks away from where we entered. I can’t imagine what our parents would have said if they’d known! Don’t tell Mom!

Ironing a Sheet

I ironed the duvet cover today, and as I worked the steam rose in fragrant clouds carrying the fresh scent of cotton. It cleared. There appeared my mother’s hands ironing a sheet. She worked with love, deftly smoothing the wrinkles as the iron erased the creases. What was damp chaos became dry flat order beneath her expert hands. In that brief moment of lowly homely task, I stood connected through time to my mother, dignified and proud in her mid-century role.

It was a simple time. I learned household tasks by watching, then doing. I took great satisfaction in ironing the wrinkles out of my doll blankets against the carpet with my toy iron. When I was old enough, my mother let me iron pillowcases and my father’s handkerchiefs.

Ironing was just one of the weekly chores I attended with my mother. Monday was washing, Tuesday ironing, Wednesday mending, Thursday cleaning, Friday market. She kept mostly to that schedule. It made things orderly at our home. My mother wasn’t a stickler for neatness but our house was mostly clean and ready for company. I was never hesitant to invite friends in.

Today’s sensibilities demean the homely chores that once defined womanhood. We think we should be running companies, leading marches, doing important work. But ironing a sheet was once important work – still is. Making home is important work.

Now that I am old – older than my mother when she stopped ironing – I treasure those days spent at her side, learning to be a woman.