Those of you who read my blog know the makeup of my family. I am the
youngest of four, and my mother in order to maintain a decent semblance
of good housekeeping in a house full of messy children elicited our
help. In other words, she made us help. She divided the house chores
among all of us, and she had expectations for how those chores were
done. We worked in the yard, did our own laundry, grocery shopped, and,
of course, cleaned house -- which included taking our part in cleaning
up after meals.
When I was in elementary school, my mother went back to work full time
as a dietitian [what we now call a nutritionist] at Grady Hospital in
Atlanta. At each week’s end, she planned the menus for “supper” for the
upcoming week [written in her illegible scrawl in a stenographer's
pad] and made out the grocery list.
When my sister Margaret and I came home from school each afternoon, we
cooked the meal from her plans {frozen fish baked in the oven, cubed
steak fried in an iron skillet, corn beef and cabbage boiled into
oblivion}. In those days, mother defrosted frozen meats by leaving them
out on the counter all day oozing and dripping their juices [so barbaric by today's standards -- no wonder I can't do math]. By the time my sister and I
got home from school, the meat would be ready for cooking. The bulk of
the cooking responsibility went to my sister who was older and more
capable.
After dinner, my mother expected us to do the clean up.
These chores, for some reason, *rolls eyes* caused much infighting and feelings of being put upon.
We did it --- reluctantly and poorly, I’m sure.
In order to ease “too much” cooperation among siblings and to expedite
the process, my mother divided the dinner clean up chores into four
areas -- four of us, four jobs:
1. Table and chairs
2. Counters
3. Washing and drying
4. Sweeping the floor and taking out the trash
We found all of these jobs annoying if not downright intruding on our
lives. A formidable taskmaster as indefatigable as a battle ship, my
mother nagged and hounded us until we acquiesced, no matter how long it
took. She did it nightly, standing behind us as she could take on anyone
and outlast them. I now know that she could have done all the clean up
in half the time it took her to get us to do it, but...she was raising
us to take care of ourselves --- in all ways. :)
As I grew older and became more aware of all the sacrifices she made for
us, she did come behind us, sometimes late at night, and make sure that
the kitchen was cleaned to a level [much higher -- rewashing pans,
wiping down the counters more completely] so that none of us would die
of botulism, salmonella, or other painful deaths associated with poor
kitchen hygiene.
My siblings and I share a collective childhood memory: barely out of
diapers and not even able to speak in complete sentences, we each
remember standing on a stool in front of a sink full of hot sudsy water
and dirty dishes. Traumatic, huh? We used to say -- we washed dishes
right after we learned to walk.
LOL
Another memory that brings us bouts of laughter about the nightly
cleaning up of the kitchen is one, we swear is true, of my oldest
brother Hunter cunningly calling out first at the end of supper: “table
and chairs,"a claim to the job perceived to be “the easiest” of the four
ones designated by my mother.
I don’t know what the protocol was for who got to say first what he
wanted to do -- but ingrained in my and my other siblings’ memory is
that somehow Hunter got the easiest job. Every time. I’m sure it’s some
kind of intuitive jealously that went along with his being the oldest
and somehow more privileged in our eyes.
“Table and chairs” by definition meant clearing the table of dishes,
wiping down the table and the chairs that sat under it, and then being
done.
We viewed it as the dream job of cleaning up.
The second best job,"counters," involved clearing and wiping down all
counters. Containing only a single aisle, our kitchen was tiny,
especially in terms of today's kitchens, but we did have a walk in
pantry. On one side sat the sink with a short counter on either side,
and on the opposite side, a longer counter between the refrigerator and
stove was used for food preparation and storage.This counter space got
ridiculously messy with the detritus left over from getting a meal
ready.
Of course, the two worst jobs [and the last two that could be
completed] were washing and drying and then sweeping the floor and
taking out the trash. So, if this was my chore, I had to wait till the
others were through before I could complete mine.
It was a Communist set up, but it was one that my mother found worked
because it divided [not evenly in my humble opinion] but into four
distinctive jobs.
The job I hated the worst and which I seemed to get the most, of course,
was sweeping the floor and taking out the trash. It was the last job of
the cycle and usually completed at dusk or when it was just starting
to get dark -- the spookiest hour of the day.
Our small kitchen had an extension [that we called the den], and the
sweeping of the kitchen thus involved the sweeping of the den as well.
See? Worst. Childhood. Job. Ever.
Since the counter job was done before the sweeping and usually done by
my brothers, instead of sweeping the crumbs from the counters and the
crumbs from the table and chairs directly into the trash can or into
their hands to put in the trash, they ultimately just pushed it to the
floor. Voila! More sweeping for me or whomever was stuck with Job Four
--
Usually me -- cuz --- well, I have the best memory.
Taking out the trash was the last of the last four jobs; the trash, wet
and gross, dumped into paper bags [before garbage disposals] and handled
with as little body contact as possible, had to be taken to the outside
pails. I did this job, I'm pretty sure, more than my share.
The
location of said garbage pails lay inside the backyard fence at the end
of the driveway; in order to get there, I carried it out the back door,
where the dim back porch light barely lit the dark, down the eight
steps, and around the corner of the house to the pails. In the middle of
that trek, the eerie light from the back picture window made Venetian
blind crazy patterns on the grass.
Scary dark. It was always scary dark. Shadows. Gray areas. Boogey man.
Even though I walked the trash out, the return trip was different. After
lifting the lid on the garbage can and dropping the paper bag with a
dull thud, I looked over my shoulder fully expecting the boogey man. In
anticipation of him, I ran like a fool back around the house, up the
steps, and slammed the door behind me, breathless, but safely back in
the hum of the house.
Taking out the trash was such an irrational fear...
but it was one of many I had as a child:
stepping off the bed in the dark to turn off the over head light,
allowing my hand to dangle below the bed rails,
sleeping with the closet door open,
crawl spaces,
the trunk of Halloween costumes in the attic,
the coal furnace in my aunts' house basement,
my aunts' basement,
and the recurring childhood dream of Ced Gunter's daddy cutting off the head of a witch.
And all that, my blog readers, is the stuff of another blog. :)
