Saturday, January 26, 2008

I am not my mother

When I was a kid...

If the butter was cold I'd scrape the top of the stick with the knife into curls thin enough to spread on my toast leaving rows of concave trenches along the creamy yellow bar. This would irritate my mom to no end. Thou shalt not mutilate the butter.

Or I'd pick up the stick of butter and swipe it across my toast. Leaving crumbs, of course, on the end of the stick. And again, "Who did this to the butter!"

Or I'd put the butter plate in the microwave to soften it so I wouldn't leave the telltale deep plowed furrows or even crumbs. Except it'd melt into a puddle. No escaping now.

Thirty-some years later the butter in my house is always a mess, and I don't care. The bath towels are not folded lengthwise perfectly in thirds, then in half and half again making identical stacks that fit precisely in the color-sorted linen closet. There are at least seven loads of laundry waiting to be done, probably ten, in the laundry room and quasi-sorted in piles on the hall floor. And I don't have the foggiest notion what's for dinner next week.

I'm glad the butter is a mess, it makes me smile.

4 comments:

Joy T. said...

Crumbs in the butter...yuck. Yet that's the only way my butter seems to look on any given day. When all the kids have moved out? I will no longer have crumbs in my butter. And I'll be damn near giddy about it! I know. But it's the little things in life. And Michelle says hi :o)

AM Kingsfield said...

Amen!

just me said...

I know you always have ADHD to fall back on, but could it be your laundry is a conscious effort NOT to be your mother?

In contrast, when my mother would visit, she would help with my laundry - but didn't fold it because she knew how fussy I was about how the laundry was folded. I still am, but only about my own clothing... I never do my kids' stuff is never as neatly because I know they don't care... I just avoid looking in their drawers.

And thankfully, I now have a cleaning lady who washes and folds the sheets - that was always my most-hated chore!

Lorraine said...

I had a boyfriend once who criticized the way I folded my bath towels. Because it wasn't the way his mother did it. Needless to say...