Mornings with my Mother
May. 15th, 2010 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memelainaUnlike the mothers of most people who were children in the 50s, my mother always worked. I can't remember a time when she was in the house during the day on weekdays, and I can't remember ever being distressed or concerned about it. She left for her civil service job in downtown DC every morning about eight. So it was the time before eight that I remember as mornings with my mother.
Now I have inherited from my mother a propensity for burning toast. I thought about that this morning as I made a couple of slices of cinnamon toast in the toaster oven. As a child cinnamon toast was a special treat, and I, the youngest and the one up earliest, was the only one who might secretly know that the reason we had cinnamon toast was because mother had burned the morning's toast (which was buttered and cooked under the broiler in the gas oven) and had scraped off the burned layer, spread it with cinnamon butter, and oh-so-carefully tucked it briefly under the broiler again. What was it like, I think now as an adult, to burn the toast that was breakfast for a family of six children? Mother always made it seem like a big joke, but I realize now that there was no place to go at 7am in the 1950s to get another loaf of bread, and likely no money with which to buy it.
As the youngest I remember getting up very early, and always finding mother already in the kitchen and Daddy already gone to work. He was a Master Sargeant in the Army and while we lived, during my childhood, consistently in a house in Takoma Park, he was stationed either out of the country (about half the time) or at various bases from Fort McNair downtown to Fort Belvoir way out in Virginia or Fort Meade up north in Maryland. He left the house each day before even a three year old woke up. I would come downstairs and mother would spread a clean dishtowel on the counter and lift me up to sit and watch while she made breakfast (toast to go with cereal and milk) and made lunches. When I was very little there were usually only three or four lunches. Each was two sandwiches (one sweet like peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and Karo, and one meat - mostly baloney and cheese or deviled ham or egg salad). Each sandwich was wrapped neatly in waxed paper, folding the ends over into nice points like wrapping a christmas present. There were usually two cookies (like Oreos or Vanilla wafers) and a piece of fruit. The stack of brown paper bags would come out and each child's name would be written in big manuscript letters on the front of the bag - Diana, Juanita, David, John - and then the lunches would go into the bags, the tops would be rolled down, and the bags lined up neatly on the closed keyboard of the piano that stood by the front door. All the lunches were the same. Why did it matter that there were names on the bags? But it did matter, and when in later years I joined the lunch bag brigade it was enormously important to me that I had MY bag with MY name on it.
As I got older and slept later, Mother still continued her routine. Daddy still left early, Mother still got up well before six to start her morning routine. Probably over the years each of us in turn had taken that early morning seat on the counter, and each grown out of it. I remember Mother singing in the mornings as I waited in my warm bed to be called to get up for school. She sang Negro spirituals like Swing Low Sweet Chariot and 20s pop like Three Little Fishes in the Itty Bitty Pool. She always said that she didn't sing well, but I liked her voice, and I liked listening to her first thing in the morning or last thing at night when there were occasional lullabies.
The last half hour before she left for work was more hectic because all of us had to be awake, dressed, and at the breakfast table before she left. There were lost clothes to be found, notes for school to be signed, all sorts of last minute bits and pieces. I think getting out of the house and onto the way to work (at her nice, orderly office across Lafayette Park from the White House) must have been a relief. What was it like for her, I wonder, for all those years to get up so early to make coffee for her husband, make breakfast and lunches for all those children, see them waked and washed and ready for school, all before starting her own day at work?
Now I have inherited from my mother a propensity for burning toast. I thought about that this morning as I made a couple of slices of cinnamon toast in the toaster oven. As a child cinnamon toast was a special treat, and I, the youngest and the one up earliest, was the only one who might secretly know that the reason we had cinnamon toast was because mother had burned the morning's toast (which was buttered and cooked under the broiler in the gas oven) and had scraped off the burned layer, spread it with cinnamon butter, and oh-so-carefully tucked it briefly under the broiler again. What was it like, I think now as an adult, to burn the toast that was breakfast for a family of six children? Mother always made it seem like a big joke, but I realize now that there was no place to go at 7am in the 1950s to get another loaf of bread, and likely no money with which to buy it.
As the youngest I remember getting up very early, and always finding mother already in the kitchen and Daddy already gone to work. He was a Master Sargeant in the Army and while we lived, during my childhood, consistently in a house in Takoma Park, he was stationed either out of the country (about half the time) or at various bases from Fort McNair downtown to Fort Belvoir way out in Virginia or Fort Meade up north in Maryland. He left the house each day before even a three year old woke up. I would come downstairs and mother would spread a clean dishtowel on the counter and lift me up to sit and watch while she made breakfast (toast to go with cereal and milk) and made lunches. When I was very little there were usually only three or four lunches. Each was two sandwiches (one sweet like peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and Karo, and one meat - mostly baloney and cheese or deviled ham or egg salad). Each sandwich was wrapped neatly in waxed paper, folding the ends over into nice points like wrapping a christmas present. There were usually two cookies (like Oreos or Vanilla wafers) and a piece of fruit. The stack of brown paper bags would come out and each child's name would be written in big manuscript letters on the front of the bag - Diana, Juanita, David, John - and then the lunches would go into the bags, the tops would be rolled down, and the bags lined up neatly on the closed keyboard of the piano that stood by the front door. All the lunches were the same. Why did it matter that there were names on the bags? But it did matter, and when in later years I joined the lunch bag brigade it was enormously important to me that I had MY bag with MY name on it.
As I got older and slept later, Mother still continued her routine. Daddy still left early, Mother still got up well before six to start her morning routine. Probably over the years each of us in turn had taken that early morning seat on the counter, and each grown out of it. I remember Mother singing in the mornings as I waited in my warm bed to be called to get up for school. She sang Negro spirituals like Swing Low Sweet Chariot and 20s pop like Three Little Fishes in the Itty Bitty Pool. She always said that she didn't sing well, but I liked her voice, and I liked listening to her first thing in the morning or last thing at night when there were occasional lullabies.
The last half hour before she left for work was more hectic because all of us had to be awake, dressed, and at the breakfast table before she left. There were lost clothes to be found, notes for school to be signed, all sorts of last minute bits and pieces. I think getting out of the house and onto the way to work (at her nice, orderly office across Lafayette Park from the White House) must have been a relief. What was it like for her, I wonder, for all those years to get up so early to make coffee for her husband, make breakfast and lunches for all those children, see them waked and washed and ready for school, all before starting her own day at work?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-05-15 09:51 pm (UTC)Pleasant, I'd like to think. I'm sure if it seemed burdensome, the oldest child (or two) could have been drafted to help out.