A short list of chores for Mom ~ May 6, 1993

David Heiller

It’s late on a Monday night. I should have written this hours ago. But I was too busy transplanting catnip and trumpet vines that my mother gave to me.

I was going to write this column about Mom, what with Mother’s Day around the corner. I was going to find some poignant way to say how much she means to me.

But I ended up planting three catnip plants and four trumpet vines instead. Mom would prefer it that way.

Never put off tomorrow what you can do today, she says, and I do too. It’s one of my favorite sayings.

We visited Mom last weekend. It rained most of the time, but that was fine. Rainy days in Brownsville are fine. You can sit and visit at the kitchen table, play the banjo or a game of Scrabble, maybe even watch the Twins play a game or national TV (they won!), and not feel too much guilt. It’s raining.

At one point on Saturday, I told Mom I was going to take the plastic off the basement door. That was on my weekend job list, along with trimming the trumpet vines and taking the glass off the storm door. It was a short list, as usual.

“It’s raining out. The water will run right down your neck,” she said, and she talked me out of that strenuous job without much effort. I could feel those rain drops falling three stories onto my head.

Fern, David, Malika and Noah

She wasn’t always this easy on me, and her kids weren’t always willing workers. Sometimes in the winter, the ice would build up on the porch, and she would ask Danny and me to chip it off with the ice spud. But Danny had his own theories about when that ice was ready to chip. The temperature had to be just right. The ice had to be slightly melted, so that when you chopped, it would come loose in big slabs. That happened about twice a winter, which wasn’t enough for Mom.

When she had finally asked enough times, she would take the ice spud herself, and start chipping away with quick, angry jabs. She was a prize fighter with that spud. Then Danny would slowly get off the couch and shut off the football game and I would follow his shining example and we would chop ice off the porch.

It was a trick of Mom’s that never failed, and even now, late on a Monday night 250 miles from home, I’m starting to feel guilty about not taking that plastic off the basement door, rain or no rain.

I’d like to say that Mom worked us hard when we were kids, but she didn’t. My sisters did the dishes and housework, as was customary in the 1960s. Danny and I took out the garbage, and burned the trash, and spaded the garden and spudded the porch. I work much harder now than I ever did as a kid. Maybe Mom knew that would be the case, and let me enjoy my childhood while I had the chance. I’m glad she did.

I asked Mom last weekend about the work she did as a child. She downplayed it as usual. She’s not one to brag about walking to school and back home, barefoot, through the snow, uphill both ways. But she remembered one of her jobs was filling the buckets with water and then doing dishes. Her mom would ask, “Have you got your water for the dishes yet?” It was always YOUR water, Mom said. It was expected of her. It was her job, no questions asked, no whining, no excuses.

There was nothing unusual about it, which is maybe why older folks don’t brag about how hard they worked. Still, I like to hear little stories like that. It helps me understand and respect Mom and her generation.

I asked her what she did to pass the time when she was a girl. Did she listen to the radio?

“Radio?” Mom asked, trying not to smile. “What radio?” They didn’t have a radio. Sometimes they would borrow their grandparents’ radio. There was no electricity, but radios had batteries. But batteries were expensive, so you couldn’t just turn on the radio any old time.

You know these stories of life on the northern plains in the 1920s and 30s, but you can never hear them enough times, especially when they are coaxed from your mother on a rainy day.

And you can never comprehend them fully, not in this day of satellite TVs and every luxury imaginable. It’s like looking at the stars on a clear night, and trying to figure out just how big the universe is and just how small you are.

That’s why I like to visit Mom. A pot of soup will be boiling when we arrive. There will be homemade cookies, and Spring Grove strawberry pop, and Jeopardy on TV, and a few stories about the good old days that weren’t all good.

And a list of chores that almost all get done.

Happy Mother’s Day.