My mom raised us to fear the wooden spoon. It was kept in the "squeaky" drawer of the kitchen. Most times you wouldn't even hear her say "Don't make me get my spoon!", instead, we'd hear the sound of that drawer. You could hear it from any room in the house! Not to imply that we were ever abused, we weren't. We were just raised in that generation of "spare the rod, spoil the child." It didn't take very many personal meetings with that spoon before we learned to not ripple the water enough to really tork her off.
She's also a obsessive compulsive housecleaner. Everything had a place, and was to remain in that place. The house was filled with nick-nacks of various sorts, and God forbid, we'd have a friend over who would move one, we'd spend forever trying to make sure everything was back in it's correct spot.
We were kids in the 70's, and the upstairs had green shag carpet, the downstairs had orange shag carpet. My mother had a tool called a carpet rake. After she vacuumed, it would be one of us kids' job to take the rake, and rake the carpet til it was standing straight up, in perfect "raked" lines.
Our house was the only one in the neighborhood with a ba
throom floor clean enough to eat off of.
I remember many a time waking up in the downstairs ba
throom, which was our tornado shelter. They'd put us kids in there, meanwhile my dad would be outside on the patio, watching the storm, and my mom would be upstairs cleaning the house!! My dad would holler up there "if there's a tornado Joanne, no one is ever going to know if the house was clean or not!"
I love my mom like crazy. She just turned 72, and lives across the country, and I've not seen her for a long time. God bless her, she still makes us all up Christmas stockings from Santa and sends them every year, there's a greeting card in the mailbox for every holiday you can imagine. She still insists on mowing her own lawn, hanging her own Christmas lights, she bakes and sends out everyones favorite treats.
I hope when I grow up, that I will be just like her. I love you mom.