Smell the Roses

This Mother’s Day, my mind went back to my life with Mom on the farm.  I think a farmer’s wife with children needs a special kind of resilience to survive the yapping demands of barn work, house work, garden work, and church work.  Do you see a common denominator?  When did she have time to “smell the roses?”  (For those of you who don’t know, that term means “Slow down: take time to enjoy life!”)

Before we children were old enough to help much on the farm, Mom’s daily early morning routine involved helping Dad milk the cows and do barn work.  Then she’d come into the house, wake us four children for school, get baby George out of the crib, pack our lunches and make breakfast.  After that, she diligently pursued the work for that day, whether it was doing the laundry, ironing, mending, planting or weeding the garden, gathering produce and canning or freezing it for preservation.  Of course, she fixed dinner for Dad and any hired hands (the noon meal was called dinner because it was the main meal) and then planned and fixed the evening meal we called supper.  In the evening, she went to the barn to help with chores again.

On Fridays, she cleaned the entire upstairs of our large farmhouse, stripped the bed sheets, put on fresh linens, then bunched up all the dirty linens and rolled them down two flights of stairs to the cellar floor where the wringer washing machine was waiting for laundry day on Monday.  Washing and drying clothes was an all-day job; I hung many a load of clean, wet laundry on our clothesline in the back yard.

Saturday mornings, she got up at 4:30 to clean the downstairs before she had to go to the barn to help milk the cows, so she’d have enough time to prepare food for company on Sundays, and then prepare her study materials for teaching a Sunday school class at church.

The two oldest of my brothers and I helped with all farm work as well.  Morning and evening, I helped with the milking and washed/sterilized the milking machines afterwards.  When I was eleven years old, Mom taught me to do laundry and ironing.  On Saturdays, my job was to wash the legs of the dining room and kitchen chairs, dust, and clean the tub and toilet.  More than once Mom found me sitting in front of the bookshelf reading a book that caught my fancy as I dusted.  I still remember the words I hated to hear: “First word—then play!”  Reading was ever so much more fun!  Another job of mine was to scrub ten pounds of potatoes, put them in a large pot to cook to make “jacket potatoes” for the coming week.  They were super-handy for making Dutch fried potatoes or casseroles.  We also baked cakes, pies and cookies for company on Sunday, because we often had guests on Sunday after church.  Mom needed lots of cookies for lunches and hungry boys who raided the large walk-in pantry. 

Mom also had a huge garden to tend, produce that needed picking and preserving: strawberries in season, peas, beans, tomatoes, and corn that we used to sell by the dozen to area customers.  (How well I remember the many dark green rows of corn wet with dew and the wet, unpleasant "slap-slap" of my Mennonite skirt against my legs as we picked golden Iochief corn early in the morning).  A farmer’s wife had no time for vacations.  Lord knows, with life constantly barking at her, Mom could have used one!

When I was fifteen years old, Dad had to have what was to be the first of three open heart surgeries.   

Mom’s parents and her sister Fannie took my parents to Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Dad checked into the hospital.  Having never been away from any of from my family and children, Mom suddenly found herself alone in a strange city with a husband who was miles away in a hospital, not knowing if he’d live or die.  She had to learn to hail a taxi morning and evening to get a ride to the hospital.  Mom slept alone in a strange bed, ate breakfast alone, and was alone at the hospital.  She was there for two weeks until Dad was released to go home.

Grandparents Claude and Ollie were with us kids at the farm house during that time.  A hospital bed was waiting in the living room for Dad when he came home from Shadyside.  Mom was so glad to be home again, and with Daddy on the mend, she resumed her duties in the barn and daily routines as before.  To take Dad’s place in the work load, we also had a hired hand boarding with us, and Mom cooked for him and did his laundry too.  For reasons I’ll not go into, he didn’t last long, so they hired his brother, who didn’t last long either. 

Because Dad needed help on the farm, my oldest brother, Stan, had to quit high school and finish his education by correspondence.  Things began to settle down; Daddy was doing well and able to go to the barn and help out a bit.

Then Mom fell apart.  Because of her stress over Dad, she had a nervous breakdown after she relaxed—so said Dr. Rock.  She told me whenever she’d see everyone come in for breakfast after milking was done, she felt like screaming and pulling her hair out.  (She never did.) Dr. Rock told her he could give her medication for it, but the best remedy, he said, was to go somewhere quiet and relax.

I had to stay home from school on Mondays to do the laundry and help Mom.  I remember falling asleep in Mr. Slifko’s science class, and the awful embarrassment I felt when he called on me to answer a question.  Everyone laughed, but I didn’t think it was funny.  I barely squeaked by with a “D” in Mr. Deeter’s history class because I had no time to do my homework.  Our family became especially closely-knit as we did what had to be done.  We were like a team of horses hitched together, each pulling his weight.   

Leaving the farm for a vacation (even a short one) was out of the question. So Dad had an ingenious idea to help Mom: he and the boys built a simple 10 x 10 cabin covered with homosote in the woods above the “clearing” on our farm.  The cabin sported two old chairs and a small fold-away table on one side of the wall, with a bed on the opposite wall.  Two windows could be propped open to let in fresh air.  (I had a few camping trips there with my cousins, Pauline and Judy, and also my friend Ruth Yoder who lived on a neighboring farm).  Many an evening, our family went up to that cabin, and sometimes enjoyed the luxury of roasting hot dogs in the little stone fireplace Dad and the boys assembled. Mom sat in a chair surrounded by the peaceful beauty of nature, looked at the sky, and watched the trees sway in the breeze.  And she gradually recovered. 

I think moms are the glue of their families, and the importance of taking care of their physical and emotional health—the need to smell the roses along the highway of life—cannot be minimized.  I wish Mom had been able to smell the roses much more than she did.

 

A beautiful bouquet of eighteen roses my youngest son sent me this year for Mother’s Day reminded me of the chorus of an old song Mom used to sing when I was a girl on the farm: “Give me the roses while I live, trying to cheer me on; useless the flowers that you give, after the soul is gone.” 

Amen, Mama.

Copyright © Elaine Beachy 2015