Yesterday my mom, who is here visiting, helped me and the girls drag out, and deep hand-clean my very large living room area rug;
A task I’d been planning and had watched YouTube tutorials on.
Right away I could see that handing her the garden hose set to power spray may have awoken that thing inside her.
The beast was alive.
Before I knew it, she went from casual helper to Main Person in Charge.
She took on a new look.
We were merely support staff now.
She was running this thing.
She wielded that hose like a weapon, and called out what actions we would take next.
I took a few steps back at one point and just watched her, smiling, thinking about how this was a part of her I know so very well – The determined look, the sure victory.
You could give her rug stain liberty, or you could give her death!
She had held the nozzle mere minutes and already the whole family looked like we’d been sitting front row at an Orca show from the way that she had waved it and swung it around,
never once looking up at any of us.
Her eyes were laser focused on the task that needed to be done.
The bunny cage was dripping, and even the shed was wet, but we didn’t dare take that hose away.
This victory would be hers.
At one point my daughter, Tessa, ran asking, “What did I ever do to you?!” and
my other daughter, Chloe, said she needed to go inside for a drink, and didn’t come back out, but that didn’t matter. I saw the look.
My mom could take that rug down alone.
She would get it clean if it meant they’d roll her up and bury her inside of it.
She might not have even noticed if we had all left her alone.
After beckoning the girls that it was OK, and safe to come back out, they giggled to each other in the corner of the yard, saying, “She’s kind of scary when she gets like this.”
“Scary amazing,” I said, noticing the admiration in their eyes, too.
Sometimes there’s a good kind of scary.
I could see that lesson was starting to come through.
I just watched her knowing that fire creeps in with women in our family.
It’s the fire of knowing you are capable.
It’s the fire of getting stuff done.
The fire of knowing what you know.
Some would call it stubborn.
I call it a Family Crest.
I saw it in her mother when I once tried telling her that I had just set the microwave for two and a half minutes for popping a bag of microwave popcorn,
at which she ejected herself out of her electric recliner and ran at me like a gladiator,
declaring that it only takes two minutes flat,
and “she knew her own microwave, Bless Pat,”
and no one could tell HER that “they’d just wait and see when the kernels stopped popping, and then know it was done, because
(and I’ll never forget the look in her eyes)
that would be two minutes and not a second more.”
That was in the 90’s, and I don’t think I tried popping more popcorn until at least 2005.
I saw it in that same Nonnie when, at 80 years old, she didn’t like the quote she’d been given on having someone install a floor in her home,
so she just got down on her hands and knees and re-laminated it alone.
The only ones there to witness were the eyes of the past presidents in their frames that she had hung willie-nillie all over the room. Each frame had taken 6 nail holes to get just right. It looked like a woodpecker had helped her.
It wasn’t perfect, but whatever.
“No one mention it or make eye contact.”
I have seen this fire in my mother most all of my life as she has painted entire school buildings, and fixed toilets, and tinkered with engines to figure out what that rattle is.
See girls, this is your lineage.
We women get things done.
The fire lights, and we take hold, and we just handle it.
Last night as I surveyed our (mostly her) work, a brand new looking rug.
I smiled thinking about how observing these very types of moments has completely shaped my life.
It taught me to not doubt myself, and that I could do hard things.
It taught me that if I didn’t know how to do a thing originally, I could definitely learn.
I grew up believing I could do anything,
and what a powerful lineage to pass down to all girls – To let nothing and no one hold you back.
Just roll up your sleeves and get to it
(Well, except for popping popcorn. Apparently, ask an expert first.)
Last year we put up an above ground pool that never would sit just right.
Because of it the kids rarely swam in it, and it was left to become a algae-ridden eyesore just sitting in our yard, looking like something the girl from The Grudge may come crawling up out of at any time.
It took my friend’s daughter coming inside once to say that she’d seen a dead bird floating in it, for us to realize it was time to clean and finally do something with it.
My husband, Justin, couldn’t bear the thought of returning it.
He works and Costco, and we’d bought it there, and I guess hauling that thing back in on a flatbed felt like a symbol of defeat,
so it sat for months
until my mother came.
She pulled on boots and grabbed a broom and some soap and gloves, and set to scrubbing that thing out from the inside.
From far away it looked like the top of her white head was just bobbing to us.
I jumped in and helped her, and one by one the family came until after 3 hours of elbow grease, the pool was sparkling clean.
She and I returned it alone, nevermind the stares,
and when the woman at the returns counter noticed it was us, she asked why we had been the ones to return it, and why Justin hadn’t just brought it to work,
which is when my mother squinted one eye, and she leaned in close to her, and said her now famous words,
“Because the best man for the job was a woman.”
I might have it engraved on her tombstone.
Yeah, girls.
See that fiery, hose-wielding, firecracker 74 year old?
Count it an honor if she got you wet.
We’re definitely with her.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
