Recently, while watching my grandkids, I started thinking about my own childhood and remembered the whimsical, silly things my mom did to entertain her children and grandchildren. Am I as fun? Do my grands find me amusing?
When my sister visited a few months ago, I asked her if Mom used to make us sandwiches shaped like a house. I thought I knew the answer but couldn’t be sure of my memory. In fact, my sister remembered the sandwich: no crust, a slanted roof, a cut-out door which served as a chimney, and two windows. This is exactly how I made them for my daughter, and I was now quite the architect of the peanut butter-and-jelly house sandwich for my grandkids. Last week I was commissioned to make a building for my grandson. I gathered four slices of bread and built a two-story building with windows and a large door. He was thrilled, and I was happy that he ate the whole thing, brick by brick.
Now, remembering it, I was surprised my mom had time for such playfulness with ten children. It wasn't a school-lunch sandwich, more like a weekend treat. Nonetheless, I was tickled and happily ate the tiny crustless home.
Mom also had a few apple tricks that I still try to mimic today. She used to make an apple puzzle. She would slowly and methodically cut an apple vertically and horizontally to create a puzzle. She would then pull it apart, and to our amazement, put it back together. Again, when did she find the time to do this? I am going to guess that her father taught her; he was a cabinetmaker who made her wooden jigsaw puzzles and other wooden toys. He was ingenious, and the apple did not fall far from the tree. Pun intended. I was in awe, and I recently found this video with step-by-step instructions.
I knew my mom was talented, but when she peeled an apple in a single continuous thread, I was in awe of how clever she was. Round and round she would go with her small tin peeler, the red skin of the apple intact from the stem to the core at the bottom. When she was finished, she would hold up the curly peel, like a magician who had just pulled a rabbit out of a hat. We couldn’t wait to eat it without breaking the foot-long tail. We knew that the skinless apples would soon become a delicious apple pie.
I have never been able to recreate the apple puzzle but love to try my hand at the continuous apple peel trick.
When oranges were in season, Mom would cut them in quarters so that we could share these scrumptious treats. After eating the pulp, she would secretly take the peel shaped like an eye and cover her teeth, smiling; her big orange grin always gave us the giggles. She never felt too proud to be silly and make her children and grandchildren laugh.
Mom loved black licorice, and one of my favorite photos of her is with my niece, both of them with shoestring black licorice attached to their upper lips like a thin mustache. Her childlike sense of frivolity attracted people to her. She never took herself too seriously. The same niece also remembers her leaning over her son’s high chair; he was about 1 1/2 years old, and she was giving him advice on how to treat women and be kind to them, especially during menopause.
She wore bunny ears at Easter time and always dressed up for Halloween. One year she dressed up as a man and my dad as a woman. In her nineties, she wore a Raggedy Ann doll outfit in a gingham dress and white apron, and another time she dressed as a farmer in her son-in-law’s overalls.
At one of our family reunion talent shows, she wore a lavish costume, imitated Jerry Lee Lewis, lip-syncing to “Great Balls of Fire,” and pretended to play the piano. She was always open to a good time.
Decades ago, my parents went to the airport to pick up my dad’s sister, arriving from Omaha. They dressed up as Hobos and met her at the gate. Who does that?
I wish I had inherited half of my Mom’s silliness. She made life fun when times were tough and made us laugh, which then made her laugh.
What silly things do you do that have been passed down from your mom?
Bit by bit, that’s all she wrote…