Hopes and Dreams

Janet, a MOMYS, wrote this in to the digest recently. I was so touched by it, I asked if she would share it with LFL readers.

Dear Ladies,

������������ I don't have much experience with hope chests and only have one daughter, my youngest child, but thought I would share from my experience.

I grew up in Scotland and we didn't have hope chests we had "bottom drawers". Our bottom drawers were not always literally a bottom drawer although it might be, but the place where we tucked things away.

�� My mother was thirteen when she started working, her father was sick and couldn't work, and in those days there was no government help of any kind so the two oldest children� left the school and got jobs to support the family.

 

My mothers first jobs were close to home, as a waitress or anything else she could get,eventually her father was able to go back to work but she never did go back to school instead she left home and� got a job as a maid� for the rich people in what we called "the big houses".

� She dutifully sent half� of her small wages home to help her family, as was the done thing in those days, and the rest she had to live on. It was not so bad really, she always said, as the job came with room and board so she was able to get by with very little so she decided to start a bottom drawer.

She started by saving until she had enough money to buy the finest linen and she made and embroidered bedding, napkins, table cloths, dish towels and dresser sets. She poured over catalogues her master and mistress discarded, and saved the money to order� a tea� service, cutlery and a dinner set, and many other household needs. She stored them in cardboard boxes and an old suit case, tied with string and pushed under her bed.

She found she didn't need to buy many clothes, she pieced over what her employers threw away, right down to the masters socks, she would take his old� worn socks and make them into� several layers and wear them as a� kind of bootee. She started her day at 4 am as her duties included preparing the house for the family's rising and morning routine, and she� quietly glided around on the polished wood floors coal scuttle and feather duster in hand, never wearing shoes.

The evenings she spend alone in her little room stitching away and dreaming of the day when she would use her pretty things in her own home. She knew she might not marry, as her middle twenties approached she was already an old maid in those days, but surely some day she would have a home of her own, even if she didn't have a husband and children she could provide a place of respite for people like her old school chum who had never married but was a missionary in Africa or a place to invite the young girls from church who might need a sister/mentor in their lives, and so the years passed and she stitched and dreamed and saved.

She did get married or I wouldn't be here writing the story, my parents married at an age considered 'old' then, and� society dictated big flashy weddings were not proper for old people so their wedding was modest, my mother did not even wear a white wedding dress but a nice suit that for many years following was her Sunday suit. She paid it all herself not wanting to add hardship to her family, from the 300 British pounds she had saved, a huge amount back then from a� maids small allowance.

My mother would often say " get a clean towel and dry the dishes" and I would pull a clean towel out the drawer and she would look up from the sink and say " Oh! I remember when I stitched that one" and she would tell me stories of the days she worked in the big house, the chandeliers, the German and Swiss clocks, the silver, and the furniture and floors polished to such a shine you could see your face in them, and how she would sit in her room and stitch and sew and dream, "and here we are" she would say, " My daughter using the very things to dry the dishes".

One day when I was ten we were shopping, when I noticed the prettiest dish towels "Oh mummy " I said " aren't these the prettiest towels, would it be all right if I bought them with my birthday money and started a bottom

drawer?"��� She looked taken aback for a moment " I should have thought of

that" she said " The years are passing and you are not really to young to start" so I did.

One day she surprised me with a suitcase, " you can keep your things in it now," she said, " and when the times comes you'll have it to pack and move to your new home with". I kept it under the bed.

I really wanted to learn to do beautiful sewing like my mother, really I did, and my mother patiently try to teach me but I seem to have been born with more thumbs than fingers and my hands got sweaty and the cloth grubby the stitches tight and the threads knotted, so my mother finished the pieces for me and I moved on to the windows of the drapers and the ironmongers shops. I did love the gismos and gadgets and started collecting items like potato peeler, apple corer, butter baller, scone cutters, tiny mustard spoons, egg spoons and the likes. My mother often stopped and looked with me and sometimes she would say " let's go in for a closer look" and we would go in and browser around for awhile. We were poor and we did more browsing than buying but over the years I did collect quite a few needed items. We often had a quite a time trying to figure out something and what it's use was, as they were constantly displaying new items, often we giggled over how silly some were, or mum would say " well I have lived without it this long no need to spend the money" sometimes she would say " now that could come in handy"

or " this is the kind of thing you only use once or twice so it is not really worth it"

� In the drapers she would finger the material and tell me� " now this is good for every day as it can take lots of washing, but for good stuff you want damask" and she would move to where it was and check it out and show me the qualities.

I grew, and soon I was often able to tell her what some things were as I was introduced to them in home economics, things like electrical appliances she had never had, but her experience told me if it was something a woman might truly save some steps and sweat with or just a fad. Then we would go up the road to home and talk domestic talk over a cup of tea, she would drain the last of the pot and then say " well time to make your daddy's tea" and back

to work it was.��

It came quicker than either of us imagined, I was getting married and we were preparing to have our belongings shipped to America. " I am going to buy a potato masher, I never did get one "� I told her one day. " I'll go with you" she said� We walked down town to the shops and bought the potato masher, then we browsed around the shop for awhile " mummy, you do need to buy a electric mixer" I said� " those things work wonders on creaming egg and butter and whipping egg whites, they are so much faster and really take the hard work out of it".� " well I think you are right" she said "

especially since I will have one less pair of hands to help with all that Christmas baking this year, you'll be married and off"

�We paid for the masher and started up the road home and I realized it was the last time, the last time my mum and I would browse around looking at the house wares and talk domestic talk all the way home and over the pot of tea.

The last time, because I would be married and far away in America.

That was a very long time ago, and this December 2005, I was shopping in Carolina Pottery. Christmas was over and I had time to browse around and enjoy looking at everything. I stood at the wall where they had all the small kitchen items and I didn't even know my daughter was looking until she asked me " what's this?" and I explained, then "what's this?" and I explained and then she picked up something " I've seen these on TV they look like they could be useful" and she turned the item over in her hands.� Then she turned around and looked at the shelf behind her and said " oh mommy

aren't these the prettiest glasses you ever seen?"��� I turned around and

looked 'Yes they are, although I don't know why Americans call them glasses when they aren't glass in Scotland we called them tumblers, they would be really nice for a 4th of July cook out or something like that wouldn't they?"

Somewhere in the middle of my rattling on, somewhere in the middle of my sentence, I caught it. Life had come full circle, I was my mother and she was the 10 year old me, saying " Oh mummy aren't these the prettiest dish towels?"� " Oh mommy aren't these the prettiest glasses?'

Hope chests/bottom drawers are not a collection of� ' stuff for when I get married' but a gentle guiding by a mother of her daughter into womanhood, a caring and sharing of womanhood's greatest calling, the comfort and care of others, passing from one� generation to the next.

The other day my daughter looked at me, dramatically hands on hips, eye browsed raised� she says " Well Mother if I marry when you did I have 4 more years " and she winked.

We better get busy.

love janet

[email protected]

just a lump of clay in the Potter's hand�

 

Date: 1/06