I will now admit it to you and to my family….I was a spoiled child. Not in the way you might think. I didn’t get my way when I threw a fit. Between you and me if I had ever thrown a fit I would have had a sore bottom to remind me that there were better ways to express myself.
Holding my breath wouldn’t have worked either because my dad once told me I would pass out long before I ever died from lack of oxygen. It is a body’s natural way of telling us we’re doing something stupid.
But I realize now I was spoiled in ways that were good. My dad was home from work every night at 5:00 and dinner was on the table, ready by 5:30. We had a sit-down meal, usually just the four of us, with assigned seats—Dad on my right, Gary on my left and my mom sitting directly across from me to block me from seeing the TV.
I was a slow eater and easily distracted by TV. If I was especially pokey I didn’t get to watch Mr. Rogers and I loved Mr. Rogers. Dinner was potatoes and meat and a veggie from a can on most nights. If there was dessert it would be next to our plates but if we got distracted Dad liked to hide it from us and pretend he ate it. He never did though. See, I told you I was spoiled!
My mom taught us how to clean by making us sweep and vacuum every day when we got home from school, and after dinner we had to do the dishes by hand. We’d beg for a dishwasher but Dad said he already had two perfectly good dishwashers and saw no reason to buy a third.
My mom also taught us about peeling veggies, how to cook using both the oven and the stove top and the value of clean clothes. We never went to school in dirty clothes. To me it seemed my mom was always cleaning, cooking or doing laundry. She also liked to knit and sew.
Most of my play clothes came from handme downs or garage sales but school clothes came from a shopping trip to Duluth at the end of the summer or my mom made me blouses and dresses. I wish now I had kept the dress she made me for homecoming one year….a really cute cream-colored dress with spaghetti straps and a bolero jacket. See, I told you I was spoiled!
My brother and I didn’t have the newest toys or shiny bikes or the chance to go to very many movies. We were entertained by building forts in the woods, visiting with neighbors or playing cards with our parents. We spent a lot of time one winter playing a marble board game my dad made out in his shop. These games taught us it was good to play by the rules, take turns and get along. We usually got the first two right…..the get along part took my brother and me some practice…we really liked to argue.
As a family we did a lot together both weeknights and weekends. There was a balance between work and fun. See, I told you I was spoiled! May you find the balance in your life, and go ahead…spoil your children!
You can’t get spoiled
if you do your own ironing.
Meryl Streep
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
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