Those 70ish Girls

poured the remword Mom used.
Today, I was rushing to get the laundry put away before I left to run an errand, and I remembered why, shortly after we got the RV and had taken a few trips, I started to put Kip’s washed and folded laundry on top of the stand with the drawers he uses. It was because every time I shut the bottom drawer, I broke it. The first few times, after fixing it, he said, “Since you don’t seem to be able to open and shut this drawer without breaking it, why don’t you just let me put away the things I keep in there?”
So, that is what I did…unless I was preoccupied and forgot, which is what happened today. As I sit here writing this, I know Kip has yet to discover the broken drawer. I can almost feel some of you out there cringing at the thought of having a rackier like me around. Rackiness is something you’re born with and it cannot be easily corrected. It’s part of the afflicted’s DNA.
Mom used to say, “Mary, why do you have to rackey all of your things? Everything you own…your shoes, clothes, toys, books, even the curls I put in your hair, all get rackied right a way. Other kids keep their things nice for at least a little while.”
I’m allergic to rackey… Achoo!!
Mom was right. I undid all of my doll’s perfectly coiffed hair and either cut it or braided it. I altered their clothes and poked a hole in the baby doll’s mouth so I could stick the tip of the doll bottle into it’s mouth so it looked more realistic. I tore apart and changed, everything. I don’t mean maliciously or in a sinister way, I just didn’t take care of things like I should have. Like I said, it was in my DNA. Mom had some rackey DNA, too. I believe she was the only offspring in her family who had a different perspective on “things.” Things were not her thing. In all of her childhood pictures she is wearing coveralls and a hat pulled down over her eyes. In her adult years, she always dressed and looked nice, but she really didn’t care about having anything expensive. She was a one of a kind grown-up, just as she was a one of a kind kid. Her three sisters and her mother, were all ladies. They barely spoke above a whisper. Mom could be loud…but in a good way.
A rare photo of Mom without her tennis shoes on. She bought the cheap ones and colored in the Nike logo, Sisters Ella and Helen are to her left,
Mom let me wear whatever I wanted to. My play clothes and Sunday best were one and the same. I sometimes wore a beautiful taffeta dress to play with my cousins under Grandpa’s trees. I’ve seen the pictures. My cousins all had on their play clothes. My dress soon became rackey red, but I loved it!

Mom would run around the house all day cleaning, and at the end of the day, the house looked exactly the same as it did when she started. She said she wasn’t made to work hard. I think I’ve made the comment before that she hardly ever told me to dust or vacuum… except for the motel rooms I cleaned. I did a pretty good job on those, but you should have seen the cleaning basket I used. What a mess. All the other girls had their cleaning solutions and rags all neatly organized in their baskets. Their dirty rags were always deposited into Mom’s car trunk as soon as they finished cleaning. I, on the other hand, fished mine out the next morning. It was easier to tell which ones were dirty and which were still clean. The dirty rags smelled bad.
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Mom opened up the trunk of her car first thing in the morning and the plastic laundry baskets would be waiting inside for us to fill with all the dirty towels from all the dirty rooms. Mom would haul everything uptown to the laundromat and spend the morning washing and drying all the towels. During the wait time, she had coffee with whomever was at Mack’s Cafe. Mom didn’t fold the towels. That made her crazy. She brought them back for us to neatly fold. Mom, herself, was a bit of a rackier, but she didn’t tolerate rackiness in others.

I like being clean and neat, and sometimes I can go for long periods of time being neat and clean. It’s when I get too many things going on at once or have too many distractions that I lose all control of anything resembling orderly and organized.

I saw a quote at the end of my friend, Judy’s blog that read, “Organized people are just lazy. They don’t like to take the time to look for anything.” I get it!