Five Things My Mother Used to Say (That I Really Didn’t Get at the Time) – Guest Post by Kassandra Lamb

Today I’m tickled to let Kassandra Lamb hijack my blog. Partly because I’m always happy when someone wants to do the work of blogging for me, but mostly because she’s cool and clever and a really great writer.  

Since she knows I’m in the thick of All Things Motherhood, she’s talking about things her mom used to tell her that never made sense through the eyes of a kid. Now that she’s all grown up, though, she gets it. Do you have memories like that? My mom used to always say (usually in reference to Tom Selek), “That man could eat crackers in my bed.” I never got it until I was a teenager…and then I was all like, “Ewwwww….”

Anyway, here’s Kassandra. You’re going to love her. Promise.

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My mama was the queen of one-line comments on life: ours, hers or some commentary on human existence in general. When I was a kid, I only got what she meant about half the time. Here are a few of my favorites (in the order in which I “got” them).

How ya fixed for spit?  Wha? I just asked for a cookie and she’s talkin’ bout spit? Hope she doesn’t spit on my cookie.

Somewhere around seven, I got it that she was annoyed with little ole whiny, demanding me.

June roses bloom longer. I was the very, very last girl in my junior high school to develop. I would try to climb into my locker when changing for gym class because I was the only one still wearing an undershirt instead of a training bra (I always wondered exactly how they were supposed to be training one’s boobies… ‘Stand up straight there, soldier!’ ‘Yes, Sir!’)

I was devastated by the good Lord’s lack of generosity in the bosom department, and my mother’s giving me gardening advice?

Fast-forward to my high school five-year reunion. Most of the girls who were voluptuous in seventh grade are now at least a tad overweight, and I am still my naturally thin self. And I could eat just about anything and stay that way. Ah, gotcha, Ma!

Don’t marry the man you think you can live with, marry the one you can’t imagine living without. I was a junior in high school when I had my first serious relationship. I’d had a couple puppy-love ones before that, but this was the real thing (actually it wasn’t, but I thought it was at the time).

I come home from our third date and I’m picking out color schemes for my wedding. Then my mother lays this line on me. What? I’m supposed to live with the guy after I marry him, as in whisker-hairs-in-the-bathroom-sink-smelly-socks-on-the-floor live with him? I hadn’t really thought that far ahead!

Bring on them bad boys! But live with them? Hmm, let me give that some thought.

Seven years later, I’m dating a man who doesn’t make my stomach do somersaults like the bad-boy boyfriends of my past (I’d finally realized that was fear, not love), but he does make me feel loved and secure. Yeah, Ma, got that one!

I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger. Okay, I still don’t really get this one. But I know now why she chortled every time she said it.

When I was in my early thirties, I interviewed my mother about her childhood as an assignment for a grad school class. I found out some things about my grandfather, who had died before I was born. He was a sweet man and my mother adored him, but he couldn’t hold a job or keep a business going to save his life. This caused her parents to fight a lot, and eventually separate.

The best years of her childhood were the five or so when he did manage to earn a consistent living. During that time, he was a house painter and paper hanger! And that was his favorite one-liner.

I’m so busy in retirement, I don’t know how I ever had time to work. Ma certainly didn’t coin this phrase. I’d heard it before she retired and many times since. I really thought she was exaggerating, until I’d been retired for a couple years myself. There are so many interesting things to do when you no longer have to earn a living, it really is easy to get too busy.

Embroidered by my mother; one of the many things she got into as a retiree.

And then I got bit by the writing bug, and now I am truly the busiest I have ever been in my life!

How about you? What pearls of wisdom did your mother throw before swine because you were too young to get it?

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Ohmygosh, I can’t wait to read the comments in this post! 

Hey, and Kass has a new book out. It’s the FIFTH in her mystery series. Check out this blurb:

When a former client reveals a foreign diplomat’s dark past to psychotherapist Kate Huntington, she and her family and friends are sucked into a vortex of international intrigue. Forced into hiding, they struggle to stay one step ahead of a ruthless killer bent on keeping the ambassador’s secret.

Sounds good, right? And even though it’s part of a series, Kass tells me it’s a fantastic stand-alone read! Click on the following links to check it out.

AMAZON USA

AMAZON UK

BARNES & NOBLE

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