I gathered onions from the garden this morning and as I was standing at the kitchen sink cleaning them I had a flashback to when I was a child, watching Mother doing the same thing.
Except there was no sink, just a well in the back yard that you sank a bucket into to draw water. There was a bucket in the kitchen that you filled, and a dipper to pour the water into my favorite old stainless steel bowl to clean them. There was no air-conditioned kitchen to work in, or even a fan, so you did your work early in the morning before the heat of the day set in. It was always my job to throw the onion tops on the ditch bank for the chickens, and I would do it and run back into the house because those chickens and I did not get along.
There was no pretty little glass to put the cleaned onions in, either, just a Ball fruit jar, and then she would put them on her round oak table, no doubt covered with an oilcloth to protect it from stains. And yes, we would eat the onions for breakfast, with ham and eggs and fresh tomatoes later in the summer.
I say it was so simple then, but was it really? It was a hard life, but it was all we knew. The older I get, the more I admire my mother for her strengths. Her life was never easy, but she did the best she could. I wish I could sit on the porch swing with her this morning, sipping sweet tea out of one of those fruit jars, and tell her what a good woman she was and how much I appreciated all she did for me. I wish…
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