Any Mismatched Problems in Your Legacy?

Strange how our senses can remind us of past events. The smell of hot apple pie brings back memories of Mom’s delectable offerings right out of the oven, the crust browned with sugar lightly sprinkled on top. Sometimes when I pass the bakery in the grocery store, my sense of smell takes me back to Daddy’s homemade bread. He used to let me pound the dough until my arms ached. It took some time for me to learn the right technique to folding and punching to make the dough light and airy.

Our sense of sight can also bring memories flooding back. Last Sunday, I saw this dress in church, and it immediately took me back to home economics class with Mrs. Furman in 1963. I loved sewing, and can honestly say, Mrs. Furman appreciated my zest for wanting to have every seam straight with no puckering. The early 60s was a time of plaid skirts and pin stripe dresses. But this presented huge problems. According to Mrs. Furman, the quality of a seamstress could be seen in the matched fabrics she wore. In other words, if the stripe didn’t line up with another stripe, forget the A in home ec. And as for the plaids—oh my, so much fabric could be wasted to get the perfect piece to match up for a back or side seam.

That reminds me of a side story here. In fact, I used this story with Mrs. Furman to show that I came from a long line of non-matching people, namely my dad. My parents had almost finished papering the living room walls when they ran out of wallpaper. They had two strips left and Daddy assured Mom that by the time she got back from town with another roll, he could have those strips pasted to the wall. So off she went to town. Daddy, never having papered before, meticulously followed Mom’s previous lead. He laid the paper down on the table, applied a good amount of paste to the back, and after getting it attached to the wall, quickly wiped off the extra paste. Then he repeated it with the second strip. When Mom came home, she was greeted by a radiant hubby who proudly displayed his own ability to paper.

“Great work,” she said, “but it would have been better if the palm tree branches could have met other branches rather than meeting the ground.”

He looked at the rest of the room and for the first time, realized there was a definite pattern to the palm trees and landscape.

When I related this story to Mrs. Furman, I think her reaction was very much like Mom’s when she surveyed the mismatched wallpaper.

What have you seen lately that brought a memory of the past to mind? Did you write it down? Why don’t you do that today?