A while back, I mentioned that Meghan had given me a journal and a whole list of questions to answer...some day before I die, I guess. I promised to share them with you, so after playing around with Adobe, I created a file for you. Now you, too can answer all the probing questions that your kids will want to know the answers to! So, let's give it a try....
Download Reflections.pdf
What was your childhood home like?
It was an old home, in a very small hamlet not too far from where I live now. Right across the street was the local firehouse, and each day at noon, the whistle would blow, and all the dogs in the neighborhood would howl. My parents worked hard to update and remodel our home as they could, and I was always very proud of how comfortable it was. From the fifties, sixties and seventies, it tended to be current with the times. Even though it had a large and scary dirt floored cellar, with a cistern, and a big bin of potatoes and walls of glass canning jars full of food, and spiders. From my earliest memories, I recall that the bathroom did not have a bathtub, only a shower, and as a very, very little girl, my mother actually bathed me in a big old round washtub in the "Playroom!"
There was no heat upstairs, only the registers in the floor, where you could peek through and see who was in the living room. On cold winter mornings, I would scramble downstairs to stand on the forced air heat register in the dining room to get dressed. I loved how that warm air blew up my nightie and pajama bottoms. Going to bed at night, the blankets were piled high in winter, and I would sleep at the opposite end of the bed in the summer because it was so hot upstairs.
Everyone watched television together in the living room. We had big scratchy furniture and a velvet painting of the Last Supper (my brother got that for my parents for Christmas one year. And they always displayed it.) Evenings, we would all watch Bonanza together. Or the Red Skelton Show. We'd watch Leave it to Beaver, the The Flintstones. The Wizard of Oz. The Ed Sullivan Show ( no lie, I sat in awe as I watched my sister and her friends freaking out to The Beatles!). I don't remember any fights about who was watching what on the television. I guess television wasn't as important as playing outside, or going exploring, or reading, or hanging out in the neighborhood.
There were always good things being baked or cooked by my mother. We ate dinner together every night, and we had to clean our plates. Everyone had to help clean up after dinner, and my sister would always help me to clean my plate right into the trash without my Dad seeing. Good smells came from our kitchen. And I learned to love food at my mother's side....preparing it and eating it. We got our milk from "the farm" and every Sunday, I would go with my Dad to get two glass gallons, with the thick layers of cream on the top. It was never skimmed, but shaken up before being poured into the glass or onto our cereal. My dad always made oatmeal for breakfast on winter mornings.
Outside, there were huge chestnut trees everywhere, and out back, ginormous lilac bushes, flower gardens contained by borders of tilted bricks and a massive vegetable garden, lovingly tilled and tended by my father every night. Outside was fun. We had a tree house, and a swing set, and a back porch which became the setting for imaginative play. The back porch was transformed in my mind at different times to an apartment, a hospital, a store, a dance hall, a beauty salon.
It was the only home I ever lived in until I went away to college. And there are some features of that house that I think no home should be without....an incredible craft and sewing room, and a large pantry off the kitchen... because in my mind, that is where, at your mother's side, good things are created that make a home feel like home.
Did I say gorgeous? Like butta gorgeous. For a scarf, I'd say. I haven't knit myself a scarf in a long time. 
Lamb's Pride Cotton Fleece, which happens to be one of my favorite yarns. I'm sure it will make a great summer sweater. The pattern has such an interesting construction and looks like it will be fun to knit. 
