What's Worse than Crumbs in the Honey Jar?

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a honey jar with crumbs in it.

Having come from a large family where everyone had his  or her knife in the honey pot, I recently threatened my own youngsters with a month of plain peanut butter if they even thought about sticking an already-used kitchen utensil into the honey jar.

Since then, even the son who argues food all gets fixed up anyway knows better than to let so much as one microscopic particle of toast fall into the Maid O' Clover bottle when his mom's around.

But the threat of spending thirty days without any honey hasn't kept those kids from trying bizarre methods of applying the sticky stuff to their sandwiches.

In other words, my children will do anything to save themselves the trouble of getting out a clean knife, dipping it in the jar, and letting all that bee-spun sweetness drizzle to the desired spot.

I actually caught one enterprising child turning his knife around, grasping the peanut butter-laden blade with his grimy fingers, and aiming the handle into the bottle.

Another of my littles (or was it my husband?) dumped the amber contents of a half-pint directly into the half-empty Jeff jar, thereby creating a one-step peanut butter and honey sandwich.

But it was four-year-old Julie who finally taught me there are worse things than contaminated honey.  

I had come into the kitchen just as she finished pouring herself an afternoon snack.  There was honey down the side of the bottle, honey on the counter, honey oozing down the cupboard doors, and honey on the floor.

Speechless, I watched the little girl methodically wipe sticky fingers in her hair before picking up a slab of bread that had enough honey oozing from the edges to keep a colony of bees alive all winter.

Beside myself, I opened my mouth with the intention of taking away that child's honey privileges for the rest of her life.  But Julie was way ahead of me.

"Look, Mommy," she said with a sweet as honey look upon her face, "I didn't get no crumbs inside the jar!"

MOMS SHOULD REMEMBER

 January 26, 1983

“Lakeside Review”

 

“For Pete’s sake, Jennifer!  Don’t be so silly!”  I exclaim, poking an impatient finger at the tearstains on my little girl’s beet-red cheeks.

 

How intensely green her eyes have grown in the brief interval since a distracted usher at the wedding we are attending moved the chair on which my daughter had meant to sit.  

 

Sprawled there on the floor, bony knees and elbows exposed, with her skirt hiked up around her thighs, 9-year-old Jennifer is not to be consoled. Despite outstretched hands and whispered reassurances that hardly anyone, not even the unwitting usher now rushing to seat another guest, has noticed how she fell, she is inconsolable.

 

It's no big deal," I try to make her see through tears that trace a salty path down to the corners of her mouth. To my adult eyes, the child’s acute sense of shame seems so out of proportion with the cause that I could be tempted to giggle.  But her thin shoulders have already begun to quiver, as she struggles for control.

 

“Jennifer!”

 

With a half-muffled sob, she ducks to hide her face, but not before I see the image of the little girl I once was reflected in those glistening, plaintiff eyes:

 

Once when I was six years old, I spilled ice cream at a party, and even when the birthday girl passed out shiny pennies and huge balloons, all I could see were swirls of melted chocolate on my skirt.

 

Then there was the time when I sat halfway through Sunday school, before someone told me that my dress was all unbuttoned down the back.

 

“Don't be so silly, Little One,” my voice grows soft. “You just go ahead and let those teardrops fall.”

Our sweet Jennifer when she played Amaryllis 

in Clearfield High School's Music Man

WINTER'S NO WONDERLAND FOR A WORN-OUT MOM

DESERET NEWS

 December 1992

 

Wet boots drying on the heater vent,

Mittens scattered all about,

I finally see what my dear mom meant,

when she said winter wore her out!

 

Winter wears me out, too. Ever since Jack Frost dumped his first load of powder on the lawn this year, I've spent my days zipping coats, buttoning boots, hunting lost mittens, arguing with my children about what they may or may not wear outdoors, and mopping up pond-sized puddles in the house.

 

It wouldn't be so bad if my kids, having gone through the tedious process of preparing to frolic in nature's frozen playground, would just go out and stay out. But, like all tots dedicated to the proposition that their mothers can and should be driven crazy, they follow a sacred childhood ritual:

 

1.     First you get your winter clothes, being sure to drag everyone else’s is out too, and scatter them in an even layer three feet deep around the living room floor.

 

2.     Next, you get semi-hysterical, because one of your favorite Mickey Mouse mittens has a hole in the thumb and you can't even find its mate.

 

3.     Only after Mommy has spent at least 42 minutes hunting your missing mitten and mending the moth-eaten one, do you allow her to tug, pull, and stuff your squirmy body into a complete ensemble of winter attire, minus the goofy earmuffs you had the foresight to hide in your underwear drawer.

 

4.     Then, you decide you have to go potty.

 

5.     When you have answered nature's call and Mom has repeated step three above (except for the part about the mittens), this time stopping to retrieve the boot your dog dragged under the couch, do you finally venture outside long enough to get:

 

a.     completely soaked;

 

b.     icicles hanging from your nose;

 

c.     enough snow clinging to your clothes to make a snowman feel jealous!

 

6.     At some point, meaning after you've spent at least five minutes exploring Winter's Wonderland, you come back inside, bringing all ten of your very closest buddies (and a few you’ve never seen before), for the first of many warm-up sessions, spilling steaming mugs of hot chocolate and gobbling enough donuts to dust the floor with a fine layer of powdered sugar.

 

7.     Then, you repeat the whole process ten more times, each time with Mom cheerfully ready at the door to bundle everyone up to go back outside.

 

When evening finally comes, and Daddy gets home from work to find his wife collapsed on the couch and talking to the ceiling, you casually say something like, “Gee, Mom, I'll bet you got a lot done today with us kids playing outside the way we did!”

 

HALF OF HOUSEWORK? HEY, NO PROBLEM!

Deseret News Archives, Wednesday, December 28, 1994 

 

“Now that we're both working,” my best friend Golda told her husband, “You’ve got to do your share of the housework.”

 

The way she described it to me over lunch one Saturday, her spouse couldn't understand why her face took on the color of stewed tomatoes as their discussion evolved. 

 

“OK,” Hasbin said, “I'll make the bed sometimes.  “And,” the man grew magnanimous when Golda started to choke, “I’ll change the toilet paper roll every other time.”

 

“But what about the dishes, sinks, and walls?” Golda sputtered.  “What about the oven, and the microwave and fridge?”

 

“What about them?”  Hasbin asked.  

 

“Well, they get dirty too,” Gold said, her voice as hard but not nearly as pleasant as a Jolly Rancher.

 

“Are you going to do your share or not?”

 

Alright!"  Now Hasbin’s voice was hard. After all, he explained he had no objections to doing his part as long as he knew exactly what was expected of him. “Just how much of all that is my share?”

 

“Half.” Golden closed her mouth like a steel trap.  “You do fifty percent and I'll do fifty. That way we can keep the house clean, hold down our jobs, and be equally overworked.”

 

Hasbin sighed. “Sounds fair enough to me.”

 

Naturally, Golda was ecstatic. Somehow, she had expected to run into a little more resistance in her attempts to even out the pressure she was feeling to keep her house in together without falling apart herself.

 

“Of course,” she waivered, stuffing her Big Mac wrapper into her empty Coke cup.  “Seeing is believing.  I’ll know for sure when I get home today, whether or not my so-called better half is willing to shoulder his half of the load.”

 

“Let me know, how that goes,” I responded.

 

Anxious to find out, I called my friend at work the very next day.

 

“Well?” I asked as soon as she answered the phone.  

 

“Well, what?”

 

“Well, did your hubby follow through on doing his share of the housework?  Is he still committed to doing fifty percent of the chores?”

 

“He sure is!" Golda sounded tired.  “This morning he got up and made his side of the bed!”

 

CHILDREN OFTEN EXPERIENCE PERIODIC BOUTS OF DEAFNESS

As a PTA volunteer, I have on various occasions helped give hearing tests to school-aged children. In the process of having their ears checked, the kids don headsets and listen to a variety of blips and beeps in different frequencies.

 

When a child hears a sound, he raises one hand to indicate his ability to decipher tones within a given decibel range. Of course, if he fails to hear the sound, his hand remains motionless, and the diagnostician takes note of the child’s hearing impairment.

 

However, such hearing tests do not tell the whole story. A youngster whose ears pick up the faintest blip in the examining room quite often suffers from intermittent deafness at home, with symptoms beginning in the morning before he even gets out of bed.

 

Symptoms are most often reported by the child's mother, with a typical case study going like this:

 

Mom: Rise and shine, Junior. It's time to get up.

 

Son: Zzz—Zzz!

 

Mom: Come on, Son! Your alarm has been buzzing for 20 minutes. 

 

Son: Zzz—Zzz!

 

Mom: Young Man, you'd better be out of bed by the time I count to three!  One, two, THREE!!!

 

Son: Aw right, aw right! But ya don't have to yell!

 

Mom: If I didn't yell, you wouldn't hear me.

 

Son: Whadaya mean I wouldn't hear you? You think I'm deaf or something?

 

Mom: Well, sometimes I do wonder. Like yesterday when I told you to take out the garbage, and you walked right by the trash can and left it sitting there. It's still sitting there!

 

Son: I guess I didn't hear you.

 

Mom: And last night, when I asked if you had finished your homework, I could have been talking to the Man in the Moon, the way you kept on staring at the television screen.

 

Son: Guess I didn't hear you then, either.

 

Mom: Ten minutes later you turned your music on so loud that all the neighbors called up mad.

 

Son: Why didn't you tell me? 

 

Mom: I did, but you didn't hear me.

 

Son: Well, maybe my tunes were a little loud, but that's because I like them the way, not because there's anything wrong with my hearing.

 

Mom: So, if there's nothing wrong with your hearing, I guess I'm safe in asking you to take that garbage out before you go to school this morning?

 

Son: Whadju say? 

 

Mom: I said, “TAKE THAT GARBAGE OUT BEFORE YOU GO TO SCHOOL THIS MORNING!!!”

 

Son:  Aw right! Aw right! But I still don't see why you always have to yell!

HIDING IMPERFECTIONS

“Lakeside Review”

May 21st, 1982

 

 

My friend often hides her hands. At church, she folds them neatly in her lap beneath the vinyl edges of an oversized purse. At home, she sinks them deep into the generous pockets that all her clothing seems to have. In winter, she usually wears mittens. 

 

“Why do you do it?” I asked her in a moment of sharing, when we both seemed willing to risk.

 

She spread her long squared-off fingers like a fan before my face. “Because they're so big,” she said. “Just look…”

 

I did look. Funny how I'd never noticed the slight disproportion between those well-scrubbed knuckles and the fawn-like delicacy of her face. It was her expressive eyes that had always seemed large to me.

 

I guess we've all got our vulnerable spot--a sort of cosmetic Achilles heel we seek to camouflage against unsuspecting eyes lest they widen to our sense of imperfection.

 

To others, these so-called “flaws” that preserve us from plainness usually go unnoticed.  But, somehow, from our own perspective, such anomalies grow in direct proportion to our shrinking self-esteem.

 

Once as a young girl, I heard a dentist tell my mother how beautiful my teeth were, despite a “slight overbite.” Forever after that, my incisors felt enormous. Whenever I met anyone I wanted to impress, my mouth would get so dry I could hardly close my lips!

 

A beautiful, dark-haired college girl, I once knew, complained about her funny toes, and someone else--a handsome, athletic fellow with biceps like Superman’s, always combed his hair over what he called his ragged ears.

 

My own daughter would put lemon juice on her freckles, if I'd let her.  But when the sunny rays of summer spatter tawny dapples on the porcelain primness of her nose, I see the gold that shimmers in her hair…

DANDELIONS HAVE VALUE AFTER ALL

"But you mustn't pick the neighbor's flowers,” I ought to tell my son. He has just presented me with a bedraggled bouquet of pilfered petunias, some of them still clinging to their roots.

Bits of sand and sundered petals sift confetti patterns on the floor; I don't know whether I should grin or growl.

 

Still Michael's grimy fist thrusts forth the offering with such sweet innocence that I cannot scold him. Together, we arrange tattered blossoms in stoneware teacups. When some of the tender petals, haplessly torn from supporting stems and foliage, want to float, the boy laughs out loud and pokes them down into a tepid bath.

 

I place each makeshift vase on the kitchen windowsill, peering outside to see if any dandelions beckon in the lawn. Sure enough, several dozen clumps of unsown sunshine dot the emerald grass, each lifting spiky heads of golden fuzz from geometrically perfect leaves, dog-toothed and green.

 

My son's eyes are green too--limpidly so and trusting.

 

Do you know what flowers, Mommy really likes?” 

 

Michael follows my pointing finger to the yard. Soon the whole house is filled with dandelions. There are dandelion leis on every doorknob and dandelion nosegays in my shoes.  All the drinking glasses overflow with dandelions, and on the kitchen table sits a dandelion wreath. 

 

Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflecting sheen of the toaster oven, I wipe wispy snatches of white dandelion down from the countertops and smile. 

 

Soon Michael's father will come home from work. Already I can see the laughter in his eyes as he holds me at a scrutinizing arm’s length and taps a lilting question on my cheek.

 

“Being somebody’s mom,” I'll have to say, “means wearing dandelion garlands in your hair."

 

KIDS MOVE FROM INFANT SEAT TO DRIVER SEAT IN A FLASH

Motherhood is full of surprises.

I'll never forget the day my friend Golda leaned over the back seat of the car I was driving to replace the binkie that had fallen out of my oldest daughter's mouth.

 

“Before you know it,” Golda said, “this child will move out of her infant seat and into the driver’s seat.”

 

I looked at my friend like she was cracking up. Her youngest son had left the nest only a short time before, and I thought maybe he had taken a few of her marbles with him.

 

But Golda was right. Before you know it came along before I knew it. Suddenly my precious baby was 16 years old.  I couldn't believe how quickly she had grown--first sprouting teeth, then hair, then curves, then a mind of her own.  Especially a mind of her own. 

In fact, about the only thing she hadn't sprouted yet was a set of wheels, and she was ready for those long before I was. The day she finished driver's training she locked herself in the bathroom, which she claimed was the only private place in our house,  announcing her intentions of thoroughly preparing herself for the drivers license test.

 

“Sh--h! Your big sister is studying,” I cautioned my younger kids.

 

“But she's been in there forever,” one son protested.

 

I begin to protest myself when, after what seemed like hours, Jennifer still didn't seem to be prepared.

 

“Exactly how much time does it take to get ready for a driver’s test?” I finally asked through the door.

 

“Hold your horses, Mom! I 'm almost ready,” she said, emerging from the bathroom perfectly coifed with every har in place and her face expertly made up right down to the corners of her smiling lips.

 

“But where's your training manual?”  I wanted to know. “ I thought you were preparing for your driver’s test, not a beauty pageant?”

 

“I was preparing for my driver’s test,” Jennifer answered, “but I don't know why anyone would need a book for that. What I need is a color chart.”

 

“A color chart?   You mean a chart to find out whether or not you're color blind?”

 

“Of course not, Mom,” she groaned. “What I need to find out right now is whether or not this blouse will match the background on my driver’s license.”

 

I didn't say anything to that--just stood there with my mouth open, wondering how that girl had managed to outgrow her infant she seat after only 16 years.

NO GOOD DEED TOO SMALL TO COUNT

It was way too hot for a soccer game.

 

Parents sat or stood miserably along the sidelines wondering how their young daughters could bear to run on such a day. The players came in every quarter drenched with sweat.

 

Only the small children, brothers and sisters of the youngsters battling on the field, seemed oblivious to the relentless beating of the sun.

 

How would it be to have such energy? It was almost as if those little ones were consciously trying to create their own relief from the sauna-like atmosphere by stirring up the air around themselves.

 

As the game wore on, I almost envied the couple who announced they must leave at halftime in order to get to another commitment. After making arrangements for their daughter to ride home with someone else, they had gathered up their other kids and turned to go.

 

“We'll have to hurry, or we'll be late,” I heard the father say. But the words had barely left his mouth before he paused and bent down close to the ground.

 

“Look at this!” he said, parting the grass to reveal a pile of broken glass. Then, forgetting about their rush to leave, he and his wife painstakingly fished out shard after shard, against the possibility that someone else's child, any of the many toddlers whose range of perpetual motion brought him down hard in that particular spot, might get cut.

 

It was just a little thing for the two adults to stop and pick up that glass. It probably only delayed their escape from the sweltering soccer field to their air-conditioned car five minutes. But watching them, I felt a warm spot growing deep down in my heart that had nothing to do with the temperature outside.

 

It reminded me of the day my baby lost his shoe in the mall, and the stranger who found it went from store to store looking for an infant wearing just one shoe. There was someone, probably as busy as anyone else, willing to spend a little time to help someone he didn't even know.

 

My dad is that kind of guy. As a child going camping with my parents, I knew we'd always be a little late getting up into the hills, because whenever Daddy saw someone stalled beside the road, he stopped to help them out. And after we got to the campsite, we cleaned up the area upon arrival, during our stay, and again before we left.

 

That was my father’s way of showing his children that quite often it’s the little things in life that count—the small acts of service done in the spirit of making the world a better place, without expecting anything besides the satisfaction of knowing you've done what needed to be done.

 

I guess that's why I felt such gratitude to the couple who picked up the glass. I wanted to rush right over and thank them--tell them what a neat thing they'd done and how they'd reminded me of something important that I forget from time to time.

 

I wanted to say it loud enough for the whole world to hear. But of course, I didn't. I thought they'd be embarrassed if I did. They hadn't expected or meant for anyone to notice what they had done.

 

So I didn't say anything--just went my own way resolving from then on to look more carefully each day for any shards of glass I could pick up.