THE STANDARD OF PERFECTION

Dorothy Portfors (Walrath Dobson)

As I was baking the oatmeal cookies (see previous post), I couldn’t help but think of my mother. She (meaning her ghost, because she's been gone these 20+ years) often accompanies me on my day, especially when I’m alone. Mother worked with such precision. I can see her now, meticulously pushing cookie dough off a teaspoon, each little mound the same size as the others. She disapproved of my haphazard method. “The cookies must be the same size or they won’t bake evenly,” she instructs, and so I try harder, but I can’t make mine uniform even with a cookie scoop!

Whatever Mother undertook to do – baking, sewing, embroidering, crocheting, making Christmas ornaments, even writing a letter – she did it with precision and took pride in the work of her hands. Where did this come from? Well, I have it on good authority – Mother’s – that it was not from her mother. She might have learned first lessons at Grandma’s knee, but she was mostly self-taught in the rural home arts, and she simply had a talent for working with her hands – an innate sense of uniformity. And – her hands did what her eyes told them to do.

Freshly-baked cookies, not uniform in size

My parents did the best they could to teach me things, but you know, talent has something to do with it. I’m neither the musician my dad was nor the seamstress my mother was. At some point, practice just doesn’t make perfect.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a sloppy worker. And I do try. I just don’t have Mother’s talent for precision. What Mother could do quickly and easily, I have to work at. But – in my world, it doesn’t really matter. The dolls never complain if a garment is a bit askew, and Mike doesn’t complain if the cookies lack uniformity as long as there are cookies – though he did mention that the one he ate this morning was rather large.

But -- whatever I'm doing, that old standard of perfection still stands beside me. KW