 |
| 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
