A Personal Story of Life

Childhood memories at Maywood Cottage

I enjoy reading through my blog roll to see what other bloggers are posting, what are they doing, sharing, selling, creating...and all the other things happening in Blog City. But, I especially enjoy reading posts when they're stories of cherished childhood memories.

Today, I want to share one of my childhood memories.

My dad was from the South, the son of a Baptist preacher.  My mom was from Canada.  It was a "His, Hers and Ours" kind of union. His was 3 daughters and Hers was 4 daughters which = 7 half sisters. The Ours was 6 children.  I know it's confusing, and people are always amazed when I tell them between my  mom and dad there were 13 children.  I actually grew up with 2 brothers and 3 sisters.  Our household, as you can imagine, was lively.

I mentioned that my dad was the son of a Baptist preacher.  However, I can't remember going to church when I was young  except for Christmas and Easter.  We were a excitable pack of kids and I'm sure taking us to church was quite an under taking for my mom and dad.  What few times I remember attending service, we generally sat in the back of the church and if my parents were lucky, they offered childrens church.

On one occasion, we were all seated together closer to the front of the sanctuary, the kids were seated between my mom and dad, practically an arm length for both of them just in case one of the kids acted up.   Not long after being seated, I heard my older sister ask my mom if she could go to the bathroom, then the next to the oldest asked and me, being the third one from the top, asked if I could go too.  Off the three of us tromped, stepping on toes and kicking purses as we made our way to the center aisle.  And of course as soon as the door closed behind us, it was a full, top speed run through the church hallway.

We did or business and being taught to wash our hands, we took care of that.  That's when my middle sister noticed a can sitting on the counter.  She picked it up, looked it over and asked "What is this?". When she pushed the sprayer, we stood amazed at the floral, sweet honeysuckle scent (well, it could have been any floral scent but honeysuckle is popular in the South).  After testing it, we were convinced it must be a body spray put there to "freshen" ladies, and we needed freshening.  First, she sprayed my older sister; my older sister held out her arms and twirled around as she was "freshened".  I was next, I too, held out my arms and twirled as I was "freshened". My middle sister, not wanting to be left out, received her freshening from my older sister.  Believe me, I really wanted to push the sprayer too but we had been gone a sufficient amount of time and didn't want our mom to come looking for us.

We ran down the corridor and slammed to a halt when we reached the sanctuary doors.  We gently pushed them open, like good little girls, and started our parade down the aisle to where our parents sat.

As you probably already imagine every head turned as we passed by each pew.  I don't recall this but it's probably not a stretch to imagine that there were quite a few loud sniffs as we floated by, a waft of sweet honeysuckle left in our wake. 

A repeat of stepped on toes and trounced purses; we scooted by my dad first. Yes, you can imagine the look he gave us.  But, my mom was not so calm about it. She was a pincher and we received our due pinches.

It was a while before we went back to church but we 3 girls never freshened ourselves again... with a can of Glade air freshener.

Share..Inspire..Create..Believe
~willa~