but, sadly, that I had no desire to learn.

Like cooking. I did do some cooking, mostly baking, cookies and cakes. The first main dish I ever made was macaroni and cheese, and I could not believe that you had to cook the macaroni FIRST, and then make the cheese sauce and cook the whole thing AGAIN!! Wasn’t there a better way?

I think Mother got a little bit panicky, after I got engaged, thinking that I didn’t know how to cook. At all. So she began to find recipes (and gather ingredients) for me to cook for David when he came to town. And, seriously, I could read and I could think, and I had this great cookbook with recipes for 2 (with main dish, vegetable, salad, bread, and dessert suggestions). I prepared many, many of those, and doubled lots of the recipes to include all the members of our family of four, over the years.

I can hardly bear to look at this.

She tried the housework tasks. I remember vacuuming, occasionally. We had an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. It was a canister-type vacuum. There was a large, roundish thing on wheels, and a hose with a metal tube on the end. The vacuumer could attach a variety of nozzles on the tube. There was one for floors, and one for upholstered furniture and one for getting into crevices, and I very strongly disliked each and every one of them. I was constantly getting clobbered from behind by the canister. I desperately wanted one of the upright vacuums that I saw on television.

I’m sure Mother asked me to dust, too. I don’t recall, but I imagine I gave her grief, or at least some eye-rolls.

I remember, once, cleaning the bathtub. Maybe I did that more than once. Maybe. But I don’t think it was more than that.

She developed a strategy that she thought would work. She would pay us. A quarter, which doesn’t seem like very much, but I think it was significant back then. Not lots and lots of money, but enough for a couple of soft drinks or candy bars. I wasn’t interested. But you know who was? My little sister, JoAnne.

JoAnne might not have been money-hungry,  but even then, she knew how to make hard work more fun. She explained to me, much, much later, one of her takes on vacuuming.

You’ve seen the pages from early readers with Dick and Jane. I don’t really recall who were the stars when I started First Grade, but JoAnne remembers, quite well, who were the main characters of her readers. Tom and Betty. And their little sister Susan and their dog Flip. When Mother would ask JoAnne if she would like to be paid a quarter to do some vacuuming, JoAnne would gladly agree. She would go to the closet where the Electrolux, and all its parts, were stored. And as she got them out and assembled, she would say things like, “Good morning, Tom. Glad to see you, Betty. Oh, Susan, be careful!” And so on. And the vacuum cleaner parts would be her friends, as she went from room to room, cleaning up. (Tom was the canister, Betty was the metal tube, and Susan was the flexible tube.)

Who knows what shenanigans went on when they were all scrubbing the tub!

This brings me to the baseboards. A while back, a few years ago, I guess, JoAnne and her family were visiting. As I walked by the bathroom, she came out, holding a cleaning rag. She said, “Oh. I hope you don’t mind. I cleaned the baseboards.”

“Of course I don’t mind. Were they really dirty?” “Well, a little.”

I’m blaming it on being older and not too spry, and, apparently, not seeing much. Way down there. Behind the door.

Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity . . .

Titus 2:7 (English Standard Version)

We all have our areas of strength, and we all have our areas of not-so-strong. For me, I could not have come from a better family. I’m hoping that at least some of it shows.