I loved the Saturdays my mother baked bread…this was on top of her other chores. First thing before she started the cleaning chores, she put together the flour mixture for bread and covered it to let the dough rise. A few hours later she punched the dough down and I can still see her dividing the bread mixture into little balls and working each with the fingertip to make what would rise the second time as rolls. The way she twisted the dough made the tops of each little dough pillow as smooth as silk. I often wonder if all bakers used that same approach to preparing the rolls. The dough was left to rise again and at just the right time she put the pans, one by one into the oven to bake. She also made coffee cake with part of each batch of dough and sprinkled a sugar and cinnamon mixture on the top. What a wonderful smell that sent through the entire house and a great Sunday morning breakfast before church!

I remember short sleeve house dresses, washing dishes by hand, aprons…then, later each Saturday afternoon, our bathroom would become a beauty “parlor” and after I washed my hair, she put the wet strands into “pin curls” so they could dry overnight and be brushed out in the most relentless curly mass for

Sunday school and church. It was a welcome change with the invention of “rollers”! We put our hair up on rollers instead of pin curls and the result was still a curly mess, just not quite as tight.

I loved my mother’s stories and hearing about her experiences as she grew up in a house with seven sisters and brothers. My mother was in high school when her youngest brother was born and my most favorite sibling story of all time was the one she would tell about how she and her oldest sister fought over who would push the “baby buggy” when taking their brother around the block for a ride.

One day they were fighting so much about who got to push the buggy, they didn’t notice when the baby slid out of his seat and landed on the ground some distance back. They couldn’t believe it when they stopped arguing long enough to check the baby and he was gone. Then it was a fight to make sure each swore not to tell their mom of their mishap. In later years, sitting around a table with the two sisters at lunch, they would have the biggest laugh over that incident…a memory that makes me smile even today.

Did your mom have favorite sayings? My mother had a lot of them, and we still repeat them at our family gatherings and they still make us all laugh. Sayings like, “Settle yourself”! or “There before the grace of God go I”. What do you remember about your mom and what were her favorite sayings that come to mind?