THE OVERWHELMING KNICK-KNACK SHELVES

Before I start this post I have to refer to the one a couple of days ago--BEING ALONE. I think this is what this post is all about--I wrote it for my Personal History group today. Now I'm going to say something that is probably really stupid but it's my theory and what use is a theory if you don't voice it? I think, if someone would have helped me with the horrible knick-knack shelves and I would have had dusting success when I was a wee person that my housekeeping abilities (I say "abilities" with a wicked little smile) would be better today than they are. Or aren't.

It's really all about doing things together, learning together, living together, going through "stuff" together and for single folks you are part of our togetherness too, it's not just immediate family togetherness. The women in my ward who are single I simply adore. I wish I could spend more time with them. I feel part of them, they would probably be shocked to know that but I do. We are all one family. One day we will know it.

Okay, one other point I need to clear up before you read today's story. My Personal History group know all about me and so know when I talk about Mom "loosing another husband" that she lost two husbands to death. My two sister's daddy died in a car accident and my dad died in a small airplane crash in a snow storm before I was two.

Also, I love my sisters but it's so delicious to cast them as the evil sisters here. So with that said please read todays blog and think about working with your little people, helping them to have 100% success.

THE OVERWHELMING KNICK-KNACK SHELVES

Pat and Julie learned to do housework by a Mom who was young enough and with enough energy to supervise and enforce. By the time I was old enough to actually contribute to the household duties she had lost another husband—I tell you, Mom was always misplacing husbands. Anyway, with all the single parenting duties and the work it took to find and snag a new husband she was too tired to train me properly. Or perhaps it was because I was her favorite child and she pampered me.

But, one day Mom decided I was old enough for the housework brigade; she handed me a dust cloth and led me to the corner knick-knack shelves. I sat on the floor and looked at all the little glass animals, some of them I had bought myself with fistfuls of warm nickels and dimes. I had wrapped my gifts in wads of white tissue and wound the wads with curling ribbon.

I looked at the knick-knack shelves—four of them and knew that there were three and a half shelves more than I could dust. I sat there for a long time while everyone else was in the kitchen, eating heavenly little snacks and drinking Cokes. Okay, so they weren’t eating heavenly little snacks and drinking Cokes but they weren’t in the living room with me, giving encouragement and help either. I finally started to cry.

“Oh for Pete’s sake,” one of my evil sister’s called from the kitchen. “You could be done by now.”

It was true but her words didn’t inspire me--actually they were such an insult that I sat on the floor and bawled and sniveled and finally I lay down. I looked at the nick-knack shelves, which loomed taller, like a Jack’s beanstalk sort of a nick-knack shelve. Little glass animals peered over the edge at me, wondering why they were standing in dusty spots while their dust-remover-person was obviously a slacker. The evil sisters thought I was a slacker too and they cackled from the kitchen.

I was there two hours, they told me. I don’t know how anyone can let a little person be in overwhelming-dusty-knick-knack-depression for two hours before they send help so maybe it wasn’t that long. Maybe their evilness made them exaggerate the amount of time so I would feel guilty forever.

Mom’s knick-knack shelves disappeared soon after that. I am choosing to believe that the little animals went to loving homes where they could run free on lemon scented, polished wood. I have my doubts, because Mom was a great believer in donating what you didn’t want to the trash dump so others, like her, could rummage around and bring home surprising finds, but that’s a story for another day.