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August 13, 1999/1 Elul 5759, Vol. 51, No.45
Tuning out mom's advice can lead to mishaps
TAMI BICKLEY
Staff Writer
Throughout my life, I have rolled my eyes at my mother so many times, they should have gotten stuck by now, as she so often said they would.
The gesture was usually in response to yet another dose of motherly advice, such as "Stay out of the sun," "Don't wear shoes that are too tight," or, most often heard, "Never depend on a man for anything."
I used to tune her out, the way I do my alarm clock. Amazingly and thankfully, though, some of her advice seeped though my guarded conscience. Now I realize that her intentions were to protect my personal well-being and not to simply imitate a broken record. After all, she didn't want her only daughter to end up with skin cancer or too many wrinkles, bunions on her feet, or a broken heart.
Unfortunately, at some point, she grew tired of my eye-rolling, gimme-a-break attitude, and gave up. Therefore, I missed out on several years' worth of key advice - advice that might have prevented a number of mishaps I faced after leaving home and marrying.
The flurry of minor disasters began the day I attempted to produce a lovely garden in the yard of my first home. I felt like a responsible adult as I strolled down the outdoor aisles of Home Depot, color coordinating all types of bright flowers and foliage for my future landscape.
Once home, I eagerly gathered my shiny, new planting supplies and colorful plants. I kneeled on the sidewalk and slowly dug into the first plastic container to remove some petunias. Out came the plants, attached to their root bulbs. Back then, those bulbs were foreign entities to me, complex knots of tangled roots that could not have been intended for anything but the garbage - or so I thought.
The following morning, I awoke to the sound of a loud gasp coming from my front yard. I peeked out the window, and caught a glimpse of my husband, who had gone out to retrieve the newspaper. He was standing in the midst of our new garden - our very dead garden.
"But I don't understand," I later told him. "Just yesterday, it looked like an English garden in spring." We were baffled. So we called the one person who may have had an explanation: my mother.
"What?" she exclaimed in utter disbelief. "You removed all of the bulbs? You're supposed to plant flowers with their bulbs. Didn't you know that?"
Had my mother taught me a thing or two about planting, my garden wouldn't have died overnight.
The issue of who was to blame for my household ignorance didn't end with the garden incident. It continued with the time I used regular dishwashing soap in place of automatic dishwasher detergent, of which I had run out. Soon, I was knee-deep in soap suds. My kitchen floor looked like a giant cloud.
Eventually, I was forced to pay a plumbing company to suck my suds through a giant tube into a vacuum-like device. The serviceman snickered under his breath the entire time. When he left, I called my mother.
"You should never, ever pour dishwashing soap into a dishwasher," she said. As if I hadn't figured that out.
I have since discovered other hidden evils of soap and water. For one, the two combined do not do good things to wool, as I learned when my new wool skirt emerged from the wash the size of a postage stamp.
"Who washes wool?" my mother asked me over the phone, as if I was supposed to know that "dry clean only" is more than a mere suggestion. I guess the same way I was supposed to know that when a recipe calls for one teaspoon of baking soda, you cannot substitute baking powder. And that if you toss a pat of butter onto a hot griddle, it will splatter and burn you. Or that if you pour coffee into a mug before it's done brewing, your morning java will taste like asphalt.
No, I did not learn these things from my mother, but from the harsh reality of trial and error. Indeed, I blamed her for neglecting to inform me of the many things that could have saved my garden, kitchen floor, wool skirt and coffee cake.
However, if I hadn't earlier turned a deaf ear every time she spouted "how tos" and "remember tos," she would have continued to share with me everything I would need to know once I was not living under her roof. And maybe I could have forayed into independence without a trace of disaster. For that, I can only roll my eyes at myself.
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