I always feel like my mother when I clean the oven. I did it last night in recognition that our days of barbecuing will be curtailed soon enough, and an oven-warmed house will soon be a lovely thing. Oven cleaning has come a long way, with the push of a button, but there is still the messy bit at the end that involves rubber gloves, and that is when I feel like my mother — in the best possible way. Productive.
I’m one of those people who love September. The season of fresh starts and new beginnings. I don’t start new projects on Jan. 1 — who has the energy in the middle of winter? I start everything in September. It harkens back to my school days, color-coding my notebooks and binders (red for French, orange for math) to my modern Septembers, unpacking new clothes for the baby and the preschooler just as the nights get cold and the evenings darken before dinner. The tank-tops and short-shorts go away, the sweaters and corduroy emerge.
Last month I got rid of the baby gear. This month, the new clothes come out. The size 4s for Claire, the 18 months for Anna. The toddler clothes I look at and think, cripes, Claire JUST wore that, it’s already back in the rotation? Unpacking Anna’s new clothes — Claire’s hand-me-downs — is inevitably about the past. I remember my firstborn in those clothes, where we were in our journey between countries, between jobs, between houses. The second child, doomed to don memories of her sister, at least until she is old enough to need her own new clothes.
But those size 4s?? They are the future. They stun me, leave me speechless with something that feels like fear. Where will she go in these clothes? She’s not yet in school, but she is old enough now that she does go to little programs without me — arts and crafts, ballet, preschool drop-off days where she will be seen for herself alone, not through the prism of someone accompanying her, correcting her manners or reminding of rules or talking about her, over her. Does the orange dress, second-hand but with a good cut and lining, show people I’m a good mother? Will the brown shoes prove our family sensible? Does the purple suede show we have whimsy?
The size 4s are also about love. Half have been found by me in my favourite consignment stores, painstakingly pondered and sorted and chosen because the price is right and the quality is high. The other half come from grandma, who winters in the land of inexpensive clothing. Adorable, perfect, pristine clothes, with tags all still attached, $40 marked down to $2.97. Each item, $2.97, pink sticky tags over the cardboard label, a testament to an entire season of department store clothing in a land of recession. Chosen with love for a granddaughter because my mom can afford it now.
Forty years ago my mother made my new school clothes with shared pattern books and bolts of cloth and her trusty Singer, and hand-me-downs from cousins and neighbours. Forty years ago my mother was a stay at home mother of two, who gave up her career in teaching, as they all did then, to raise her two children. In September, she pickled vegetables and made jam, and sewed clothes and baked pies. September was about school, sure, but it was also about getting the tomatoes and the pears and peaches into jars and into the dark room under the basement stairs. Fall was about hunting and partridge carcasses in milk bags in the deep freeze, and half a moose hanging in the shed, including the year my parents foolishly decided they could butcher it themselves. Is it possible I grew up on the Banks of Plum Creek, and not in 1970s Northern Ontario?
My mother was doing all this, raising her family, feeding and clothing her children, in her late 20s. The year she was unfolding the size 4s for my brother and recycling the toddler clothes for me she was about 27 years old. My father provided, but he did not cook, vaccuum or change diapers, so my mother’s life was, really, entirely about her children.
I am, at midlife, painfully aware of how much of my life has become about my children. Unlike my young mother, I spent nearly 40 years living for myself, fostering my career, living a very nice, fast-paced, carefree life. For me, it is a sea-change to spend my days putting myself last on the list of priorities. I don’t unpack fall clothes for me, or buy a new winter wardrobe — my clothes from last year fit fine. It is surprisingly nice to focus on others, career pitfalls aside. Years of fertility treatments and fear of never being a mother have a way of ratcheting up the grateful factor. Each new autumn brings our school years one step closer, and I’m nowhere near ready to let them out of the nest.
I’ve never before felt I was walking in my mother’s footsteps. Because of the career, living abroad, surviving singly and well, I felt like the first generation of something. My mother was thrilled. My grandmother, who raised her children through poverty and trial, confided she was envious. I felt quite triumphant, and proud, if perhaps a little lonely.
But now, my Septembers are the Septembers of my mother and her mother before her. I don’t can fruit (though I do eat as many summer peaches as possible in a short period of time), and I don’t sew, but I do focus on the home and the coming winter. The endless sorting of children’s clothes, finding snowsuits and boots for the coming cold, figuring out what scheduling our family can bear with the shorter days.
Fall is my best season. I’m a Type A. I like to prepare and lay in provisions and get projects started. I don’t mourn the end of summer. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I look forward to the end of the sandbox days — you know, the only bad thing about the sandbox is the sand, which gets into everything, from the carseats to the crib to the carpet. I happily cleaned the carseats on Saturday, dismantled and scrubbed right down to the styrofoam, cheerios and sand eradicated for another season. Yes, I am that person, who resents sandbox sand. I blame my mother, who somehow managed to enjoy both camping and cleaning, often simultaneously.
The carseats and the oven are clean. The warm clothes are unpacked and in the closets. Mothering never ends, but there are periods when it peaks, and the promise of frost is one of those peaks. So I’m ready. Thanks to my mother, who taught me how to prepare, and how to provide, I’m ready.