I like that TIE O’ THE DAY has been around long enough to have post topics people expect to see annually. My grandma’s early-70’s homemade milkweed pod Christmas ornament is one such holiday topic. It is a crafty artifact worth taking a moment to gaze upon. It’s a clever use for a milkweed pod, and it also shows off my beautiful grandmother, Zola Walker Wright—who our family has always called Momo (pronounced Mom’-o). I usually display the ornament with my “Santa, Baby” Ties o’ the Day, because Momo was a looker.
Momo was an elegant, well-spoken woman of manners and culture. She belonged to book clubs and garden clubs and whatever fine arts clubs existed in town. Despite her grace, she could not spell, and my dad’s lack of spelling ability came directly from her genes, I’m sure. They spelled words wrong, the same way.
Since we lived next door to Momo and Popo, I was the recipient of many Momo confections. She could bake up a storm, and I was a willing guinea pig for new recipes she tried out. But my fondest childhood memory of Momo is of her washing my hair every Sunday morning in her kitchen sink, to help out Mom while she got my siblings ready for church. Momo or Popo would lift me onto the kitchen counter, where I would lie down on a towel, with my head over the sink’s edge. Momo washed my hair with her sink sprayer. It felt exotic to me. She then towel-dried and combed out my hair and sent me off towards home where someone would assist me in getting into my church clothes.
I can still feel the kitchen counter, straight, beneath my stretched out kid’s body. I can feel the strangeness of lying there. And I can still feel the warmth of the water through my hair, the sting of shampoo in my eyes when I got too fidgety. I recall feeling entirely safe and loved and cared for as I lay on my back on the kitchen counter with my head over the sink. I felt wonderful because I knew this was something extra I got from my grandparents, simply because I lived next door and was the baby of my family.Thirty years later, when I bought my grandparents’ home, I repainted the kitchen and had the kitchen flooring replaced. The sink and the kitchen counters needed to be replaced, but I could not bring myself to do it. That was the Sunday morning hair-washing sink of my early childhood. That was “my” kitchen counter. I didn’t want them to be different than they had always been. When I sold the house in 2017, saying goodbye to the beat up sink and counter top was the hardest part of leaving the house for the last time.
Holiday Tie Tally: 108 Neckties. 24 Bow Ties.
#wearthedangmask #whistlewhileyoumask #getyourdangflushot #scienceisyourfriend #evensasquatchknowsthecoronavirusisnotahoax #criticalthinkingsisacriticalsuperpower #hashtagtreeohashtagtree #harmonyandhopearehardtocomebysogeneratesome #iloveyoumomo
