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The Most Important Woman In My Life |
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My
mother, Dorothea Wikell, was a rare woman indeed. She was the mother of
nine children in a small, Swedish village during WWII. As I was growing
up in the late thirties, mamma has a way of dealing with
very little of many necessary things. It was hard to feed all those
hungry mouths. My father, Karl, was as a coal miner during the harsh
winters and a tar roofer in summertime, which kept him from helping out
at home. Mamma turned the meager money he earned into an amazing little
nest egg at times. She sewed all of our clothes on an old manual Singer
or, often by hand. As we had no electricity, she frequently sat up late
at night sewing by kerosene lamp or gaslight (lots of socks to darn for
twenty-two feet). My mother had a slight disability throughout her life,
yet nothing kept her from managing our large family. She baked all our
bread, coffee-break and sometimes, when we could afford or find
ingredients, delicious cookies. During long Scandinavian winters, she
stored up laundry for days. Her methods of rinsing was quite an ordeal.
She would start out very early, loading big buckets of washed clothes
onto a sleigh, gliding across the snow to the nearest lake. Then, she
would crush the ice with a big axe, making a hole large enough to dip
our clothes in. My oldest brother was usually there to help her. Before
all the laundry was draped over the clothes line, most of it was frozen
stiff. The next day we would go out and try to remove the clothes
without breaking them. Everything went inside to the kitchen, hung out
on large lines, where we would hear the drip, drip, dripping for hours.
Mamma rarely complained. Her saying was “Just pull your socks up and
keep going.” At the time mamma’s endless sayings
annoyed the heck out of us. Yet, her wisdom must be ageless, as my
loving husband now quotes her, in this new century…daily. As all these
years have passed, I admire my mother more and more. How could she have
accomplished so much, so smoothly? I find myself using her methods, and
I often hear her, loud and clear, telling us the words which have been
the keys to all of our successes as children and adults. As a child and
teenager, I never appreciated her nagging.
As I have matured and
become a bit wiser, mamma is the inspiring symbol of a very impressive
person….and truly, the most important woman in my life.
Annastina Wikell |