Beech Tree News Network

My daughter called one afternoon expressing the woes that went with being out of hot water.  Her water heater was on the blink and she was waiting on a repairman.  “I can’t wash clothes or take a shower, and this sink-full of dishes is really getting on my nerves,” she said.
    “Here’s what you need to do,” I said.  “Get the biggest pans you have, fill them with cold water then heat them on the stove till the water boils.  Add that water to the cold water in your sink, and you’ll be able to wash your dishes.  You can do the same thing in the bath tub.  I know it won’t be a shower, but at least you’ll be clean. You can wash your hair in the bathroom sink then rinse with cold water.  Cold water cuts down on the frizziness anyway.  I think I’d wait on washing the clothes unless you want to take them down to the creek and beat them out on a rock.”  (I had to tease her a bit.)
    That advice came pouring out of me as an immediate response to an adverse situation, and it made me realize that much of the person I have become is the result of having grown up in situations where I had to make a way when there wasn’t one readily available to me.
    I learned that mindset from my stepmom.  If she hadn’t made a way, we would have all gone under.  She heated water on the stove for baths in the big washtub.  She washed the little ones’ hair in the sink.  She taught us how to wash out clothes in a bucket and hang them on the porch to dry when the ringer washer was on the blink. 
She tied gates shut with grass string, she patched fences with pieces of broken wire, and she saved feed sacks, so her sister could make clothes from them.  My stepmom never learned to sew.  She was the one out in the fields with the mules and the crops.  She wore the feed sack dresses.  She bought our clothes at K-Mart. 
 It wasn’t just necessities Mom helped us with.  If we had a school project, she would often come through in a way us kids could never have dreamed of.  I remember once, she helped me make a fall wreath for a home economics class.  She took the round Styrofoam base from an old Memorial Day arrangement then got some dried corn shucks, cut them in strips and taught me how to curl them like ribbons.  We taped the curls to the round base and added orange leaves we took from another left-over plastic arrangement.  My teacher bragged on the wreath in front of everybody, and I was so proud of it.
Another time, I had to make a model room from a cardboard box.  Mom found scraps of cloth for the curtains, some left-over wall paper for the walls and a square of blue carpet for the floor. (I have no idea where she came up with the carpet, we had linoleum on every floor.)  I made furniture out of cardboard then drew pictures and cut them out for paintings on the wall.  It was another successful project.
If not for the training I received from my stepmom on how to make something from near-nothing, there would have been many times in my life when I would have thrown up my hands in despair.  Learning to make a way when you don’t have the money to buy a way is the greatest gift she could have given me.