My Mother's Purse

As we're taught, so we learn. 

Mom taught most lessons by example. 

My Mom was raised in the times of "Spare the rod and spoil the child." 

She told me about how her father sat at the table, took the first helpings of whatever he wanted and then the children and then her mother got whatever was left. 

He was the enforcer, sitting at the table with a "switch" across his lap and finding any excuse to "make an example" of one or more of the many children, ten in all, in the family.

Mom welcomed the "new" parent-child relationship guides, like Dr Spock, and was kinder and gentler while guiding, directing and showing by example.

Mom valued education -- school and what she could learn by herself. 

I remember how she went back for her GED when I started college; she didn't tell me until she was ready to graduate. 

I was and am so very proud of her taking that major step when she was into her 50's.

The times I grew up in taught by books on raising a child, making a home, repairing things around the house and the family car. There were books for dreaming, too, including magazines.

News came at specific times. Published in the "news"paper and then seen on TV; the 60's truly began the Information Age. 

Not like today, of course, when information is at your finger tips -- literally -- and available 24/7 even as it's happening.

We thought we certainly knew more than our parents and their parents -- the same as every "new" generation.

We believed what we were told and it sometimes took months and even years to find out what we'd originally been "told" was far from what actually happened.

So, if you think media is "controlled" today, you should go back in time and listen to broadcasts "the way they were". We built "trust" on people we believed; sometimes we found out we'd misplaced this trust. .

My Mother's Purse. I watched the other day as a very small child took their mother's purse off her lap, opened it up and started rummaging through it for something they wanted. 

No request for Mom to see if she had it, no consideration it was "her purse". The child wanted and sought immediate gratification and did what is now considered "normal" -- took immediate action to satisfy that want.

Much has been written about the "helicopter parents" and the "generations of entitled children".  Where did they come from and why are they growing in number?

I never "went into" my Mom's purse -- not even when I was a grown woman -- without her asking me to do so.

Mom never had very much to keep in her purse but what she did have, she valued. 

I saw her take things from her purse over the years and add things as life advanced. When she'd ask, I'd bring her purse to her and never thought about going into it or through it. That was my Mom's purse. Not mine.

Mom taught me to respect other people's property. 
She taught me to ask permission. 
Mom taught me respect for others and to value each person not for who they were but for what they did with their lives and what they did for others.

My daughter was raised with the same foundation of life values. 

It might be "old fashioned" and it might seem out of place in today's world, but integrity and honesty should have no expiration date among the generations.

What have you practiced? What do you teach others by what you say and do? 

My mother's purse was a simple example of living a life valuing the world and all we come in contact with every day.

I still have her last purse. Can't part with it just yet. It shows some wear; it went everywhere with her almost to her end of days. 

When she stopped taking it along, we'd pick it up and take it with us. She'd passed the point of "needing" and even of "wanting" anything inside its many compartments.

To me and to my daughter, it was Mom's/Grandma's Purse:
A part of who she was and a part of life as we knew it with her as we shared so many years together...so many great memories.