Flour-Dusted Hands, Pretty Nails, and a Day of Curls

MOM

My mom was five foot two and a natural redheaded beauty. She had the deepest brown, most flirtatious eyes. Mom’s eyes always spoke louder then her words ever did. With her hourglass figure and gorgeous legs, it is not hard to figure out why Dad was attracted to her. Or could it have been her turned-up nose? I think Mom and Dad were always a very attractive couple. I can only recall a few stories Mom told me about North Dakota. She grew up in North Dakota by the Mouse River. Life in North Dakota was challenging. But true to Mom’s nature, she would always find the upside of a story and tell it with a lighthearted nature, even though it might be the most formidable of tales. Mom would talk about the long winters in North Dakota. Snowstorms and blizzards would completely bury the house. A tunnel had to be dug to get out the front door. But the fun part for Mom was snow-skiing to school. Can you imagine skiing to school everyday? What fun! Mom did very well in school. Of course, it figures, the way Mom loved to read. Mom also recalled the year of the devastation in North Dakota—The Year of the Grasshoppers. She remembered this terrific noise and how deafening it was, followed by thousands of grasshoppers. The grasshoppers ate everything. There was not a green leaf to be seen for miles. Before Mom married Dad, she worked at a button factory, and then for the telephone company for a while as a telephone operator. One day, while she was working, Schmidt Beauty Supply in downtown Moline caught on fire and Mom had to transfer all of the phone calls for the fire. Mom said she was so busy she had to stay extra hours to work the switchboard. Dad courted Mom at Lagomarcino’s ice cream parlor and sandwich shop, a business that is still thriving and unique to the downtown Moline area. The shop still even has the original decor. Years later, Mom and I would have lunch there, and Mom would have a twinkle in her eye as if she was remembering a wonderful time in her life. When Mom and Dad got married, Elva Melton was Mom’s maid-of-honor and witness. After they tied the knot, Mr. and Mrs. Floyd and Ethel Guild went to the movies and then to “Lagos,” their favorite place. After Mom married Dad, it seems to me, Mom immediately started having babies and didn’t work any more. She was a full-time “domestic engineer,” and that terminology doesn’t do Mom’s role as mother, wife, and daughter justice. I have always had a vision of Mom in her crisp housedress and an apron, wiping her hands on each other to shake off the flour dust. Mom would wipe her hands together when she finished any job. I imagine it was Mom’s way of acknowledging the end of something and getting on with something new. Susy recalls Mom’s other little quirk was a true show of her vanity. I think she knew she had very elegant hands and she could grow the hardest, most beautiful nails. In her later years, Mom kept her nails very manicured and polished. When sitting at the table, she would rest her hands on the table as if to display her beautiful nails. If her nails were not painted or a nail was broken, she would sit at the table with her hands in fists. Mom loved to look pretty and enjoyed getting dressed up. She took great pride in the way she dressed. With each outfit, Mom wore a piece of jewelry with matching earrings, and her shoes always matched her purse. Even into her senior years, Mom did not hesitate to wear high heels and show off her sexy legs and petite ankles. As we girls started growing up, Mom taught us some of her beauty secrets. She taught us how to paint a black line up the back of our stockings to make our legs look sexier, and how she used sugar water to make “spit curls.” Remember the day Mom and Virginia decided to give all of we girls, Diana, Carol, me, and Virginia’s daughters Pat and Marilyn a Toni home perm? It took them the entire day, and then I refused to go to school the next day because my hair was too curly. Now I won’t live without curls. Mom never cut our hair. She told me she always took us to a barber shop. I always wore my hair in a straight “bob” or banana curls, and I remember Barbie always wore long braids.