“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. ” – Proverbs 22:6
I am living a very different life than my mother’s. We won’t even discuss what it must have been like for her mother, scrabbling about in the hard-packed dirt of the Depression with all those babies. But there are some fundamental things I share with my ancestors that cannot be disputed, and many more that I have not ever considered or am even aware of.
However, I am not going to get into the deep genetic soup of epigenetics.
Instead, I think I’m wondering about pedagogy. Of course, I didn’t even know that word until I started writing this, not at least, in any meaningful way. Simplified, it refers to the social learning or information passed between individuals.
All of which, brings me back to cleaning on Mondays. That’s just what my mother did. And like those little goslings that imprint on a dog and then wonder why they can’t bark, I never consciously set out to replicate her behaviour in this, or any of a million other things I do exactly like her.
But it doesn’t matter what I intended. Somehow it all settled in at some cellular level, and Mondays – come hell or high water – just like she did when I was growing up, I clean. I’m very glad that Mom imprinted me with mostly decent habits…though I could do without some of her more anxious bits.
But at the risk of getting back on the epigenetic topic, it might be that when my mother or perhaps her mother, was getting lousy nutrition, it might have turned off one of the genetic markers that predisposed the next generations (ie; moi) not only to blue eyes but perhaps a tendency to startle easily or to being compulsive list-makers.
This is not an excuse to shrug my shoulders and assume everything I do has an air of inevitability about it. I believe we are each dealt a hand, but it is up to us as to how we play it. However, I find it interesting that this might be part of the science behind Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious.
It’s funny what you can think about when you’re scrubbing a toilet.
Maybe in our world it was stew on Thursday. 🙂
Ha. At least it rhymes with ‘brew’…or maybe it was ‘hew’ and they piled up firewood?
rhymes.org.uk has it like this:
Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Bake on Wednesday,
Brew on Thursday,
Churn on Friday,
Mend on Saturday,
Go to meeting on Sunday.
I am so glad it no longer takes a whole day to iron (or mend)! And brewing and churning are right off the list. 🙂
Thanks so much Janet. I’m trying to remember which day my mom did the baking…maybe it was on a Wednesday just like this rhyme suggests? I know one thing for sure…there was no brewing going on. Not in our world 🙂
I cannot help but respond with a couple of comments.
One – there was a poem that said women washed clothes on Monday, ironed on Tuesday etc. One day was for baking and another was cleaning. I’ve forgotten most of the poem now. I suppose it would come to me if I really put my mind to recalling the rest of it. I remember that the women in the town would all have their clothes out on their clotheslines early on Monday mornings.
When you mention you mother and grandmother, Colleen, if they came from the Prairies, especially your grandmother, toilet cleaning may not have been part of the ritual. Most people who lived in the country, in those days, had outhouses. Running water was a rare luxury. I was thinking about them the other day. Many people did not even have toilet paper as we know it. They used to put last season’s catalogue out there, so people could rip out the pages as needed.
Maxine. Thanks for your comments. I’ve wondered if it was just the ‘way things were’ when it came to Mondays. It would be great to find the poem and to see how that came to be the accepted day. My mom always did laundry on Mondays, the clothesline was always full on that first day of the week. And yes, my mom talked about the Eaton’s catalogue in the outhouse when she was growing up. If I remember correctly, I think my parents only had an outhouse when they first started out together. Incredible that it’s not really that long ago…
How funny, because I was cleaning today too and feeling might proud of myself for it 🙂
I remember my mother cleaning EVERY darn day, though. I sure didn’t get those genes!
Becca, I could never keep up to my mother’s cleaning schedule, because she also cleaned constantly. It’s just that Mondays were the BIG cleaning and laundry days. I wonder if it was just the way it was done back then? Maybe every woman did the Monday thing?