Scrubbing Milk Bottles

I’ve heard it said that becoming a mother is the one life experience that surpasses all expectations. The indescribable bond that grows as a new mother sacrifices to nurture, feed and love her infant is heroic. You look down at that sleeping bundle in your arms and the future starts coming into focus: “Maybe someday he’ll be a surgeon,” you think to yourself. “Perhaps she’ll be a great singer.” They don’t even have teeth yet and we already feel compelled to plan their careers. Hope is one of the blessings of living in a land of limitless opportunity. And if hope for our children’s future is our greatest dream, our greatest fear is wondering if we will always live in a country where anything is possible.

The struggles in the economy are unprecedented: exorbitant gas and food prices, foreclosure notices going out by the thousands each day, and financial institutions dropping like flies. With outstretched hands, the offenders have suddenly become the victims, waiting for the taxpayers to give them a multi-billion dollar hand out. The greed and corruption that have threatened the world’s strongest nation have made me think in contrast about a different kind of America… the one my grandmother used to tell me about when I was a little girl.

My grandma was the second of seven living children, born to peasants who migrated from Czechoslovakia at the turn of the century. I remember the stories she used to tell over and over and over again, how as a young child she picked cherries in the hot sun for twenty-five cents a day. Then there is my favorite. When grandma was a school girl she used to spend her afternoons at a local dairy “scrubbing stinking milk bottles.” I can still hear the disgust in her voice as she would describe the smelly task. My sister and I would smirk at each other from across the room when we would hear that one with a look that said, “No, not the milk bottles again, grandma, not the stinking milk bottles!” But we listened with empathy as she described the disappointment of having to quit school after the eighth grade to go to work as a nurse’s aid. She would clean bed pans and mop floors well into the night to help her parents make ends meet. Imagine a family of nine living together in a house with only two rooms. My grandma shared a bed with three sisters. She says they were elated when the oldest got married and moved out, freeing up more sleeping space for everyone else. Mind you, this was all before the Great Depression. When the stock market crashed in 1929, my grandmother, now a young married woman, found herself cleaning homes for the “more fortunate” and doing odd jobs to help subsidize the family income.

Grandma made it through those hard times using the only resources she had: hard work and determination. There were no handouts, no bail outs, and no credit cards to max out for people living through one of the most difficult eras in modern history. Not only did my grandmother survive, but she successfully raised a daughter and eventually saw my sister and I graduate from both high school and college, something she could never have imagined. When she died at the age of ninety, she looked back on her life with satisfaction knowing that she did get her little piece of the American Dream.

Yes, parenthood has its share of blessings and curses. One of those curses is walking that fine line between sanity and insanity, obsessing about all the horrible things that could potentially happen to our children in a sometimes cruel world. I had one of those “what if” moments when I was walking the aisles of my local grocery store the other day: What if, God forbid, someday these shelves should turn up bare? What if my husband and I should both lose our jobs and be unable to provide for our children? I know I can’t control the economic future of our country, but I can learn from the lessons of my grandmother and pass those lessons on to help my own family.

Lesson #1- The Christmas Bonus
During the Depression, shifts at the Pittsburgh steel mill where my grandfather worked were few and far between. Grandma said one year they opened his Christmas paycheck to find a whopping ten cents. Most people would have cried after an experience like that but not my grandparents. They laughed. In today’s world it seems priorities have taken a dramatic shift as people sacrifice more hours at work and time away from family in pursuit of a bigger paycheck. My grandmother’s experience taught me that the things of this world can easily come and go, but the relationships we build are treasures that should be protected and cherished. She also taught me that laughter and a sense of humor can help make the hard times a little easier to take.

Lesson #2- The Bedroom Set
In my mother’s guest bedroom sits a beautiful antique bedroom set. It’s been carefully taken care of for more than half a century. My grandparents met at the age of sixteen but didn’t get married until seven years later; they couldn’t afford to. Grandmother carefully set aside a little extra money each month to save for a few household items, including her bedroom set. I remember her polishing the furniture with pride when I was a little girl and telling me about life with my grandfather, who passed away when my mother was only two. They scrimped and saved for everything they owned; they understood the value of a dollar. It’s a far cry from today’s attitude of “buy now and pay later.” I’ve realized that delaying gratification builds character. I’ve also learned that there is a sense of dignity, freedom and accomplishment that comes from living within your means.

Lesson#3- The Thirty-Five Cent Tip
Whenever grandma went out to eat at a restaurant the tip she gave was always thirty-five cents, no matter what the bill. When we would ask her about it she would say, “That’s more money than anyone ever gave me.” Occasionally, if the service was truly exceptional, she would break out her bill fold and put a crisp one dollar bill on the table. She would even make a point to tell the server she was going to “reward them” for a job well done. When I was an adult and she used to treat me to lunch, I sometimes added a little extra to the tip when she wasn’t looking. The point is that grandma never forgot where she came from and how hard she had to work for what she had in life. Through conservative investments and frugal living, she managed to save enough money to be generous with her loved ones in her later years. She knew what it was like to live without much, and she made sure that she had enough money saved for a rainy day.

Lesson #4 – The Lentil Soup
My grandmother’s signature dish was her delicious lentil soup. I can still hear her telling us with reverence, “It’s the food Jesus used to eat.” She was a talented cook, and she loved to share her food with others. My grandmother would be exhausted when she got home from work, but she was never too tired to make my great-grandmother her favorite meal. Even in her old age she brought bowls of soup and homemade bread to her neighbors. It was her small way of sharing of herself to bless the lives of others.

It’s amazing how easily the stories of my grandmother’s youth seem to come flooding back into my memory. Maybe there is a reason she used to tell them over and over again. Rest assured, when my three-year-old son and his two-year-old twin sisters are old enough, they’ll start hearing the stories too, stinking milk bottles and all. And when they can repeat them back without rolling their eyes, I’ll know the lessons from my grandmother are finally starting to take root for the next generation.