[Magdalen] Mike & Everett face a demon.

[Marion Thompson]

In my strange life, age 11 in the late Fifties in Montreal when I was no 
longer at boarding school and lived just east of  McGill University, a 
Chinese laundryman came every week to collect the outgoing stuff and 
bring back what had been done.  What an utterly wretched life this man 
must have had!  Down the block from our apartment was his little 
laundry, always completely steamed up and with numerous sansevierias and 
jade plants on the sill of the large front window.  It was a hell-hole 
of heat and humidity inside. Sometimes I was sent to pick it up, 
otherwise the clean laundry was returned in neat brown paper parcels 
tied with string and with a slip of paper with Chinese characters 
slipped under the string.  I guess that said who we were and how much.  
I don't know.  Stuff that he washed was permanently marked on the hem 
with a neat O in laundry ink.  He was known generically as 'Sam' and he 
was forever trudging along with a huge grey cotton bundle over his 
shoulder.   Even when we moved elsewhere, Sam followed us. He called me 
'May-ling' and at Christmas he would give us a box of lychees which I 
loved.  At the time he was just part of the rich passing scene, but I 
came to know he was another part of our sorry treatment of immigrants.  
Shameful.

A long way of saying that we were apartment dwellers and the laundry 
went out.  Do you know, I can't recall what happened to laundry until I 
got married and had to look after it?   The memory is blank.

I did better with cooking, but I think I was out of school before I ever 
did more than Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat, or Kraft Dinner.  
No, I wasn't a pampered darling, but had a really undomesticated rather 
Bohemian mother who was about her own life and did the best she could.  
Funny how the pattern repeats!

Marion, a pilgrim

On 1/10/2016 4:18 PM, Lynn Ronkainen wrote:
> IT is interesting what we don't/didn't know or get taught "the 
> basics", and sometimes the reason why.
>
> Either by admission or by my own deduction, I discovered some unique 
> reasons why I never washed clothes, or knew how to do so until I 
> landed at college (my mom had to do her family of origin's laundry 
> growing up and she wanted to 'spare' her kids). I was the laughing 
> stock of the dorm when I needed to ask what to do. In retrospect, 
> there were a few neglectful things that happened to me growing up and 
> I think not even telling me how to do my laundry when I headed to 
> college may have fallen in that category <gdr>
> As adult who has discerned a number of quirks about myself as having 
> their genesis in my growing up years, I am sometimes amazed at what I 
> failed to do for my kids because it never occurred to me, or was not 
> done to/for me, all the while my kids experienced their peers having a 
> different experience then their own in many areas, and as is sometimes 
> just human nature, never talked about it until their 'scarred for 
> life' years, post 30.
>
> Lynn
>
> website: www.ichthysdesigns.com
>
> When I stand before God at the end of my life I would hope that I have 
> not a single bit of talent left and could say, "I used everything You 
> gave me." attributed to Erma Bombeck
> "Either Freedom for all or stop talking about Freedom at all" from a 
> talk by Richard Rohr
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Roger Stokes" <roger.stokes65 at btinternet.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2016 12:20 PM
> To: <magdalen at herberthouse.org>
> Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Mike & Everett face a demon.
>
>> On 10/01/2016 16:32, Jay Weigel wrote:
>>> Mine did dishes on a rotating basis until we moved to a house with a
>>> dishwasher. Then I didn't mind it so much. I did make sure, by the time
>>> they were in middle school (11-12-13), that they learned how to cook 
>>> the
>>> basics (burgers, eggs, pasta, etc.) without setting the kitchen on 
>>> fire.
>>
>> I think we owe it to our kids to ensure they have basic survival 
>> skills before they leave home.  By that I do not mean how to survive 
>> in the wild but cooking such as you describe, how to use the washing 
>> machine without ruining clothes, how to sow on buttons, etc.
>>
>>> Sam became a fairly good basic cook and Betsy a fairly creative one. 
>>> Adam
>>> didn't do much with his knowledge until he married a woman who couldn't
>>> cook, and then he became, out of necessity, a pretty decent one. In the
>>> Guard, he and his buddies operated what they referred to as Cafe 
>>> Wrench.
>>> The food was so good guys from other units came by to eat; they charged
>>> them by the plate.
>>
>> I assume that they knew how to charge, including something for 
>> knowledge and skill as well as the cost of the ingredients. That is 
>> another important aspect of survival skills - not being made use of 
>> by others.
>>
>> Prayers for you tomorrow.
>>
>> Roger 
>
>