I best remember Mother wearing an apron. She generally wore her bib-style apron to protect the dress underneath while saving her fancy half aprons for holidays and entertaining. Her favorite bib apron was red gingham with white eyelet across the hem, fashioned from a set of her mother’s hand-me-down curtains. Another was made from a soft, touchable buttery yellow fabric with fresh pink and green flowers with matching bias trim.
It's easy to conjure up any one of many images of Mother in action with the aprons she wore. In the kitchen, their natural home, she used a corner of one to wipe crumbs off a chair before inviting a guest to sit down or to move a smoking frying pan off a burner. In the yard and garden, her apron fell into other roles. She would flap the apron skirt at the birds and squirrels that came to feast on her newly planted garden yelling, “Scat! Get out of here!” She would throw her apron over her head when caught outside in an unexpected rain shower.
When harvesting her garden, Mother would bring an apron full of tomatoes, cucumbers, and green beans into the kitchen. She would toss her apron over a bushel of ripe plums to keep the bees and wasps away until she could can them. Whenever necessary, she used the apron hem to scrub our dirty faces and wipe away the hot, salty tears of childhood heartaches and accidents.
Not only were Mother’s aprons constantly in motion, but they also talked to us kids, telling us what was happening in the kitchen without our having to ask. Dark red splotches told us it was plum jelly-making time. Needles and thread attached to the bib indicated sewing and mending day while damp spots and the smell of starch spoke of laundry day.
Each of Mother’s aprons had a pocket, sometimes two. From a child’s perspective, the apron pockets were fountains from which sprang nickels for ice cream or candy, combs to straighten my unruly hair, and flower seed packets with seeds ready for planting. On wash day her pockets housed clothespins to batten down sheets flapping in the summer wind. For playing ‘grown up,’ a string of brightly colored snap beads would magically appear. Best of all, a pocket once held a tiny kitten for us to pet and from which we learned the meaning of responsibility.
And when the condition of the aprons got to be so that no amount of starching and ironing could make them look respectable, Mother would cut them into squares, using them to make colorful quilts. I’m lucky enough now to have many of her quilts as well as a couple of her aprons. Mother’s aprons, like the quilts, talk to me, telling me stories and giving me memories of times gone by—such precious gems that in my heart will always reside.
