What I owe to my parents.

What I owe to my parents.

When you get to be my age some people become reflective.  We think about things in a different light and so I though it might be well to divulge my feelings about my parents.

Of course, they gave me life and a place to live and food and an education. They were kind to me and disciplined me when it became necessary. 

I never really thought much about it until just recently.  Here are a few of my thoughts of gratitude.  My dear grandchildren do not take your parents for granted.  Express thanks to them often.  You will not have the opportunity when they are gone.  As my grandmother Gee used to say, ”A rose to the living is worth sumptuous wreaths to the dead.”

What I owe my mother.
She let me cook.

When I was about five she helped me bake a cake. She let me help in the kitchen. I liked to make cinnamon toast and she would let me prepare it in the gas oven in our kitchen in Denver.

She taught me to iron and do the laundry.

 I would help sort the clothes and put them in the washing machine. I would run the clothes through the wringer and hang them on the clothesline. She taught me to iron the pillowcases and then to iron shirts and press pants and suit coats.
 
She taught me to scrub and wax floors.

I would scrub the kitchen floor every Saturday on my hands and knees. Then I would wax and polish the floors.

She taught me to wash and dry the dishes.

My brothers and I would take turns doing the dishes. We would alternate   setting and clearing the table, washing and drying the dishes. We never did have an automatic dishwasher.
 
She taught me to sew and darn socks.

I learned to sew on a sewing machine and to hand stitch. I sewed on buttons. I embroidered towels. I darned socks. I even learned to repair runs in nylon stockings.

She insisted that we make our beds in the morning.

Making beds has always been part of my life. We learned to make what we called square corners at the lower end of the bed. When our children were growing up we called it making the bed Snoopy perfect.

What I owe my father.
I have been thinking a lot about the things that I learned from my father.  I may not remember all or everything, because we learn many things that we are unaware of.

These are not necessarily in any particular order.
My father was a gardener.

Every place we lived he planted a garden and raised produce. I learned to love the land and to not waste space that could be cultivated.
My father was a worker.

I learned from him that work was important. He was always reliable. He went to work on a bicycle when we lived in Denver and did not have a car. I learned that one did what ever was necessary to honestly provide for the family.
My father loved me.

Although he could not always be with me, he cared and showed me that he did. I went to scout camp at Camp Tahosa. He could not go with me for the whole time, so he took a day off and took the streetcar to Boulder, Colorado and hiked the 30 miles to the camp and spent the night and then hiked back to Boulder and took the streetcar back to Denver.
He was interested in my education.

When I was having trouble with my arithmetic in grade school he would give me problems to do in my head. When I had spelling problems he would give me the words and correct my spelling. As a result I became a better speller than he.

He taught me frugality.
We never had an abundance of money. I rarely got an allowance, but I was encouraged to save my money and to not be lured into spending for things that I did not need. One of his sayings was; "Don't spend too much for your whistle."

He was totally dedicated to the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is never a time that we did not attend all our church meetings. When we lived in Lander we always drove to Casper for all the district meetings. When we decided to build a chapel in Lander, he gave all of his overtime pay to the building fund. He rented a rotary tiller and tilled gardens in the town and gave the proceeds to the building fund. He joined the ministerial association and took his turn giving the devotional on the radio.

He treated his wife with respect.

I never heard him speak disrespectfully of my mother. He was over protective and was quick to chastise any one who he thought might be critical of her.

He let me make my own decisions.

I always wanted to be a doctor. My father's brother (Vernon) was a doctor and most of the doctors that my parents were acquainted with were not active in the church. To my father's credit he never told me what to do or demanded that I become what he decided should be my profession. He supported my decisions even though it was not what he would have chosen.

He was an example of being friendly and inviting.
He would greet people at church; those that he knew and he always greeted strangers. He would find out about them and often invited them to dinner. New people in the ward often came to our house to dinner when we lived in Denver. We often had the missionaries to dinner at our home when we were in Lander.  I am naturally not as outgoing as he was, but I have tried to be as hospitable.

He maintained a good reputation among his associates.

There were people who did not agree with him and those who disliked him, but they respected him. One person said that if they saw Ivin Gee stumbling out of a bar at midnight, they would know that he was not drunk nor had he been drinking.

Love,

Grandpa