I can see my grandmother in her Sunday church clothes tending to the mid-day Sunday dinner. She has an apron on over her dressy suit, something which she took from a hook on the back of the pantry door every time she ventured into the kitchen to work. It was made of flowered cotton with a yoke that went around her neck, and ties which she knotted in the back. It pretty much protected her from any kitchen spills and splatters she might encounter.
She would have put the roast in the oven before she left for church, and would now be scurrying around the kitchen getting the vegetables ready to go with the meat and oven roasted potatoes. She would place the roast in front of my grandfather, still in his coat and tie, for carving. Then in a final gesture that indicated that dinner was ready, would whisk off her apron hanging it back on its hook in the pantry, at last sitting down with a smile and a sigh.
I can picture her Sunday outfits because there were not that many of them. They were mostly tweed-like suits, and always accompanied by a small hat with a veil that tucked into her gray permed hair. These clothes lived in her closet, neatly draped over hangers, the hats in their special hat boxes with her shoes on a rack at the bottom. The closet was accessed by a door, and the closet was not much bigger than the width of that door.
I do not own an apron, and my closet is twice as big as my grandmother’s was. Yet by today’s standards it is a very modest wardrobe, and what is more, I share it with my husband. Recently, while visiting a model home, I went into the master bedroom and walked into a closet that was the size of my bedroom in the house in which I had grown up. There was a bench in the middle which reminded me of a Victorian fainting couch which I might have needed if presented with the number of shoes that closet could hold. There were bars and more bars for hanging clothes, drawers without number, and a chandelier sparkling down on the acres of space. I was taking it all in when a fellow model home sightseer behind me said to her significant other, “This closet is just too small. It will never do.” I will guarantee that there is not one apron to be found in her house.
Yet, while I do not own an apron either, I admire what it represented in my grandparents lives. There was a care that went with processions. One owned just what one needed, and one took good care of what one did have, from a good wool suit to a carefully cared for car. When I think of my grandparents and their times this quote from Billy Graham comes to mind. “The greatest legacy one can pass on to one's children and grandchildren is not …..material things accumulated in one's life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.” I only hope I can do as well as they did in passing on that legacy, even though I cook with nary an apron in sight.