Life With Father

You may wonder what my title has to do with aprons. Well... let me tell you.

For those of you that are old movie buffs you are familiar with the movie Life With Father. We were brought up on the classics - thanks to my mother - and we watched this movie repeatedly. We thought it funny and amusing with all the many wonderful stories that spun around together within the family featured in the film.

My most memorable part of this movie comes from the scene where the older son, who was courting a young lady (Elizabeth Taylor) was wearing a "hand-me-down" suit worn previously by his father. Earlier in the movie we learn that the boy feels uncomfortable in the suit because he feels like his father in the suit. Anyway, the couple is alone and about to make their parting wishes. The young man sits down and Elizabeth Taylor's character plops in his lap and throws her arms around him. He immediately pushes her off of his lap and screams - not the reaction most young men would have while a young lady they are interested in shows them attention. We later find out that this reaction solely came from him feeling like his father in that suit. He felt his father's presence around him and therefore was extremely uncomfortable at the advances of the woman he had feelings for.

So why do I say all this? I was thinking about my history with aprons. I remember wearing aprons as I grew. I remember wearing a smock as a child while painting, wearing an apron while baking cookings and icing them, wearing my mother's apron as a young adult helping out in the kitchen. With all of this experience you may think that aprons have always been a part of my kitchen ware. Unfortunately, they were not. Why? Because my biggest and most outstanding memory of aprons is watching my mother cook for the last 28 years in one of her many aprons.

So... whenever I put on an apron, I, like the boy in the movie, feel like my mother. When I was younger (late teens and early twenties) this sincerely bothered me - because I was too immature to appreciate it. :) Now, it comforts me to know that everytime I put on an apron, I can feel my mother - the messy cook that she is - cooking away in our home kitchen in south Alabama.