A Treasure

Found in a Shoe Box

It lay in the bottom of the shoe box that held Aunt Marjorie recipes.  Half Hour Pudding, Pumpkin Pie, Crazy Cake were written in Aunt Marjorie’s familiar writing I turned the paper over and was surprised to find a child’s writing...

The Answer

1 Our house is usually neat

With things where they belong

The plants are green and blossoming

And not a thing goes wrong

The clocks are always ticking

The dog is always fed

The kitchen is always tidied up

Meal punctually spread

2 But now it doesn’t look the same

No one can find his things

The plants are brown and

every day some new disaster brings

The clocks are old and silent

The dog looks gaunt and dreary

The kitchen is a cookery heap

Cold dinner thing taste queer

3 You like to know what turned the tick

I’ll tell you why simply

Mother’s Sick

It was signed by my mother a younger school aged mother.  I sat down surprised by the comfort this piece of history brought me.  I held a piece of my mother's childhood, writing out this poem at school and then carrying it home to present to her parents.  I wonder what they said how they received this gift.

The piece of paper would have been placed on a door or cupboard displayed as evidence of their pride in her.  Eventually though taken down and placed in a desk draw, where Aunt Marjorie would have found it.  

Did she read her baby sister’s poem again before turning it over and writing down her recipes?

When she took it out to make the cake or pie did she think about the poem on the other side, for the paper shows evidence that it was brought out to sit beside butter and flour.

Would anyone have every guess the joy and comfort it has brought a daughter to hold a piece of her mother’s childhood?

A treasure found in a shoe box.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2014 twosnydergirls