You Can Leave Your Hat On*

*Inspiration from Heff

I was brought up in a house where you took off your shoes.

No questions. Winter, spring, summer, or fall (all you have to do is call - oh stop!) the shoes came off.

Didn't matter if you had on the loveliest boots that took you five minutes to get on and tucked perfectly. Didn't matter if you had on shameful socks. Didn't matter if you needed a pedicure (although my mom once told me that any woman who painted her toenails was hiding something), the shoes came off when you hit her front door.

Of course, you wouldn't come in the front door. You had to enter through the garage. My mom had millions of 'rules'.

1. Do not throw any tissues in the bathroom wastebasket. I had a girlfriend at the cabin once and my mom was thoroughly annoyed that she kept tossing tissues into the canister.

2. Wipe the dog's feet before she enters the house. Well, the damn dog didn't have shoes did she?

3. No bare feet on her vinyl kitchen floor. Those feet leave little sweaty footprints.

4. No showering in the main bathroom. This one flummoxed me. Yes I knew the 'reason', but wha?? I still love baths, but I decidedly luxuriate in long, hot showers.

5. No one's cooking tastes better than hers. This one happens to have been very true. She was an AWESOME cook, but god save you if you ever mentioned that Mrs. Oppen could make a mean pot of coffee.

6. Vacuum carpet so the nap goes all one way. When I was in high school and my parents were at the cabin, my girlfriends and I ran amuk and trod on the carpet. Smushing the carpet all over. The joke was on me however, because I would have to re-vacuum. Ha!

7. No one over the age of 30 needs hair longer than her shoulders. Well, she didn't like vacuuming up long hairs. It interfered with the carpet nap.

8. Kitchen and bathroom floors need to be scrubbed on your hands and knees. There is stuff going on down there you need to see close up. A domestic-dinosaur I practice to this day. She's right!

9. Redheads cannot wear red. She was a redhead and stayed in her color wheel. And this was YEARS before anyone had ever heard of having your colors 'done'.

10. All meals need a salad, pickles, olives, bread, meat, gravy, vegetable, and a starch. I don't know how she knew this stuff, but my mom was waaaaaay ahead nutritionally. She made EVERYTHING from scratch. I didn't appreciate it at the time. I loved going to my friend's houses where we ate Jeno's Pizza, drank Tang, and had sugary cereal for breakfast. That shit wasn't happening at our house.

I am crazy just like my mom. Except for the shoes. Leave your damn shoes on. I know how taking them off can ruin an outfit.

Miss you Nana. It kills me that you're gone.