Saturday, December 28, 2019

12月29日(日曜日)2019
亡くなった母は大正2年、商家の長女として生まれて当時としては比較的自由な少女時代を過ごし、父と結婚してからは5人の子(男4女1)の母となりました。子育ての時代は毎日の洗濯だけでも大変な量であったと思います。私が生まれてしばらくすると一槽式の洗濯機が我が家にも置かれるようになり、母にとっては夢のような文明の力(リキ)の登場だったに違いありません。私が子供の時は掃除は祖母(姑)、料理と洗濯は母がやっていたように記憶しています。そんな訳で忙しかった母から料理や裁縫を習うということはあまりなかったのですが、母がしていたことを思い出しては時々やってみることがあります。その一つは台所で使う布巾の煮沸消毒です。母は時々布巾を大鍋に入れて石鹸も少しいれてグツグツ煮ていました。汚れが出た後すすいでからしばらく漂白剤に浸けて、再びすすいで、干します。これを私も真似てやっているとそばに来て見た人が「布巾を料理するんですか!?」と珍しそうに言います。年末の1日、思い立って布巾の煮沸消毒をしました。My mother (1913-1976) was born in a family of merchants as the first daughter and grew relatively freely at that time. After getting married to my father, she became a mother of five children (4 boys and 1 girl). During the time she was raising children, I can easily imagine that many things must have been hard for her such as washing kids' clothing daily. A washing machine was set up in my house several years after I was born and it must have been a remarkable cultural device for her. When I was a child, my grandmother took care of cleaning the house and my mom prepared meals and washed the clothing of all family members except my grandma's. Therefore I didn't have chance to receive any cooking or sewing lessons from such a busy mom. However, I remember what she was doing at home and I still do them by myself. One of her house chores was to sterilize kitchen towels by boiling. She sometimes put kitchen towels into a big pot and boiled with a little powder soap to take the dirt out from the towels. She would wash and soak them in water with bleach for a while. She would rinse them again and air-dried them. When I was doing this, people who came to watch said with surprise, "Do you cook kitchen towels!?". On one of the last days of the year, I thought of doing the sterilization of kitchen towels my mother's way.