There are some women who swear they will be nothing like, or identical to, their mothers. I am somewhere in between. I never expected I’d be exactly like my mother, but I also did not strive to be a Grandma Alice clone. We are all individuals after all. I definitely don’t expect Melody to turn out like me, she is too much like her Dad in many ways already. She’s stubborn, she’s developing a sense of humor, she loves Hannah Montana… But I digress. She will learn some of my behaviors…hopefully the more graceful and refined ones.

Tonight, I found myself doing something that I saw my own mom do obviously enough times that it stuck in my head as “the thing to do.” I freely admit I am not a neat freak, nor am I even tidy. At best, I’m organized chaos. However, I like to keep my kitchen clean. There are times I slide on that, and yes I have left dishes to sit in the sink too long, or allowed the trash to pile up because I’m being stubborn and waiting for Dad to take it out. But, every night after dinner, I like to clean the kitchen, and tonight was the night I scoured the sink with Comet. I can remember my mom doing this, the faint smell of scouring powder on her hands afterwards when she’d say okay to a cookie, and the sparkling clean white of the sink.

I have always scrubbed my sink with some regularity. I love the white porcelain, the smell of Comet, and the memory of my mom. It’s completely mundane, I know, but for some reason tonight I really identified this as “something I learned from my mom.” She has taught me how to sew, sprinkle and iron (although I rarely iron and heaven forbid, sprinkle!), do laundry, clean properly – yes I do know how to do it – cook imaginatively, be frugal, be generous, be patient, and most of all, she taught me how to be a good mom. But, sigh, for some reason, scrubbing the sink it what popped out as a mom-ism tonight. When I do this, I feel very connected to my mom, and a bit like a little girl again, remembering how I would sometimes sit at the bar of our kitchen and watch her work. I guess you could say that at the feet and knees of our parents is where we learn a great deal of our behaviors, morals, and values. You don’t really think when you are a kid that learning the difference between the usages of Spic-N-Span and Basic H are going to affect the rest of your adult life, do you?

What are some things you learned from YOUR mom that you find yourself doing from time to time? Use the comments to share “something you learned from your mom.”