"What Southern Moms Tell Their Daughters"
Shellie Rushing Tomlinson
This one is turning out to be a lot of fun! I've pasted a blurb about it below. I hope you'll read it and email me with your own southern mom's wisdom. The response to this project has been tremendous. It seems to touch a soft spot with a lot of people. I'm enjoying cataloging all the varied submissions. If you have a website with a spot to paste it--that would be great! Or maybe you can pass the word along to your email list to help me get the word out. I have a printable form on this page if you'd like to make copies to pass out. Any involvement would be appreciated. Won't you join the fun! Warm regards~Shellie
WHAT SOUTHERN MOMS TELL THEIR DAUGHTERS… A friend's mother gave her this piece of advice on her wedding night: Honey, when you're late with supper, or just plain tired, remember to have the Holy Trinity of Southern cooking (onions, celery and bell pepper) sautéing in a dab of butter or bacon grease when your man comes home--it'll put him in a good mood and you can feed him anything. Shellie Rushing Tomlinson (author of Lessons Learned on Bull Run Road) wants your southern mom's advice about love, marriage, relationships and life in general. Write to Shellie at tomtom@allthingssouthern.comto have your mom's advice memorialized in her new book:
WHAT SOUTHERN MOMS TELL THEIR DAUGHTERS…
UPDATE 1/12/04:
For your inspiration, here's a list of the different catagories and a sample of one of my chapter introductions. ~Hugs,Shellie
Chapter Headings:
What Southern Moms tell their daughters about…
1. Life
2. Love, Dating and Relationships
3. Marriage
4. Sex and Coming of Age
5. Education
6. God
7. Social Graces and Manners
8. Appearance, dieting and “yore figare”
9. Cooking and keeping a house
10. Fashion
11. Finances
12. Children
13. This and that
Sample Chapter Introduction:
“What Southern Moms Tell Their Daughters About Life…”
My mother’s first marriage ended in disaster. Her second continues to thrive. When mama’s Prince and my Papa, the only daddy I’ve ever known, brought us to his little farm in Louisiana, she was a young 22 year-old with three girls, ages five, three and two. Only recently have I come to realize what an adjustment it must have been for her to leave her parents, her church, her siblings and her friends in the busy city of Natchez, Mississippi and move to a quiet farming community in rural Louisiana. It was years before they even had a phone and Mama’s long-awaited mail was delivered to her mother-in-law’s house closer to the highway.
Along with her other new chores, Mama was expected to feed the chickens and wring their necks, to work a garden and freeze the produce. Her talents at the time lay more along the lines of playing the piano. She had a great deal of learning to do.
Of course, I didn’t realize this back then, not when I was younger and she was teaching us about life. By the time I was old enough to notice, I saw only a competent farm hand, bean truck driver, cook and housewife. When she admonished us to “do a good job or we’d have to lick our calf over” it sounded like she’d been licking calves her whole life.
I remember a lot of things mama said about life, though they always sprang from the moment. She never actually sat us girls down and gave us life lessons. She didn’t have to, she was a continuing education course all her own. Never one to hold grudges, I watched her excuse the same lady’s sharp tongue many times. “She means well,” she’d say. “She has a good heart.” My sisters and I always wondered why the lady’s good heart couldn’t do something with her sharp tongue.
Mama had a unique way of making her point. If we were fighting, which was often, she’d tell us to “kiss and makeup”. Then she’d have us sit under the kitchen table with our arms around the enemy until someone gave in and a truce was born. She believed life was too short to go around mad at the world. “No one likes to be around a sour puss,” she’d say.
By the time we were teenagers Mama had a new line. If we were pouting about something we needed an attitude adjustment. I hated having my attitude adjusted. It was never pleasant and Mama was always in charge of the adjusting.
Around this time, Mama’s lectures became all about not “following the crowd.” She asked us about the proverbial bridge on more than one occasion. “If your friends jumped off the bridge, would you?” she’d ask. Of course, my sisters and I always needed more information. “How high was the bridge?” “Who all was going?” “What are they wearing?” “What are they going to say about the kids that don’t jump? We knew better than to ask Mama. The only answer she was looking for was, “Yes ma’am.” Anything more and we’d be looking at another attitude adjustment.
In compiling this book I recognized many familiar quotes from moms around the country, and some that were truly unique. What follows are the wise words from other southern moms as they taught their daughters life lessons handed down through the ages.
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