Mother's Little Sayings
From: "Good Little Girl",
The Bulletin Board,
Saint Paul Pioneer Press (03/21/2015)
==================================
"My mother used to say:
- Hell's bells! when she made a mistake.
- Landagoshen! as an exclamation. (I thought she was saying Atlantic Ocean, but it probably was Land of Goshen.)
- If all's well about anything in the future: 'If all's well, Daddy will take us for a ride tonight.' I thought she was talking about the season, fall.
- What you don't see when you haven't got a gun! (No violence intended.) One time, my 2-year-old sneaked out of the house with nothing on but his big sister's saddle shoes. Mother said: 'What you don't see when you haven't got a gun!'
- His nibs when she referred to my favorite uncle.
- That takes the cake for anything out of the ordinary.
- Pride cometh before the fall. She'd say this so often; it's etched in my mind!
- God love him whenever she held a child.
- That beats all! for anything exceptional.
- It was only a love-tap anytime your brother or sister hit you.
- Don't make that face! God will freeze it and you'll look like that forever.
- Eat your crusts, or Mr. Hoover will get you.
- Eat your crusts if you want curly hair.
- If you don't sit down to eat, all the food will go to your feet.
- You look like a Fiji-Islander when we didn't comb our hair.
-Don't get up on your high horse if we became indignant over anything.
- A long drink of water to describe a really tall person.
- If asked where she or her relatives were from, the answer was always County Mayo, God help us.
- We'd say Hocus pocus dominocus without realizing it was probably making fun of the most sacred Latin liturgy."
-----------------------------------------------------
Good Little Girl, days later:
"When I sent you the list of expressions the other day, how could I have forgotten my mother's most famous one:
- Offer it up. We'd skin our knees on the stony tar in the alley and come in covered with blood. She'd say: 'Offer it up.' We'd have to walk eight blocks to school in 10-below-zero weather. She'd say: 'Offer it up.' We almost died from measles. She said: 'Offer it up.'
Somehow it worked. I think the saving factor was that, when things were hard for her, she'd always say: 'I'm going to offer it up.' It wasn't just something she imposed upon us.
All the things that were difficult for us, we believed could help someone else: the poor souls in Purgatory, the Pagan Babies, the sick and the dying. I think we were more aware of the interdependence of humanity than kids are today. We honestly felt that our being brave and good and kind and long-suffering could affect complete strangers if we offered it up.
......................................
Of course, I still do ...."
