Man Explains How Families Worked Back in the Day

While growing up, we might not realize the wisdom in certain things until we grow older. In today’s story of the day, a man shared what his upbringing taught him.

Born in the mid-1940s, I grew up in a house where practicality ruled many aspects of our lives. My parents had a stable marriage with focused dreams, down to earth people who believed in making the most of what you have.

A way of life, they looked after what they had and included everything from us as kids to grass on the lawn.

They didn’t believe in wastage, and I can still remember how my mother used to wash aluminum foil after she cooked in it.

She knew how to recycle, mend, and heal anything and usually with something in her one hand and a cooking spoon in the other.

Memories of my dad in trousers and a tee shirt checking the oil in the car, wiping the summer sweat off his brow with his floppy hat as he moved the lawn, still fresh in my mind.

Things got well maintained, but something always needed fixing, whether it be the oven door, or clothes, or the screen door, or the washing line.

Sometimes it drove me crazy, the constant reusing, re-fixing, the repurposed leftovers. For once I didn’t want to care whether there would be more of something if I threw it away.

But that feeling vanished when my mother died. The pain I felt taught me that sometimes there isn’t more, sometimes what’s most important to us can have an expiry date.

So while we have the gift of something unique that adds value to our lives, we have to look after what is important to us, maintain and nurture, and fix it when it's broken.

While this can apply to everything from marriage, to a diabetic dog, to aging parents, we do so out of love for them and because they are worth it. Because we are worth it.

The value of making the most of something may save money, but more importantly, it will also remind us of the special people closest to us, to cherish them, and to keep it that way.

In a related story of the day, a young grandson learned from someone special to him as well. His grandfather’s words back in the day when they used to visit their friends at the nursing home every Saturday, taught him another valuable lesson in life.