🌿The Long Way Round: Coffee Filters to Portrait of My Mother
This morning I found myself comparing coffee filters. The natural brown kind, the white kind, the slightly more expensive kind versus the store brand. One of those tiny domestic decisions that should mean almost nothing.
And suddenly I was remembering my mother when she was out of coffee filters and out of money to buy more. Sometimes she would improvise with a white paper towel or even a plain Kleenex. It wasn’t a lifestyle experiment. It was what was available.
My mother had good taste. Poverty never changed that. She didn’t learn to love cheap things. She learned to live without things. She would not pretend that imitation was the same thing as quality.
She expressed beauty in the ways available to her, which meant primarily two things: Sewing and making food. This is where she remained entirely herself, where circumstances had the least reach.
She was an excellent seamstress, and she recognized quality in fabric and design. After I began to work and could purchase Vogue patterns and fabric she would sit over her machine late at night and learn the complicated sewing techniques to make beautiful designer clothes.
She loved to bake for everyone from church to family to the postman. She would take her limited resources and make wonderful food that everyone loved. Even after she was no longer able to have her own place she continued to cut recipes out of the newspaper.
She lived by her own standards. Not for status. Not from snobbery. But because beauty mattered to her. Craftsmanship mattered.
Had she been born into different circumstances, she probably would have delighted with beautiful things and strong opinions about how things should be done. She had that instinct naturally. But life handed her limitation, and limitation did not soften her preferences.
There is something poignant about people whose taste exceeds their circumstances. They are aware of what could be beautiful, but rarely have access to it. And still, they recognize it.
As I try to simplify my own life I remember these roots by wanting fewer things, but better ones when possible. Not needing to fill every corner. Wanting things to feel intentional.
That is why something as ordinary as coffee filters can stir memory. Behind those little household choices are entire philosophies of living, passed from one generation to another.
Janis @ Maison Tranquille
Still Curious. Still Growing. Still Grateful.
This morning I found myself comparing coffee filters. The natural brown kind, the white kind, the slightly more expensive kind versus the store brand. One of those tiny domestic decisions that should mean almost nothing.
And suddenly I was remembering my mother when she was out of coffee filters and out of money to buy more. Sometimes she would improvise with a white paper towel or even a plain Kleenex. It wasn’t a lifestyle experiment. It was what was available.
My mother had good taste. Poverty never changed that. She didn’t learn to love cheap things. She learned to live without things. She would not pretend that imitation was the same thing as quality.
She expressed beauty in the ways available to her, which meant primarily two things: Sewing and making food. This is where she remained entirely herself, where circumstances had the least reach.
She was an excellent seamstress, and she recognized quality in fabric and design. After I began to work and could purchase Vogue patterns and fabric she would sit over her machine late at night and learn the complicated sewing techniques to make beautiful designer clothes.
She loved to bake for everyone from church to family to the postman. She would take her limited resources and make wonderful food that everyone loved. Even after she was no longer able to have her own place she continued to cut recipes out of the newspaper.
She lived by her own standards. Not for status. Not from snobbery. But because beauty mattered to her. Craftsmanship mattered.
Had she been born into different circumstances, she probably would have delighted with beautiful things and strong opinions about how things should be done. She had that instinct naturally. But life handed her limitation, and limitation did not soften her preferences.
There is something poignant about people whose taste exceeds their circumstances. They are aware of what could be beautiful, but rarely have access to it. And still, they recognize it.
As I try to simplify my own life I remember these roots by wanting fewer things, but better ones when possible. Not needing to fill every corner. Wanting things to feel intentional.
That is why something as ordinary as coffee filters can stir memory. Behind those little household choices are entire philosophies of living, passed from one generation to another.
Janis @ Maison Tranquille
Still Curious. Still Growing. Still Grateful.
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