St. Patrick's Day is coming up, it's a special day for me. Kind of my own Remembrance Day, for my family. I was thinking today about all the old cleaning methods women have used in the past. I can remember my Grandma talking about using the old wringer washing machine. Not automated at all. I remember my Grandpa using the old lawn mower, the kind you really have to push around to get the blades turning. How did those old folks manage? I tried pushing around that old fashioned mower and I could barely get it to budge when I was a young sprite of ten.

The funny thing is that I tend to think of my Grandparents as being old, that's the only way I knew them. In fact, they would have been young 20 year olds, hanging laundry out on the clothesline. New Mothers washing cloth diapers, ironing shirts and cooking dinner. In turn, there would have been young Dads fixing the car and then taking the kids out to the park while Mom stayed home to wax the floors.

It seems the biggest changes we have from our modern electric machines are the saving of time. I don't know how long it would have taken to wash all the clothes by hand and wring them through. Grandma told me about catching her hands in the wringer and boiling them in the hot soapy water. Not that she was a complainer. She just wanted me to understand how things were. How else could anyone know what the experience was like? I'm not tempted to try it personally. It's so much easier to turn on a machine and leave it to do the work. So convenient too. I've got laundry in the machine right now.

But, I don't forget Grandma, Grandpa and all their brother's and sister's who make up my family. On St. Patrick's Day I remember them all. We're an Irish and Austrian blend (mainly) so I picked this one day for them. To think of their struggles, their jokes and everything else they've left me.