It kind of makes me sad that my son has never watched me put on an apron and cook. I used to watch Mom do that and I always knew she was going to make something delicious, something memorable..
Ironically, since he is a cook in a restaurant, my son wears an apron every day. He views it as part of his work uniform, of course.
My apron memories are vivid and happy. I remember hugging my mom or my memaw when they were wearing an apron. The aprons always smelled like food -- in a good way, of course. I remember being a little kid and trying to hug my mom and ending up pressing my face against her apron, the softness of the cotton against my cheek.
Apron pockets always held something good.
My mom wrote about aprons in her blog, talking about her childhood and young years [1933-53]:
"Every day outfits for women were dresses , or skirts and blouses. They either had to be washed and ironed or dry cleaned, which was expensive. Thus aprons were important.
We had everyday aprons that covered pretty much everything -- some with bibs, some without – or there was just the skirt type which Mother favored. She was so short that bibs were in the way. During the World War II years, when we lived on a South Carolina farm, Mother sewed feed sack aprons, some with cheery, nice prints, as she was a good seamstress. She always added a large pocket, which was helpful. [at right is a photo of a flour sack apron made by my grandmother]
From about the time I was nine or ten, I was as tall as my mom [4’11], then much taller ‘til I got to be 5’3 or 5’4. So her aprons fit me just fine.
From time to time, my dad helped her in the kitchen, so she made aprons to suit his 6ft. 4in frame. He preferred plain white aprons with bibs. I still have one of the last ones she made him. For years, I hung it in my kitchen so I could hug it from time to time. Seemed to bring him closer.. He mostly helped her on Sundays, after church, since he needed to protect his good clothes. We usually had a big Sunday dinner, in the middle of the day, that involved heavy lifting of roasts etc. Most of the cook pots and frying pans were heavy iron, especially the Dutch oven.
We often had guests for meals, so like most women, when it was time to eat the soiled apron was removed and replaced with a “company one” that was kind of pretty, often starched and ironed."
I have never come home from church, left on my "church clothes," tied on an apron and cooked a big Sunday dinner. I need to do that sometime, to keep the tradition alive and honor the women in my family who came before me, who did that just about every Sunday of their lives.
Some Sundays they packed up the food and went over to Chastain Park and had a potluck Sunday dinner. Below, Memaw and some of her sisters and kinfolks at the park. Memaw is in white. [I left it big so you could see the faces] I think, based on the shape of the shadow, that my mother took that shot..
