Cleaning Behind My Ears
Notes from the Prairie: I Wonder #7
Sunday morning, after I shampoo my hair, I clean my ears inside and out. It’s my normal ritual. This morning, though, I hear my mother’s voice across the decades from my childhood Sunday mornings
My three younger brothers have just rushed into the car last-minute. She turns her seat in front, and says in her time-to-listen tone, “Did you wash behind your ears?” She makes eye contact with each. They nod.
I don’t nod with them. She has not directed her stern glance my way.
Under the warm spray, I wonder, Why didn’t she ask me? Several easy answers spring to mind.
She had a pattern of treating the boys differently. Her daughters helped with cooking and cleaning the house, but not her sons. The boys helped Dad in his tool truck and occasionally rode with him on his sales route in summer. I stop myself. It’s true, like most of her peers back then, she had sexist standards, but there was no reason for her to be sexist about ear washing.
My brothers’ ears got dirtier than mine. Nope. I played in the mud just as much as they did.
I was a docile and obedient child. She knew I had washed behind my ears without having to ask. I would like to believe this, but I had my moments. I often read a book when I was supposed to be dusting the second story furniture and flooring. I read as I walking from bedroom to bedroom, making sure she heard footsteps instead of silence.
I reflect further, and remember an unchallenged family standard: Avoid others’ disapproval, no matter what.
I hear again her other angry-voice instructions.
“Don’t you ever fight outside again. Don’t you know the neighbors can hear you?” She delivered these words passionately after calling the fighters indoors where she could not be overheard.
“Turn off the lights when you leave a room.” We heard this instruction nightly, after a passing motorist had commented to mother every light on both floors of our home had been on the night before and he couldn’t imagine why.
I picture my brothers again. When they sat in church pews with their buzz cuts, the backs of their ears were clearly visible to the people behind them. My long hair concealed mine!
I think of my mother-in-law’s similar standards. She often straightened her husband’s collar and smoothed down a few hairs before they left the church foyer.
I consider my own standard. I wash my ears because I want them clean, not because they might be seen.
I rejoice. It has taken decades, but I have finally silenced my inherited fear of disapproval from others.
I continue daily my morning routine. I dress, apply make up, use a curling iron, and comb my hair. I check the back with a hand mirror and plump up a few flat spots. Ready for hairspray, I check the back a second time.
My hand freezes. I only do a second check of the back on Sunday mornings! My childhood standard lives on.
At church, I follow a mother and adolescent daughter down the hall to the church foyer. The mother reaches over and removes several blond hairs from her daughter’s black sweater.
I am two decades older than the mother. Wrapped in my own black sweater, I chuckle and say to her, “Will you do that for me too, Mom?”
We laugh together and continue toward the sanctuary. That pre-worship impulse may be more universal than I realize.
The sermon today includes a suggestion that we conquer our fear of how others might react to us.
I take notes. I listen. I smile again.
No, I have not yet arrived. And won’t. Not until the hereafter.
But, praise God, I am on the journey.
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Carol Van Klompenburg is a writer living in Pella, Iowa. She has a BA in English and an MA in Theater Arts — and is available for reading performances of her work. Readers can contact her publicly by commenting on this Substack or privately at carolvk13@gmail.com. By today, she expects to receive multiple copies of A World in a Grain of Sand: Lively Little Stories of Household Stuff. Email her requesting to sample a few free electronic chapters. Contact her about a purchase, or go to Amazon.
Oh my! Having no brothers, I didn't know that mothers made sure they washed behind their ears. My mother was more concerned that in country school I did not unhook my long stockings from my garters and roll them down to my ankles causing my legs to get too cold.