IT’S A CAR, NOT MY SHORTS!

A young TLW

The other day TLW (The Little Woman) and I drove to have our ritualistic Sunday morning breakfast using my car. If anything TLW is astute and can immediately recognize a flaw or two of mine and point it out.

“You really ought to get this car cleaned at the car wash,” she said as I immediately felt bad, self-conscious and guilty, and it wasn’t even 7:15 am yet.

“Yup, I oughta, you want to use your car?”

“No, just saying. Good thing you didn’t drive using this car to Albany!”

“Why? No one would be riding outside the car, just in it!”

If there are two things TLW knows it is: shoes, her dad worked for Thom McAn Shoes and washing cars, her mom was the master at it. You see it wasn’t the results her mother got, no, and it wasn’t how long it took, no it was something else. It was how she did it!

A great storyteller!

My mother-in-law would never live in a desert or very dry area of the world because the rain was so important. Whenever it rained, my mother-in-law Helen would go out in the rain and wash her car. Her car was particularly clean in the spring around April and in the fall about October! Her theory was why go to a car wash or use a hose when the rain would do just as well, thank you!

Being how she was a popular lady, knowing all of East Islip, she would often be seen washing her car on the corner of Third Avenue and Union, a very busy thoroughfare! It seems that when she passed on, they had to close the local A&P because they all knew her, loved to talk to her and probably caused long lines at her checkout counter as she chatted with a Mrs. Flattery or Finnegan or Murphy or even O’Brien. If her children wanted to talk to her they had to buy something and get on line just like everyone else, including daddy!

So it was indeed a problem for TLW to know her dear sweet mom was in a raincoat washing her car in the rainstorm on a major corner for the world to see! It was one of life’s better lessons, one of frugality and economics.

My mother-in-law was a very smart woman, a social butterfly and always busy as a bee, she took nothing in life that wasn’t hers and yet could I imagine her giving it all away! I see a lot of TLW in her mother, and I know that her mom give her a lot of herself in so many ways, just not when it came to washing her car.

So like wives everywhere, she always wants her husband to have a clean car and clean underwear! One out of two ain’t so bad.