By: Janice Lindsay
In my family, “to grout” a plate or kitchen utensil means you removed it from its storage space but didn’t use it, and you returned it without washing it. This expression honors the memory of Miss Grout, my junior high Home Economics teacher, for whom this practice was a serious sin.
I’m descended from a long line of mothers who have held the convenient and endearing notion that taking care of children is more important than taking care of houses: There’s nothing wrong with a few dust bunnies as long as everybody’s having a good time.
So most of what I don’t want to know about housekeeping, I learned from Miss Grout. (She was “Miss Grout.” She had no first name. “Ms.” had not yet been invented.)
Miss Grout firmly ruled the state-of-the-art kitchen and simulated living room and dining room in our brand new junior high. She held no such notion as the toleration of dust bunnies.
By the way, these were the days when girls took “Home Ec” while boys took “Shop.” I thought Shop would be more fun.
Gray-haired, tall, and erect, Miss Grout was imposing and very proper. She was kind and patient with us girls, in a cool, correct way. Week after week, her challenge was to teach the rules of clean, well-run homes to rooms full of girls, all at various stages of early teenagerhood, who were coming to grips with the thought that – yikes – in a few years we would be grown-up women.
I believe Miss Grout was trying to convince us that, whatever might be expected of us in those grown-up years, we would be able to handle it, if only we paid attention to doing things correctly.
Miss Grout taught us the right way to wash dishes (Miss Grout didn’t assume anything, not even dishwashers): silverware soaking in the bottom of the dish pan while you wash the other dishes, glasses first because they’re least dirty, pans last because they’re dirtiest.
She taught us – here’s where my family’s sin comes in — that if you take a dish out of the cupboard, you must wash it before you put it back even if you don’t use it. I haven’t followed this rule once in my entire life, but I remember Miss Grout every time I don’t.
She spent so long teaching us how to polish silverware that, when I grew up and accidentally acquired some, I gave it away.
Miss Grout taught us that, when you cook, first collect all the ingredients, then put the packages away as you use them. If there’s anything left on the counter when you think you’re done, you’re not.
Miss Grout didn’t teach us about careers, or how to manage children or marriages or money. But she shared her belief that there’s a right way to do everything. That’s a comfort on those grown-up days when you can’t figure out the right way to do anything.
By now, Miss Grout has gone to her final and well deserved reward, probably cooking tasty luncheons for the angels, in an immaculate kitchen, to serve on perfect shining china, with spotless and well-ironed tablecloths and matching napkins, where every piece of silverware and glassware sparkles in its exact and proper place.
Miss Grout lives on in the memories of countless women who, even as we break her rules, have no excuse for not knowing what they are.
By the way, I’m sure Miss Grout taught us the correct way to dust and vacuum. Apparently I was absent that day.
Contact jlindsay@tidewater.net
