Bleach & Saturdays

 I love the smell of bleach. They say that people will forget what you say, but they won't forget how you made them feel. To me the smell of bleach is connected to a feeling of cleanliness, fresh, and a new beginning. Just like every Saturday. A try again. Maybe this time will be better. It didn't matter how many times Sunday's events happened, Saturday always came. If we helped our mom with chores on Saturday we would get to go grocery shopping with her in St. George. I don't know if that was a reward, but it sure felt like one. Carl's Jr. used to sell this long steak sandwich with onion rings inside it. Oh my gosh!! It was so good. I knew if I went grocery shopping that I would get that too. I didn't know that it was a stretch for my mom to get that steak sandwich with a side of fried zucchini (extra ranch) for me and her, but now looking back I remember her cutting the sandwich in half to share and always giving me the bigger half. You see- moms do that. They give every piece of them that they can to their children. My mom did. She did this for all 7 of her children. Each of us felt special and individualized by her. As Saturday's sun drifted across the sky and the moon would start showing it's face my mom would turn on "Unsolved Mysteries". I loved trying to be the one closest to my mom to snuggle into her. I did this into my teenage years. We all did. We loved our mom. The biggest treat was when she would pull out one Snickers bar that she had probably bought at the grocery store earlier that day. It was her favorite chocolate bar. All of us kids would be so freaking excited! She would unwrap it and cut that one bar into pieces so all of us could have a bite. We all had the same size. To be honest, I love chocolate, but I don't like Snickers. I still swallowed that thing in two bites. 

Grocery shopping was always the same story. We would help my mom load the groceries on the belt and then she would tell me to stand at the start of the belt so nobody else could put their groceries on it. She was always embarrassed to pull out a stack of papers called food stamps to pay for our groceries. She didn't want anyone to see or judge her. She was already judged for her accent and she didn't want any of us to be judged for not having money. Sometimes she would have to write a check and I remember her worry as she would say on our drive home "I hope that doesn't bounce". I didn't even know what that meant until later. Saturdays were magical. Saturdays made every bad day completely dissolve. As if we lived in a fairy tale. Seriously. My mom was that amazing to make things such as grocery shopping feel like a reward. My love for the LDS temple started when I was a child. My mom would always make it clear that Saturdays were so good because she went to the temple. I am going there one day. When I can. I will. I couldn't wait to have that same joy. Fast forwarding- I did and I soaked it in on a weekly basis. I loved it and it gave me the same energy that it did my mom.