©By Evelyn Mitchell, 10/13/2019
I didn’t get this lesson in the usual way granddaughters are given lessons from their grandmothers. Mine was a hard realization that changed my perspective on what people do with the lessons they learn. It sharpened my skill of observation when I revisit the people I’ve taught. It trained me to see more clearly the genius in them, to use what they are given, to make what they have work for them. A trait my grandmother didn’t have but passed on to me none-the-less.
In case you’d rather listen, the audio is a little under 8 minutes long.
How My Grandmothers Lesson for Folding Towels Taught Me another Lesson for Life
My Grandmother, God rest her soul. She taught me how to fold towels so they hang nice on the towel bar.
Her method is to lay them out flat then fold the sides to the center to make a nice crisp tri-fold, that wouldn’t have any edges showing except at the ends where the pretty detail could be displayed, then fold lengthwise half way to put on the towel bar. Then for putting them into the linen closet she instructed me to fold them in half then in half again keeping the trifold intact for quick delivery to the bathroom towel bar after cleaning and collecting the old dirty ones for the laundry.
I studiously adopted her method and have been folding my towels as she instructed my whole young life. Proud of how beautiful they hang on my towel bar. So even though over the years the edges fray just a little and a thread or two peeks out, no one notices because my grandmother showed me how to make them look crisp and new.
I was folding the towels, just as she showed me, on a day she happened to be visiting. As she watched me work she started looking a little agitated, and then finally she asked, who taught me to fold towels like that. I proudly exclaimed that she did. She got all red faced and pursed her lips; “I never showed you that, it’s not how I fold towels.” I stood there with such a blank look on my face, and then she went on. “I never taught you to wrap the towel around the front of you like an apron letting the edges just flop over.” That should have made me laugh, but it didn’t, I was devastated, it hurt my feelings so much that she couldn’t see the basic lesson was still there and the outcome of a neat crisp towel on the towel bar had been accomplished.
Although I tried to argue with her, she couldn’t see how I could be right. Because in actuality she didn’t teach me to wrap the towel around my body, she taught me to use a flat surface. I had to adapt her method to the situation I found myself in most frequently when I was doing the laundry. Either the surfaces were too small, or already taken up by folded laundry, or other things. So rather than trying to move everything to fold 3 or 4 towels I just used the only surface available at the time… me.
If she hadn’t seen me folding towels that day she never would have known that I adapted her method of folding towels, and she would have continued to smile when she saw the pretty towels hanging in my clean bathroom.
Now I think to myself how sad it is that people are so set in their ways or methods of doing things that the adaptations one has to make, to accomplish the same goal, is met with such disappointment or hostility that it taints what should have been a beautiful memory, in this case, of a lesson taught by a grandmother to her granddaughter, for the rest of their lives.
I do laugh now, but by the same token, it has taught me another lesson. It taught me that as I go through life teaching people how to do things, I keep in mind that they may need to make adjustments or adaptations to get the same results. So I can be content that the core lesson is still intact, and I can be prouder still, that they can think for themselves, and that they thought enough of what I taught them to keep it and just change it enough, to make it work for them and their situation.
Thank you Grandma, I love you.
Okay you may be wondering what’s the difference between change and adapt, well the dictionary description says it concisely.
As verbs the difference between change and adapt
…is that change is to become something different while adapt is to make suitable; to make to correspond; to fit or suit; to proportion.
