My mother was Lillian Phillips Shivers. She grew up in the village of Allen in Wicomico County, married there in her parents’ parlor, while her father and her future mother-in-law wept on the front porch – out of joy, I trust! In 1946, she and dad decided that it was time for her to sell the store and move to the farm where he had grown up, about a mile from the village. By that time my older brother Jack was 15 and I was 3.

My sister, Emma, was born 3 years after the move. Mom always said that they had raised 3 only children, because we were so widely spaced! From the early 1950s until the end of her life in 1983, Mom sold Avon products and was recognized by the company as a top salesperson. Since we raised chickens on the farm and Dad had a large summer garden each year, she also sold dressed chickens, eggs and vegetables to customers in Salisbury.

One of the more colorful aspects of my mother’s character was her propensity to various and sundry superstitions. Many of her superstitious saying had to do with company or visitors and, strangely, with itching.  If your right hand itched, it meant you were going to shake hands with a stranger. An itchy nose forecast a visitor. Itchy feet (in addition to a possible infestation of athlete’s foot) meant you were going to walk on strange ground.

New Year’s Day was a major source of superstitions. The first person to enter the house on that day should be a man to bring good luck. I’m assuming the opposite applied if the first visitor was a woman. Black-eyed peas were always on the table at New Year’s Day dinner, again for good luck. I don’t know whether black-eyed peas really did bring good luck. I guess I’ve had my share of bad luck over the years, but I continue to eat those black-eyed peas each year on New Year’s Day. Who knows? It might have been worse! My mother insisted that you should not wash clothes on that day, for it would mean a major lice infestation during the year! I don’t think I’ve ever violated this rule, but mainly because I’ve had better things to do on New Year’s Day.

Some of mother’s superstitions were, perhaps, more commonplace. You should never open an umbrella in the house, she said, as it brings bad luck. I’m afraid my wife Jeanette violates this rule constantly, opening the umbrella to dry after coming in from the rain. I haven’t reprimanded her for that, but I confess that I do shudder a little each time it happens. Another of mother’s beliefs was that if you spill salt, you should throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder to avoid bad luck.  She also believed that bad things often happened in threes and that a dog howling at night was a harbinger of death. Fortunately, I don’t remember our dogs ever howling at night!

Do I take my mother’s superstitions to heart? Probably not, although my wife tells me that I am sometimes guilty of superstitious thinking. The thing is that I heard these things all the time I was growing up, so no doubt they had some impact. I would not have anyone think, however, that my mother was an ignorant person. As I had already noted, she was an accomplished salesperson, treasurer of the Sunday School of her church for many years, and wrote columns on local society events for one of the Salisbury newspapers. She also was in complete charge of running the household, including handling the finances. When I am asked whether she really believed these things, I have to answer yes, I believe that she took them seriously. I guess that things worked out often enough to confirm her beliefs. After all, in the country visitors of both genders were frequent and might well have become associated with an itchy hand or a dropped dish towel. And besides, I’ve grown to really like black-eyes peas!

Cover photo: Mother and the Avon Car. All photos from author’s family collection.