As a child, living in the convent school in Tacoma, Wash., I always looked forward to Tussie-Mussie Day. Life was simple then, pleasure was found in handmade presents, no money allowances for store-bought gifts.
As the month of April was coming to an end, Sister Elizabeth, a young nun who was born in Manchester, England, would gather us girls all together and tell us about the origin of tussie-mussies in Europe.
During the reign of Queen Victoria, the streets of England were filled with terrible odors from the garbage and waste thrown there. Ladies would make vessels of paper called tussie-mussies, fill them with sweet-smelling lavenders and carry them, attempting to cover the foul smells from the streets.
The day prior to May 1, Sister Elizabeth would bring a basketful of paper doilies, watercolor paints and brushes, scissors and glue, and we would set about decorating and forming our tussie-mussies. Once the tussies were made, we set about making our long paper skirts that we would wear over our clothes on May Day.
The first day of May we girls would put on our paper skirts, and dance to music being played, around a pole which had long ribbons attached to its top, weaving those ribbons in and out, just as the young girls did during Queen Victoria’s time.
I had chubby fingers, trying so hard to cut on the black lines for a handle on my tussie that Sister Elizabeth would sit by and encourage me—I had little talent for art or art-related projects.
Once crafted, we girls would search our garden and along the banks of Marybrook, which ran alongside our grounds, for ferns and wildflowers to fill our tussie-mussies.
The custom was to hang the tussie on the doorknob of your favorite person.
Our convent school accepted a few day students, and on Tussie-Mussie Day, those lucky girls would carry their flower-filled baskets home, where they would hang them on their moms’ doorknobs, ring the bell and then run and hide, waiting for their moms’ squeals of delight.
We boarders, on the other hand, had only the nuns to choose as the recipients of our baskets of delight. The doorknobs down the hallway of those dear nuns’ rooms were soon filled with brightly colored flowers of the spring season. However, no squeals here—nuns did not squeal. My tussie was not among those along the hallway.
Each May Day I would hurry to the barn behind our building where there were no doorknobs. I would look for “old Joe,” our groundskeeper, who came to us years before, looking for food and some work in-kind. Old Joe never left us, until he went to his “Maker” a few years later.
“Which hand, old Joe,” I would ask while standing on one foot and then the other until he made the right guess. This was a happy moment for each of us, and more than once I saw a tear as I received his hug.
For several years I would follow old Joe as he went about his chores. He taught me to gather up arms full of hay, filling the hayrack for Saint Bernadette, our milk cow, and how to make sure I scattered the grain for the chickens and ducks properly. Prior to returning to my room, old Joe saw to it that the bottom of my Buster Brown shoes were cleaned, as Saint Bernadette was known to leave a cowpie or two in an unseen spot.
Old Joe passed in my 11th year at the convent. The night before old Joe was laid to rest in the nun’s section of Calvary Cemetery, I made my final tussie-mussie. Fingers, not so chubby by then, I cut and glued a tussie, and when the glue had dried, I filled it with flowers from our garden. Remembering old Joe’s eyes filled with tears and his gentle hugs, I laid it alongside his grave marker, which simply read “Old Joe, June 1951.” Old Joe never revealed his last name unless perhaps to the nuns who had taken the vow of silence.
Surprise your “loved one” by making a tussie-mussie on May Day or on Mother’s Day, and like old Joe, watch her smile light up her face. You will be glad you did.
Colly Gruczelak, a Ben Lomond resident, loves people and loves to cook. Contact her at cz****@*****st.net.
