Remembering Mom: Primary Lessons

Mom was in Primary when I was young.  I remember her being in the presidency and then she must have subbed my class a time or two.  I have a few distinct memories of some of the lessons she gave and wanted to jot them down, before my brain gets frayed, and I forget to share them!

Tree of Life:
I remember this one, it was for a sharing time or for a primary activity day.  We did Lehi's dream.  I remember painstakingly stringing marshmallows with a needle and thread, making a string loop for each marshmallow and then hanging them in an artificial tree. (This was done before the activity.)  At the activity I remember a big bar infront of the pulpit and a big blue cloth on the floor representing  water.  I think up behind the stand, there were some loud and prideful children jeering at those of us holding to the rod, and making our way across the room and then up the stairs to the delicious 'fruit.'  I don't remember all of what was said or what we did, but I remember picking my marshmallow of the 'tree' and enjoying it.  And how strange it was to have children stepping all over the blue cloth.(Usually you keep your feet OFF of whatever cloth was about to be used!!!) I remember thinking this was pretty fun, and hoping we would do it again sometime.  (We never did.)

Labels:
Another thing I remember, was when mom used a label lesson in sharing time. It must've been winter time, because I remember it was dark outside when she was doing her prep work, and I was still very up and awake.  This time I remember her soaking canned goods in the sink at home.  I remember her sitting at the dining table with a hair dryer and carefully pulling the labels off of the cans.  Then I remember her drying them with the dryer.  The next day at church, I remember her asking a child to come up and pick their favorite food. I believe that a can of corn was picked.  Then mom had her electric can opener at the stand and opened the can.  GUESS WHAT?!!  There were spaghettios in the can, not corn!!!  A different child tried again, instead of peaches there were green beans inside the can labeled 'peaches!'  Clearly the lesson was to find out what's on the inside of a person, on not to base your opinion on only what the outside looked like.

Clean and Pure Thoughts:
The last primary lesson I remember is one I actually still think of often.  Mom had an empty tissue paper roll tube.  That was to represent our mind.  Then she filled the tube with gray dingy lint from the dryer.  She said that's what our mind would look like if we had bad thoughts in our head.  Then in one side of the tube, she started stuffing in pure, white, clean cotton balls.  Out the other side, the dingy lint started to fall out of the tube.  The lesson was that if we had bad thoughts in our head (lint) we needed to push them out with good, happy clean and pure thoughts (cotton balls) and to keep it clean that way!  So even to this day, if I start thinking mean or unkind things about something - I quickly think of stuffing clean cotton balls into the tube, to steer me to a more positive note. 

It's amazing that 20-25 years later these lessons are still circulating in my day to day being.