Linda Gerard DerSimonian lives in Waterville.

National Tie One On Day is a day in America dedicated to celebrate the significance of the old- fashioned apron, and the spirit of kindness and giving. It consistently falls on the day before Thanksgiving; this year on Wednesday, Nov. 26. Some sources say there is a National Wear Your Apron Day the day after Mother’s Day, but the November date is the more established and recognized day.

The holiday was first created by Ellyn Anne Geisel in 2005 in honor of her grandmother. On Thanksgiving Eve, apron-wearers share love with someone around them by gifting a sweet bread or other baked good to a neighbor, friend, loved one, or to bring cheer to someone in need.

They wrap their treat up in an apron, and tuck a note card inside. In my way, I put my apron on, and deliver a piece of dessert to someone, or give them a new apron to wear for their up coming holiday cooking! The day pays tribute to the legacy of the past generation of women who once wore them. It dovetails beautifully with the humble, noncommercial spirit of the Thanksgiving season.

Aprons take us back to the lifestyle of the 1940s and 1950s, and help us remember the sentiment of the way home, hearth and family used to be. I think of them as antiques, varnished with the memories of hard-working mothers, grandmothers and women who worked in the home.

They evoke images of housewives preparing daily home-cooked meals and baking desserts for the family, canning vegetables from their summer gardens, hanging washed clothes on the outdoor clothesline, knitting and sewing clothes, chatting with neighbors over the fence and encouraging their children to play outdoors throughout the four seasons when they weren’t in school.

Sometimes, little treasures for children were kept in the apron pockets, like chewing gum or a piece of candy. My mother, grandmothers, aunts and neighbors from my Franco-
American/French Acadian heritage in the St. John Valley of northern Aroostook
County wore aprons when they cooked indigenous foods, and did their annual big spring cleaning.

Mom had her apron on when she baked fresh loaves of bread and yeast rolls every week with her patient hands. It was fun watching the magic of the dough slowly rising in large bowls under a cloth.

The fragrant smell of yeast and bread baking in the oven filed our house with comfort, warmth and ritual. Pressed sweetly in my book of childhood memories are my young reindeer legs darting to the tall glass jar in the cupboard, where my grandmother stored her homemade donuts.

My aprons are my prized possessions. I’m now 75, and have been wearing them since I was in my 20s. I don’t like getting my clothes stained or soiled, so my apron is my shield when I cook and clean. They light up that warm and cozy room in my heart that stores black-and-white and sepia-toned photographs of the way life was growing up in the 1950s.

Our social interactions and connections with others back then seemed friendlier and more human. We didn’t have smartphones, smart watches, laptops and tablets to distract us from eye-to-eye conversation and communion with others.

A snapshot of today’s digital era would show many of us in public places with our heads tilted downward, and our eyes focused on our hand-held cellphone screens, or smart watches on our wrists, as our thumbs and fingers text and navigate the internet, the online world.

I use some aspects of today’s technology, but I choose how much of it I allow in my everyday life. I take joy and meaning in keeping alive, the atmosphere and heartbeat of the unplugged, simpler and slower lifestyle of when women wore aprons.