I Had A Strict Mother Growing Up
In a chat I told an Internet friend how my sister and I quarrelled over our mother's hairbrush when she died and the inheritance after her had to be split up among us. Our husbands did not understand why the old hairbrush contrary to for instance jewellery caused dispute and quarrelling between us.
My Internet friend asked me to tell her about the hairbrush so when I visited my sister yesterday afternoon I asked her to see mom's hairbrush.
Margit did of course not mind showing me the brush but she wondered why I suddenly wanted to see it again. I told her that an Internet acquaintance had asked me about it and I would just like to see it again before I wrote a chapter of it's memoirs. Margit went and fetched the brush, it was on the table when we sat down with our coffee and then we were both hit by a giant wave of memories. Most of these memories were of situations that at the time were absolutely unpleasant and dreadfully painful but that now so many years after could be looked back at with smiling and laughing and pleasant, humorous nostalgia. Thinking back and seeing the painful moments in a humorous perspective was no doubt also a result of remembering all the pranks and mischief that caused that mom's hairbrush was intimately acquainted with our bare bottoms.
Margit and I were often naughty, did not mind disobeying rules if we thought there was a chance of getting away with it and always seeking ways to expand our boundaries but we were not – or at least almost never – really bad girls though we often acted impulsively and accepted challenges with a devil-may-care attitude that perhaps was a little unusual for girls.
Our mother demanded that we were good girls; well-mannered, polite, obedient, quiet, meek and of course hard-working at school. She was not unusually strict, the time and social environment considered, but she was perhaps a little more consistent as disciplinarian and spanker than what was usual. On the other hand she also wanted us to be outgoing, socially competent and able to independently handle challenges and problems and she was wise enough to understand that we would never learn that unless we challenged limits and disobeyed rules and instructions. That she often had to bare our bottoms and spank us thoroughly did not really worry her but I am sure that she would have been terribly worried if we had always been the quiet, meek, obedient and angelically innocent children that girls back then were supposed to be.
Where and when mom bought her hairbrush or if it perhaps had been a present I do not know but it is a lovely hairbrush. It is about 16 inches long, 3 – 3.5 inches wide, made of ebony and is decorated with a nude silver woman inlaid in the handle. As long as I remember it had it's place on the vanity in mom's dressing room and it only left that room when Margit or I or we both needed to be spanked.
Margit is only 13 month older than I am and we were always very close and used to do most things together almost as if we had been twins, even today we are not only sisters but also best friends and confidants.
Growing up we shared a room. I guess that it to begin with was just the easiest to have two “catastrophes” in the same room and later, when we were 8 – 9 years old and were offered that we could each have our own room, we preferred staying together and and continue to share.
When we were little and one of us was naughty mom would just lift up the naughty one who then would have the bottom bared and smacked. This could happen anywhere and also in front of other people, though only females and very little boys. I never really found out if it was to protect our (Margit's and mine) modesty or to protect the boy's and men's modesty that mom abstained from bearing our bottoms in front of such creatures (our four year older brother included) but at least we understood that it would be terribly shameful if a man or boy should ever see our bare bottoms, which is just a tiny fragment of the knowledge a good and well-mannered girl never forgets.
When Margit and I began in school (Margit was seven and I was six) mom announced that now we were too big and old to get our spankings with just the hand so in future she would use her hairbrush when one of us deserved a spanking. It was an announcement that at the same time made us proud and scared us. It is difficult to measure such feelings but I think that we were more proud than frightened of now being so big that we should get our spankings with mom's hairbrush. I remember that we proudly told some of our friends what mom had said. I also vaguely remember naively thinking that being spanked with the innocently looking hairbrush could not be so much worse than when mom smacked the bare bottom hard with her hand.
My memory of the first smack with mom's hairbrush on my bare bottom is anything but vague; I vividly remember the horrible, shockingly fierce and intensive pain of that first smack that forever deprived me of all illusions about the brush being an innocent spanking implement. That first hairbrush spanking was only ten or perhaps twelve smacks but they were all hard and the pain was more burning and intensive than anything I until then had experienced. I bawled after the first smack and after two or three smacks I was certain that I would die (funny thing that in Danish “die” means to suckle as a child does when being breast fed. And now we are at it; be careful never to say to a Dane that you forgive her, in Danish “forgive” means to poison.) Of course I survived but my bottom was burning like never before and the buttocks were dark red and sporadically purple.
Being introduced to mom's hairbrush was a shocking experience and I must admit that after that I never stopped fearing it but neither Margit nor I ever hated it. The brush became a thing that belonged in our lives or really more part of a condition that though unpleasant and painful was experienced as natural and needed and part of what defined us. That we always hated getting a spanking is true but at the same time we experienced the spankings as necessary correction, as guilt relief and as reassurance of the maternal love and care that provided the basic feeling of safety and order in our lives.
I think that one other thing that also influenced our attitude towards the hairbrush and the spankings we got with it was that these spankings were something we had together with mom. They belonged to the female realm that to boys and men will always be an unfathomable universe of secrets and mysteries they will never be able to understand.
Our father was unable to discipline Margit and me. He never had problems with spanking the tar out of our brother and though we never saw it happen Margit and I knew from the sounds of it that when dad put his belt to work on our brother's bare bottom the job was done just as thoroughly as when mom spanked us. But dad was one of those men who cannot believe that his own two little sweet and innocent daughters can be naughty and deserve a sound spanking.
Mom once tried to make him spank us. Probably she believed that it would seem more serious and make a bigger impression on us if dad spanked us at least for our worst misconducts, She must have pressured him hard because he tried but it became a complete parody. We were in dad's study and mom was there too and acted as the prosecutor who with many stern and condemning words informed dad how naughty we had been. It was an unusual situation and Margit and I did not really know what to expect or how to act but as mom very convincingly accounted for the indictment and evidence of our guilt we were worried. We began to whimper and most of the time we studied the carpert intensively but when mom's accusations became too much we looked up at dad with our big blue and tear-filled eyes so it was obvious to him that it was simply incredible that anybody could accuse us two little innocent girls of being so naughty. When mom finally had said what she had to say dad, obviously finding the situation uncomfortable, coughed and stammered and finally he managed to say that we had been two naughty little girls and he was very disappointed and now he would have to punish us severely. He pulled his belt out of the loops and Margit, who is the eldest of us, had to lift up her skirt. Then dad put his arm round her waist and lifted her up so she was hanging under his arm. Her panties were pulled down and dad gave her maybe ten lashes with the belt. Margit screamed like a pig that sees the butcher coming with the knife and I stared with open mouth and totally astonished at the situation because the lashes had been so light that they not even reddened Margit's butt. Dad put Margit down again and then it was my turn. The same procedure was repeated and the lashes I got would not have harmed a fly. I understood nothing but I remembered to howl loudly as if I was in terrible agony. When I again stood on the floor dad, now obviously relieved and happy it was over, tried to sound stern when he said that now we had been spanked severely and he was sure that we had learned how to behave and that he would never again need to belt us. Margit and I curtseyed nicely and promised that never again would we misbehave but then it became too much for mom; she did not speak a word but the snorting sound that came from her when she turned on the heel and marched out of the study said more than thousand words.
But dad was partially right in his prophecy; he never again had to belt Margit or me. After dad had made a complete farce of our much deserved punishment there was no doubt that in future mom would make sure to tan our bottoms whenever needed.
Margit and I experienced this “punishment” as an amusing incident that once more proved that the adults often were very unwise and did not know what they were doing but I am sure that had dad again “punished” us we would have found it extremely humiliating and emotionally unpleasant. It might sound crazy but we much preferred to be put over mom's knee and get spanked as we deserved.
And mom was not naive as dad was when we were concerned. She knew us far too well to believe that we were little innocent angels. She even knew that it was when we looked most innocent that there was most reason to suspect that we were most guilty. And many times I have been completely mystified and desperately tried to figure out how she could know about something I had done but I guess that she simply knew us so well that whenever anything irregular happened within or just outside our range of activity she also knew that there was a good chance of at least of of her dear daughters being involved in it.
After mom began spanking us with her hairbrush the spankings were always given in our room and mom believed that when one of us had been naughty and deserved to be taught a lesson with the hairbrush then the other could just as well learn from it too. That meant that when one of us got a spanking the other was there to watch it so that it could serve not only as punishment for the naughty one but as deterrent for us both.
A punishment usually began with questioning and then reprimanding and finally the dreaded announcement, “you deserve a sound spanking!” After that nothing more needed to be said. Begging and pleading would only make things worse so all there was to do was to look repentant, curtsey politely, say, “Yes, mom” and together with Margit go up to our room.
On the way we picked up mom's hairbrush from her vanity and then we sat on our beds and waited for mom who usually entered the room only five minutes later.
A spanking by mom always meant going over her knee. First standing at her side, lifting up my skirt, having my panties lowered and then being placed over her knee.
It was certainly not a flattering or dignified position to be in and it did not get better when mom a moment later started forcefully applying the hairbrush and my bottom soon was on fire and I cried and kicked and wriggled hysterically. The pain always seemed unbearable and the spanking would never end so I cried my eyes out and the whole situation was horrible. But somehow, even when the pain was worst and I was most hysterical, it was somehow reassuring and felt safe to be over mom's knee and having her arm round my waist.
When I was an older teen going over mom's knee seemed childish and I think that it would have been terribly embarrassing if anybody else than Margit had seen me in that position and acting like a little girl when the hairbrush began smacking down on my butt and instantly turning it into two glowing and trembling globes. But Margit's presence I never experienced as an embarrassment. Even when we only an hour ago had argued loudly and wanted to scratch out each other's eyes and even though she knew just as well as myself that I deserved every blazing hairbrush smack it was comforting and reassuring to have her there watching me being spanked. During the spanking I did not care but before and especially after it was good to sense her sisterly sympathy.
Margit moved out to begin training to be a nurse one and a half year before I moved out to begin as an office trainee at a lawyer's office in Copenhagen. I missed her terribly all the time, I even missed arguing with her, but most of all I missed her when I got a spanking and felt so terribly lonely when mom had left the room after punishing me.
Why mom never spanked Margit or me after we had moved out I never understood. We came home often, especially I the first couple of years came home almost every weekend, and there were times when Margit or I or we both would have been spanked if we had still lived at home. To begin with it seemed odd, wrong and almost unnatural not to be spanked when I knew I deserved to get my bare bottom blistered with mom's hairbrush but it seems that everything and even not to be spanked when deserving it can become a habit and eventually I stopped thinking of it and just accepted that now I was considered too old to be spanked. I guess that the strong anti-authoritarian spirit that was typical for the late 60s and early 70s also inspired me to believe that now I was an adult nobody would ever again have the right to judge my behaviour and decide to punish me.
As the eldest Margit inherited mom's hairbrush when mom died ten years ago and though I wanted to have the brush I think it was fair enough that Margit got it and what really matters is that it was saved and not just thrown away. To us both it is a memorabilia that played an important role in our childhood that not despite but also because of mom's efforts with the hairbrush was happy and safe and wonderful.
I was the last to be spanked with mom's hairbrush and feel the dreadfully burning pain of it on the bare bottom. When mom died and the hairbrush was passed on to Margit her son was already almost 30 years old. Margit used to spank him with a belt.
It turned out that John and I for unknown reasons could not have children. Fertility treatment was not so advanced back then as it is today and all the doctors could do for us was to tell that they could not find any reason for our infertility. If we had got children we would have spanked but I do not think that it is because they knew this that the kids refused to come.
Margit and I never doubted that we were loved and wanted and even as little girls we understood that we had to be punished when we misbehaved and already then we believed that being spanked was the best way to be punished when needed. Many of our friends were not spanked after confirmation at the age of 14 (confirmation is for historical reasons in Danish tradition a (now only) socially important event and rite of passage from childhood to being a young adult. Today it is only symbolic but in earlier times a person who had not passed the confirmation could for instance not enter an apprenticeship or get a trade license). Instead they when deserving punishment were grounded and this was in Margit's and mine opinion horrible because it often ruined their social lives but also because it in a very embarrassing way exposed them as naughty. Several of them told us that they would much have preferred to still being spanked as they had always been before.
My Internet friend asked me to tell her about the hairbrush so when I visited my sister yesterday afternoon I asked her to see mom's hairbrush.
Margit did of course not mind showing me the brush but she wondered why I suddenly wanted to see it again. I told her that an Internet acquaintance had asked me about it and I would just like to see it again before I wrote a chapter of it's memoirs. Margit went and fetched the brush, it was on the table when we sat down with our coffee and then we were both hit by a giant wave of memories. Most of these memories were of situations that at the time were absolutely unpleasant and dreadfully painful but that now so many years after could be looked back at with smiling and laughing and pleasant, humorous nostalgia. Thinking back and seeing the painful moments in a humorous perspective was no doubt also a result of remembering all the pranks and mischief that caused that mom's hairbrush was intimately acquainted with our bare bottoms.
Margit and I were often naughty, did not mind disobeying rules if we thought there was a chance of getting away with it and always seeking ways to expand our boundaries but we were not – or at least almost never – really bad girls though we often acted impulsively and accepted challenges with a devil-may-care attitude that perhaps was a little unusual for girls.
Our mother demanded that we were good girls; well-mannered, polite, obedient, quiet, meek and of course hard-working at school. She was not unusually strict, the time and social environment considered, but she was perhaps a little more consistent as disciplinarian and spanker than what was usual. On the other hand she also wanted us to be outgoing, socially competent and able to independently handle challenges and problems and she was wise enough to understand that we would never learn that unless we challenged limits and disobeyed rules and instructions. That she often had to bare our bottoms and spank us thoroughly did not really worry her but I am sure that she would have been terribly worried if we had always been the quiet, meek, obedient and angelically innocent children that girls back then were supposed to be.
Where and when mom bought her hairbrush or if it perhaps had been a present I do not know but it is a lovely hairbrush. It is about 16 inches long, 3 – 3.5 inches wide, made of ebony and is decorated with a nude silver woman inlaid in the handle. As long as I remember it had it's place on the vanity in mom's dressing room and it only left that room when Margit or I or we both needed to be spanked.
Margit is only 13 month older than I am and we were always very close and used to do most things together almost as if we had been twins, even today we are not only sisters but also best friends and confidants.
Growing up we shared a room. I guess that it to begin with was just the easiest to have two “catastrophes” in the same room and later, when we were 8 – 9 years old and were offered that we could each have our own room, we preferred staying together and and continue to share.
When we were little and one of us was naughty mom would just lift up the naughty one who then would have the bottom bared and smacked. This could happen anywhere and also in front of other people, though only females and very little boys. I never really found out if it was to protect our (Margit's and mine) modesty or to protect the boy's and men's modesty that mom abstained from bearing our bottoms in front of such creatures (our four year older brother included) but at least we understood that it would be terribly shameful if a man or boy should ever see our bare bottoms, which is just a tiny fragment of the knowledge a good and well-mannered girl never forgets.
When Margit and I began in school (Margit was seven and I was six) mom announced that now we were too big and old to get our spankings with just the hand so in future she would use her hairbrush when one of us deserved a spanking. It was an announcement that at the same time made us proud and scared us. It is difficult to measure such feelings but I think that we were more proud than frightened of now being so big that we should get our spankings with mom's hairbrush. I remember that we proudly told some of our friends what mom had said. I also vaguely remember naively thinking that being spanked with the innocently looking hairbrush could not be so much worse than when mom smacked the bare bottom hard with her hand.
My memory of the first smack with mom's hairbrush on my bare bottom is anything but vague; I vividly remember the horrible, shockingly fierce and intensive pain of that first smack that forever deprived me of all illusions about the brush being an innocent spanking implement. That first hairbrush spanking was only ten or perhaps twelve smacks but they were all hard and the pain was more burning and intensive than anything I until then had experienced. I bawled after the first smack and after two or three smacks I was certain that I would die (funny thing that in Danish “die” means to suckle as a child does when being breast fed. And now we are at it; be careful never to say to a Dane that you forgive her, in Danish “forgive” means to poison.) Of course I survived but my bottom was burning like never before and the buttocks were dark red and sporadically purple.
Being introduced to mom's hairbrush was a shocking experience and I must admit that after that I never stopped fearing it but neither Margit nor I ever hated it. The brush became a thing that belonged in our lives or really more part of a condition that though unpleasant and painful was experienced as natural and needed and part of what defined us. That we always hated getting a spanking is true but at the same time we experienced the spankings as necessary correction, as guilt relief and as reassurance of the maternal love and care that provided the basic feeling of safety and order in our lives.
I think that one other thing that also influenced our attitude towards the hairbrush and the spankings we got with it was that these spankings were something we had together with mom. They belonged to the female realm that to boys and men will always be an unfathomable universe of secrets and mysteries they will never be able to understand.
Our father was unable to discipline Margit and me. He never had problems with spanking the tar out of our brother and though we never saw it happen Margit and I knew from the sounds of it that when dad put his belt to work on our brother's bare bottom the job was done just as thoroughly as when mom spanked us. But dad was one of those men who cannot believe that his own two little sweet and innocent daughters can be naughty and deserve a sound spanking.
Mom once tried to make him spank us. Probably she believed that it would seem more serious and make a bigger impression on us if dad spanked us at least for our worst misconducts, She must have pressured him hard because he tried but it became a complete parody. We were in dad's study and mom was there too and acted as the prosecutor who with many stern and condemning words informed dad how naughty we had been. It was an unusual situation and Margit and I did not really know what to expect or how to act but as mom very convincingly accounted for the indictment and evidence of our guilt we were worried. We began to whimper and most of the time we studied the carpert intensively but when mom's accusations became too much we looked up at dad with our big blue and tear-filled eyes so it was obvious to him that it was simply incredible that anybody could accuse us two little innocent girls of being so naughty. When mom finally had said what she had to say dad, obviously finding the situation uncomfortable, coughed and stammered and finally he managed to say that we had been two naughty little girls and he was very disappointed and now he would have to punish us severely. He pulled his belt out of the loops and Margit, who is the eldest of us, had to lift up her skirt. Then dad put his arm round her waist and lifted her up so she was hanging under his arm. Her panties were pulled down and dad gave her maybe ten lashes with the belt. Margit screamed like a pig that sees the butcher coming with the knife and I stared with open mouth and totally astonished at the situation because the lashes had been so light that they not even reddened Margit's butt. Dad put Margit down again and then it was my turn. The same procedure was repeated and the lashes I got would not have harmed a fly. I understood nothing but I remembered to howl loudly as if I was in terrible agony. When I again stood on the floor dad, now obviously relieved and happy it was over, tried to sound stern when he said that now we had been spanked severely and he was sure that we had learned how to behave and that he would never again need to belt us. Margit and I curtseyed nicely and promised that never again would we misbehave but then it became too much for mom; she did not speak a word but the snorting sound that came from her when she turned on the heel and marched out of the study said more than thousand words.
But dad was partially right in his prophecy; he never again had to belt Margit or me. After dad had made a complete farce of our much deserved punishment there was no doubt that in future mom would make sure to tan our bottoms whenever needed.
Margit and I experienced this “punishment” as an amusing incident that once more proved that the adults often were very unwise and did not know what they were doing but I am sure that had dad again “punished” us we would have found it extremely humiliating and emotionally unpleasant. It might sound crazy but we much preferred to be put over mom's knee and get spanked as we deserved.
And mom was not naive as dad was when we were concerned. She knew us far too well to believe that we were little innocent angels. She even knew that it was when we looked most innocent that there was most reason to suspect that we were most guilty. And many times I have been completely mystified and desperately tried to figure out how she could know about something I had done but I guess that she simply knew us so well that whenever anything irregular happened within or just outside our range of activity she also knew that there was a good chance of at least of of her dear daughters being involved in it.
After mom began spanking us with her hairbrush the spankings were always given in our room and mom believed that when one of us had been naughty and deserved to be taught a lesson with the hairbrush then the other could just as well learn from it too. That meant that when one of us got a spanking the other was there to watch it so that it could serve not only as punishment for the naughty one but as deterrent for us both.
A punishment usually began with questioning and then reprimanding and finally the dreaded announcement, “you deserve a sound spanking!” After that nothing more needed to be said. Begging and pleading would only make things worse so all there was to do was to look repentant, curtsey politely, say, “Yes, mom” and together with Margit go up to our room.
On the way we picked up mom's hairbrush from her vanity and then we sat on our beds and waited for mom who usually entered the room only five minutes later.
A spanking by mom always meant going over her knee. First standing at her side, lifting up my skirt, having my panties lowered and then being placed over her knee.
It was certainly not a flattering or dignified position to be in and it did not get better when mom a moment later started forcefully applying the hairbrush and my bottom soon was on fire and I cried and kicked and wriggled hysterically. The pain always seemed unbearable and the spanking would never end so I cried my eyes out and the whole situation was horrible. But somehow, even when the pain was worst and I was most hysterical, it was somehow reassuring and felt safe to be over mom's knee and having her arm round my waist.
When I was an older teen going over mom's knee seemed childish and I think that it would have been terribly embarrassing if anybody else than Margit had seen me in that position and acting like a little girl when the hairbrush began smacking down on my butt and instantly turning it into two glowing and trembling globes. But Margit's presence I never experienced as an embarrassment. Even when we only an hour ago had argued loudly and wanted to scratch out each other's eyes and even though she knew just as well as myself that I deserved every blazing hairbrush smack it was comforting and reassuring to have her there watching me being spanked. During the spanking I did not care but before and especially after it was good to sense her sisterly sympathy.
Margit moved out to begin training to be a nurse one and a half year before I moved out to begin as an office trainee at a lawyer's office in Copenhagen. I missed her terribly all the time, I even missed arguing with her, but most of all I missed her when I got a spanking and felt so terribly lonely when mom had left the room after punishing me.
Why mom never spanked Margit or me after we had moved out I never understood. We came home often, especially I the first couple of years came home almost every weekend, and there were times when Margit or I or we both would have been spanked if we had still lived at home. To begin with it seemed odd, wrong and almost unnatural not to be spanked when I knew I deserved to get my bare bottom blistered with mom's hairbrush but it seems that everything and even not to be spanked when deserving it can become a habit and eventually I stopped thinking of it and just accepted that now I was considered too old to be spanked. I guess that the strong anti-authoritarian spirit that was typical for the late 60s and early 70s also inspired me to believe that now I was an adult nobody would ever again have the right to judge my behaviour and decide to punish me.
As the eldest Margit inherited mom's hairbrush when mom died ten years ago and though I wanted to have the brush I think it was fair enough that Margit got it and what really matters is that it was saved and not just thrown away. To us both it is a memorabilia that played an important role in our childhood that not despite but also because of mom's efforts with the hairbrush was happy and safe and wonderful.
I was the last to be spanked with mom's hairbrush and feel the dreadfully burning pain of it on the bare bottom. When mom died and the hairbrush was passed on to Margit her son was already almost 30 years old. Margit used to spank him with a belt.
It turned out that John and I for unknown reasons could not have children. Fertility treatment was not so advanced back then as it is today and all the doctors could do for us was to tell that they could not find any reason for our infertility. If we had got children we would have spanked but I do not think that it is because they knew this that the kids refused to come.
Margit and I never doubted that we were loved and wanted and even as little girls we understood that we had to be punished when we misbehaved and already then we believed that being spanked was the best way to be punished when needed. Many of our friends were not spanked after confirmation at the age of 14 (confirmation is for historical reasons in Danish tradition a (now only) socially important event and rite of passage from childhood to being a young adult. Today it is only symbolic but in earlier times a person who had not passed the confirmation could for instance not enter an apprenticeship or get a trade license). Instead they when deserving punishment were grounded and this was in Margit's and mine opinion horrible because it often ruined their social lives but also because it in a very embarrassing way exposed them as naughty. Several of them told us that they would much have preferred to still being spanked as they had always been before.
