These Hands

Five years ago today, a writer friend of my daughter posted this photo and the accompanying paragraphs on her FB page. It made me think so much of my Grandma Delphia that I saved it. Those hands doing the crocheting could have been her hands. She rarely sat idly, always had a crochet hook or tatting shuttle working the threads.

Protection

I passed a woman crocheting by the side of the road in Calliope; the sign at her feet said, “Free Protection for Road Family”. I pulled the Biscuit Tin over very gently (it can throw rocks like a baseball hall-o’-famer) and walked back.

“Well, bless you,” the lady said (her eyes huge behind thick frames, like a wise old owl). “And bless you back!” I responded (never knowing the right thing to say when someone throws light on your day just like that). “What are you making?” “Wraps and shawls,” she explained, pointing. “This here’s a box of orphan yarn - abandoned skeins left out of however many that were needed to finish a making. And this box holds the thing they become together (something welcome and warm).” I’d never seen anything like it before; random bits of color woven into patterns that lay piled in large triangles like rainbows you could touch.

“I love this one,” I said, and touched the shawl when she nodded that I could. It was a dove gray with sparkle thread throughout - some darker gray and some rose with a bit of white here and there. It was thick but impossibly soft and I caught myself just shy of rubbing my face all over it. “It loves you, too,” the lady said. “The shawls tend to pick their people. That one’s the Old Souls Shawl and the protection looped into that is all about remembering the love that has been while not letting it trap you. It’s about taking the best of Before and being at peace with After.”

She wouldn’t let me give her anything for the shawl, so I got Nickel out of the camper and, together, we sat with her a while and shared cheese sandwiches and a couple of juice boxes. I wore the shawl proudly at the campfire that night and the goofy guy who was working the entrance gate left me alone.

(Written by Tansy Undercrypt - Part of her Lost Moon Road series.)

The Baby Blues

 

Whether because of the recent birth of my 13th great-grandchild, or, more likely, the current news coverage of a certain trial, I began recalling my own postpartum experience after the birth of my first born a little over sixty-four years ago.

His due date was the 8th but Douglas wasn't born until thirteen minutes after midnight on the 10th. His Dad was there for the birth but had to leave early the next morning for two weeks National Guard camp in Minnesota. 

When the baby and I were released from the hospital we went to my parents' home. 

I wasn't quite nineteen when Doug was born, but typical teenager I thought I knew everything. The first night I slept upstairs next to the baby bassinet and Mom slept with me to help when my little one woke up. When he did Mom changed his diaper and I nursed him back to sleep.

Things progressed well with my grandparents visiting to see their new great-grandchild - the first on Dad's side and the second on Mom's - as well as aunts, neighbors and my in-laws. In the daytime we put my sleeping baby on Mom's bed instead of taking him upstairs.  

I remember so well that it was one of those afternoons when I went in to check on him that I felt such a huge feeling of being overwhelmed. I started crying. Mom came in to see what was wrong. I didn't know what was wrong, but she did. Gently she said, "Ramona, you've got the baby blues." She went on to explain that it was natural for a new mother to feel as I was and that it would get better. I don't recall that she used the term postpartum depression, but that's what it was. Thank goodness my mother was there not only to help with my baby but to help one of her own understand that part of being a new mom. 

I don't recall having the baby blues after Kari and Preston were born. I might have felt overwhelmed because I had so much more to do with two more children and working full time but that wasn't the same as PPD.  👶💙

The Legend of Black Squirrels

 

What a surprise yesterday afternoon. I happened to look out my magic window at just the right time to see this black squirrel running through the yard. This is the first black squirrel I've seen since we left the farm. I most likely won't see it again because two of the resident red squirrels immediately let it know that it was not welcome.

I posted a photo of it on Facebook. A cousin of Bud's commented that their Uncle Orville had black squirrels in his yard in Corning.

Legend was that in the late 50's black squirrels were introduced into town by the Castello twins, Richard and Robert, classmates of mine. Allegedly they had brought them back to Corning after capturing some while visiting relatives in Council Bluffs. 

Prior to their introduction into Corning, I had always heard that the only locations in Iowa with black squirrrels was Davenport and Council Bluffs.

Here you can see why this squirrel was in the neighborhood - that acorn it is holding. There are plenty of those to go around if only the red squirrels weren't so territorial.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Perhaps the two factions can come to a détante and I'll get to see more of this little visitor and, eventually more like it. 

Child of Depression

 

I don't remember the Depression, but I do remember hearing about it - Dad telling about working for 50 cents a day.

Mom's habits of saving, not wasting, became part of my life. She patched the holes our clothes and shopped the grocery ads for sale items as well as tending a large garden. So, that while I was not alive during the depression, I was affected by it.

For much of my life I was affected by another depression, the one of low self esteem, no energy, feeling worthless and unable to pull myself out of the doldrums. I would suffer those feelings for several days, usually every month or so, before I would feel my mood lifting. I never thought about what caused those moods and as I got older they finally ceased.

I was reading an article about Gloria Steinem, an activist for women's rights I've admired since the late 60's, in which she was quoted as saying: "Depression is an anger turned inward". Now I'm pondering that idea. Wondering if that could have been true about some of my depressions.  

The Chickens of Quiet Harbor

 

When we first moved to this retirement community, there were three concrete chickens with chipped and faded paint setting in the weeds along the fenceline. We were told that at one time there was a 3-hole golf course on the grounds with a chicken marking each hole.

The three, (Shall we name them Cluck, Penny and Peck?) remained in the weeds until a couple years ago when an enterprising maintenance man built this roost for them.

This year our next door neighbor gave them a fresh coat of paint and added those solar powered lights you can see in front of the chickens in the first picture.

It's kind of eerie to see Cluck, Penny and Peck glowing in the night - and yet, in a way, somewhat homey and cheerful.  😊🐔

They Enter Our Dreams

Forty some years ago, I discovered and became an admirer of Wendell Berry. I am sorry to learn that he died yesterday at age 92. I have shared many of his poems and quotes before but not this one:

The Loved Ones By Wendell Berry

The loved ones we call the dead

depart from us and for awhile are absent. And then as if

called back by our love, they come

near us again. They enter our dreams.

We feel they have been near us

when we have not thought of them.

They are simply here, simply waiting

while we are distracted among

our obligations. At last

it comes to us: They live now

in the permanent world.

We are the absent ones.

August '26 Books Read

 Nine books read this month; finally back in my groove. 

November 9, Maybe Someday and Maybe Now are all by Colleen Hoover, an author I had not read before.

Sandra Dallas is an author I have read and like. I thought I had read all her books and was pleasantly surprised I still had one I had not - The Persian Pickle Club.

The same is true about Sandra Brown. I was happy to discover I had missed reading Deadline.

No Rest For The Dead is unlike any book I have read - it was written collectively by twenty-six different authors with the introduction by David Baldacci.

Under The Falls is by Richard Russo, one of my favorite authors.

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci is a bit of a departure from his usual fare. It is set in London during WWII. Two teens are left homeless. They are taken in by a book shop owner where they find healing and hope in one another.

South of Broad is by Pat Conroy, an author I hadn't read since The Prince of Tides in the '80's. I had forgotten how beautiful his prose is - and happy to find the library has one more of his books I haven't read.  

What books will you find on my September reading list?