~ Jan Mordenski
Even after darkness closed her eyes
my mother could crochet.
Her hands would walk the rows of wool
turning, bending, to a woollen music.
The dye lots were registered in memory:
appleskin, chocolate, porcelain pan,
the stitches remembered like faded rhymes:
pineapple, sunflower, window pane, shell.
Tied to our lives those past years
by merely a soft colored yarn,
she’d sit for hours, her dark lips
moving as if reciting prayers,
coaching the sighted hands.
***
One child home with a cough last Friday. A trying weekend of fevers and general malaise. Two children home with coughs today. Both padding around in flannalette and stretch knit cotton for comfort and snuggling under crotchetted rugs watching Play School (which has ageless appeal and is especially soothing when you are sick).
We've had a weekend of administering Ease-a-Cold Kids chewable orange zing burstlets, Panadol and Nurofen -- none of which they like the taste of, and all of which need to be administered with the promise of a jelly baby afterwards -- and applying greasy Vicks chest rub, disposing of an avalanche of tissues and keeping energy levels up with seasonable mandarins and bland invalid food.
Meantime, I'm still having problems loading photos onto the computer which is extremely dislocating for a blogger who likes to rely on her own images. Not that I've had time to take photos of late either in between playing nurse and catching up on the backlog of work at my paid employment ... on those odd days I turn up.
This is showing signs of being a loooong Winter.
