You never know what you’re going to find when you come back to Cape to visit Mother.
- One year Brother Mark tipped me off early about the tragic accident involving her arm and her job on a riverboat.
- I hated to do it, but last year I had to pull the plug on her.
- Mother’s not exactly a hoarder. She keeps a neat house, but the attic and basement are a time capsule.
Click on any photo to maker it larger.
“She’s collecting shopping bags”
This year, shortly before Mother’s Day, Mark sent me an email saying, “Mother’s become a bag lady. She’s going all over town collecting shopping bags.”
Mark is prone to either subtracting relevant details or adding ones to make the story more interesting, so it helps to do some fact checking. I decided to wait until I got into town before becoming concerned.
Turns out that Mother’s Friend Katie was part of a crochet group that was cutting up plastic shopping bags to make sleeping mats for the homeless.
Cuts bags into 1-1/2″ loops
Mother decided she’d make a ground cover for Grandson Malcolm to use under his sleeping bag when he goes camping. It took her several weeks to score enough bags, cut them into 1-1/2-inch loops and crochet them into something large enough to use. It turned out to be soft, durable and colorful.
In the process of doing the project, she became an expert in the colors that different stores use for their bags. Like folks who can identify the name of a song after hearing two notes, she can look at a color in her mat and tell you exactly which store uses that bag.
Keeping her out of the heat
Mark bought her a box of unused blue and yellow bags (moving ahead of me in the will, drat), but I countered by making sure to grab any bags I see on top of the recycle bins when I walk out of a store. I warned Mother to be careful when she digs through them. One of these days she’s going to encounter a full diaper.
It’s been too hot and dry to mow, even for her, so she started a mat for Mark to use on a piece of lawn furniture in St. Louis. She was picking up speed. She got that one done in three weeks.
Like a sweater with 5-foot sleeves
As soon as she finished that, she started another one. It went so quickly that it got out of control and ended up too big for her intended purpose. That’s this one. She finished it Monday night after working on it a week.
Starting a new one
As soon as her needles cooled, she started a new one on Tuesday morning. Pretty good for a one-armed woman, I must say.
