Vintage Memory Haze

I recently opened another box of my mother's things.  Simple everyday items.  They are vintage now as years have passed and the common things we took for granted have achieved a new level of importance to those who love vintage, collect vintage.

My mother was storing away her sewing supplies.  She saved everything and neatly put things away for future use.  That is her writing up there on those paper labels.  Labels made from recycled scraps of envelopes, the back unused sides of writing papers...she used everything.  It is plain to see she has thread in a plastic bag, buttons in a paper sack, rug & embroidery hooks (she misspelled embroidey...a clue) each bag carefully tagged. 
My Mother was leaving visual reminders to herself in the most practical of ways.  One with Alzheimer's can look at a spool of thread in a plastic bag.  Plainly seeing it's color, shape, and might even take it out and hold it in wonder.  Searching for meaning in this relic of the moments just gone by.  Clenching the fingers aged with knobs of arthritis around its smooth surface and with mind racing in a windstorm of noise be unable to remember it's everyday name. It is hard to imagine being in that spot.  We all forget momentarily why we walked into the kitchen or where we set our keys last...this is so much more.  This is the loss of controll of everyday actions and thoughts. This is scary stuff.  My mother fixed this problem for years without mentioning her vast unknown fears to us her family.  She labeled every plain everyday thing.  Took notes and then copied them over again and again. 

Mom also copied down what was important to her.  Left little pieces of paper with quotes that were important enough to be transcribed and left behind.  The things she wanted to remember to say to us, or hear again herself. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The sky is full of blue
and full of the mind
of God"
         -child
from book "Dakota"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Christian love is the
warm,
free,
continuing expression
of intelligent good will
to all
without being
judgemental
or manipulative
(Walker Evans
definition)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vintage collectibles.  So much more meaning when you think of how easily things can be forgotten.  We treasure everyday objects because they are what our daily lives are made of.  What we build our futures with.  The thoughts, readings, buttons, threads that bring us to our eventual end.  If you loose the 'thread' of it you have lost yourself.  Alzheimer's is just as devastating to minds and lives as the land fills that so greedily cover up and rot our possessions. 
If you look at the CT scan of a brain with Alzheimer's you plainly see vast dark areas of nothing amidst the remains of functioning matter.  In this way it is like collecting vintage. You cherish the broken bits of pottery as you hope you find all the missing pieces to the set of Grandmother's silver. What bits you can no longer find or retrieve you will regret, tell their story and remember.   If you are so unlucky as to have lost the memory then you can only hope to find your notes. 

Thanks for leaving the notes Mom.  I am remembering you.  Your brilliant creative mind and I cherish your notes.  They whisper to me the things you didn't remember or have time to say to me. I find you in them and in that I am fortunate. 

from Mom

Mom in her high button shoes.

Love, Lambie

A boy

Prayer                                                                                   
for a boy
praying
a moment
of wonder
and waiting


Prayer 
my boy
for time
a chance
praying.


relinquish the wish
to God.
breathe.


Anne 3/7/12

The Best of a Mess. Prayer Shawl

wristers

Prayer Shawl

Some things are just too hard. Like knitting a sock.  I have spent hours with four metal sticks and some baby fine wool making little knots and loops to create a pair of socks.  Maybe it is the light so I have adjusted the goose neck lamp. Or could it be my progressive lens glasses?  I have cleaned them thirteen-umpty times. What to do? Frog the sock and start over? Call it quits and admit I am too old, too blind, too arthritic to knit a sock? How useful would bulky knit socks on large needles be?  At least I could see them and make them, my fingers would not cramp so much with the larger needles.  What is the point?  I should be enjoying this.  Decision made I am not going to give up on socks.  They will be a work in progress....and put away for a while in the stash bin. I will try wristers in fine wool and tiny needles first. At least no heal to turn. They will stand a chance of getting finished. I feel more determined with this decision and I really want my own pair of delicate wristers for semi chilly Florida weather.
So back to difficult situations and knitting.
My son is on a liver transplant list.  He has been fighting his disease  for over 2 decades now and yet he is so young. Thirty-four. Not fun, unfair, sad beyond words.  I weep. I pray. I put it out of my mind. I can't get it out of my mind. It becomes my mind. I have no mind. I am finding the point. I am missing the point. He is better. He is worse. Dr's are miracle workers. Dr's know nothing. Prayer helps, Prayer frustrates me. I can't pray, all I do is pray.  I am on my knees. I am mad. I am handing it over...no I am taking it back.  I am a mother.

Ross at 24

I am knitting my way to the city of oblivion. Along the way I make some nice things. I make messes. I solve some problems. I frog my knitting. I become a yarn snob. No I will use any yarn...just keep busy knitting. I use yarn I got at Goodwill. Acrylic. No I need to use pure wool. Wool so natural the lanolin faint on my fingers.  I need the connection to life to real wool. Sheep. Silly sheep in the fields.  Chewing their way to the earth to get every taste of green grass. Sheep are such good lawnmowers.
I grew up with sheep. My brother Ross raised sheep. My mother's oldest son and he died so young at twenty-four.  My oldest son trying so hard not to die young.
Sheep, wool, knitting, mothers, children, prayer, projects, desire, love, things that fill my life and clutter my mind.  I am doing my best in this mess. My best is not enough.  The wool is lying slack in my hands with metal needles all akimbo. My son in a hospital.  My son on a list. Far away in the north. My prayers sent into the abyss.
I picked up the Acrylic yarn from Goodwill and began to make a prayer shawl. K3P3, and the opposite on the returns.  Father, Son, Holy Ghost. The Best of a Mess. Prayer.

Pray

Joshua

When I first locked my eyes with your eyes and fell into those black pools I loved you. I loved you before I saw you, when I saw you and I love you still.
You were six months old when I got off the plane at the San Salvador International Airport, El Salvador. It was November of 1976 just before Thanksgiving. I stepped out onto the stairs of the aircraft into the sticky sweet tropical evening and looked up to the roof of the terminal. There clustered against the sky a throng of people awaited the arrival of the plane that I was on. The silhouette of one tall man holding an infant high above his head into the fading light caught and held my searching gaze. I knew as a mother knows her child that he was holding you up for me.
Somehow at 25 years of age I had arrived alone at this place at this time to receive into my arms my first child. After struggling through the crush and confusion of Customs I found you again out side the glass doors of arrivals. Thomas your foster father came directly toward me and placed you into my outstretched arms. Immediately you looked up into my eyes and grabbed my nose and held on tight. Your little body was solid and so warmly dressed in a yellow terry one piece footed pajama. Sweat curled your straight black hair into glistening concentric swirls on the crown of your head. I drank you in. Your heft, your scent, no longer strange to me, but now a part of me. We came together a mother and a son as only God alone could have chosen.
Looking into your eyes I saw an expanse of time that reached back to the very beginnings of time. Like rain pouring down a spring green leaf and mud sliding an other wise sure footed step I tumbled into an awareness of love. Love that passes all understanding. Our Father's love for us. All of that reflected in your deep dark brown eyes.
When love is not enough there is faith. I have had to be reminded of that so many times. God has you in his hands. He always has. I pray that his plans for you become fulfilled. My son. My boy for whom I could not always do what was needed or wanted. My Joshua. You are filled with light and laughter and I pray that our Heavenly Father's guiding hand keeps you safe and heals you.