She opened her drawer and threw the green blanket out, searching. "I don't want this one," she said, 'I want...I want...I want the..." I knew what she wanted.
"You want the one that Grandma Karen made?" I asked.
"Yeah."
I opened the drawer and pulled out the soft, white, crocheted baby blanket. One of the million that my mother made in anticipation of future grandchildren. She gave them away. This particular one, I'd given to a co-worker who adopted a daughter about 5 years ago. After my mother died, The Little Sister and I found extra, un-gifted blankets stored in a container. We were relieved that we would have some but I needn't have worried. Several of the blankets I'd given my friends were gifted back to me after my loss.
Reaching for the blanket, my girl asked, "She was your friend?" still trying to figure it out.
"No," I answered, she was my Mommy."
**************
My mother, her mother and her mother all were skilled crocheters. None of them, to my knowledge, liked to knit, but each of them had crochet supplies next to her living room chair, stretching back to my earliest memories. My great-grandmother and my mother each crocheted until the very end of their lives. My grandmother stopped when she could no longer manage the task.
In the summer time, my mother would crochet dishcloths and other small items, so as not to overheat from a big blanket laid across her lap. I can remember her trying new patterns and stitches and yarns, again, for as far back as I can remember anything.
**************
My great-grandmother (a stubborn, proud, German woman) lived alone, in a neighborhood that decayed around her, until she was 93 years old. Then she fell and broke her hip. Twice. That got her a one-way ticket to a nursing care facility. Having vowed, solemnly, to leave her house 'feet first,' she spat nails at having to move and lose her independence. Initially, she was bitter and angry, venting all of her spleen onto my gram.
Within a relatively short period, though, she adjusted. She started crocheting. One time on a visit, I asked her what she was making. Still whip-crack sharp, she lowered her voice, so as not to offend, and then answered me, waving her hand around for illustrative effect:
"I'm making lap blankets for all the old women here.'
I don't think that she was including herself in that group, mind, but was almost certainly referring (easily) to her 75 year old roommate.
*****************
When my mother was admitted to the hospital, she was in acute kidney failure. The toxins had backed up into her system and she was floridly psychotic. As in: Paranoid and Delusional. We didn't know any of that before we arrived to see her in the ICU and so, when The Little Sister and I got to the hospital after our 7 hour drive, it took me a few minutes to determine that the crazy shit that she was talking about was, uh, literally Crazy Shit.
I had to explain to TLS that they really WEREN'T making a movie (a training video?) on the unit in the middle of the night and that the guy who played The Pretender (or maybe the REAL Pretender) WASN'T on the unit, either, and the nurse WASN'T a stand-in for Marcy D'Arcy from Married With Children (although she certainly WAS a bitch.) To be fair, The Little Sister is quicker on the uptake than all that, but it's a disorienting thing to see your normally very-lucid mother all crazified without the benefits of heavy narcotics or what have you.
Before we left the unit, my mother had a request (which she made about 17 times):
"When you come tomorrow, bring me the crochet bag by my chair with the WHITE YARN. Not the off-white. The WHITE." She put her hand out, palm down, and moved it toward me in time, "The whi-i-i-ITE."
I looked at the tubes and the machines and the crazy and said:
"Sure, all right, will do," knowing for sure that she'd forget by the next morning.
When we arrived the next morning, the very first words out of her mouth were asking for her crochet stuff.
"Oh, man! I forgot!" I said (IN-CRED-U-LO-OH-OUS.)
"Honey," she said, her tone--disgusted--"I ASKED you to bring it."
*************
The Littlest New Girl likes to be covered a certain way with that blanket. Around her shoulders and covering her legs, all the way to the toes. She gets frustrated if she can't get it right. I help and explain that it's small and may not fit exactly the way she wants.
"It's small?"
"Yes, it's small."
[Pause.]
"Your Mommy's not here right now?"
"No, she's not. But she made this for us."
[Pause.]
"Is she coming home soon?"
.
.
