Throwback Thursday

I have been spending the past few evenings crocheting baby blankets to try to fill the cute little all black German Shepherd puppy sized hole in my heart.  Yes, this is a last, desperate attempt to change The German's mind.  But I'm fairly sure he doesn't read this, so it's not really manipulative, right?  I know, I know, he is right about this one.  I would be cussing myself out cleaning up puppy puddles while we try to move. But...sigh. If you know him, feel free to email him subtle photos of children playing with their dog in the park.  Totally realistic here in big city West Africa.  I mean, come on, Bean and Sprout could totally spend their afternoons rolling around with their dog in the piles of construction rubble and decomposing trash that line the streets and fill every empty square foot here!

                                   

Anyway, back to the crochet.  My great-grandma taught me how to crochet when I was probably 6 or 7.  A sweet, vertically challenged woman who I always picture with her purse in her lap, twiddling her thumbs, she would come down from "up north" each year to stay at my grandparent's house, which is where I spent a lot of my childhood hanging out.  I would sit next to her, on that old, yellow couch in the upstairs sitting room making long chains.  I can almost hear her voice, prompting me how to hold the yarn, but it's a bit faded and I can't seem to imagine the tone just right, the way voices get when you haven't heard them in too many years.

Every summer, I would ride up north with my grandparents to go visiting for a month or so.  These road trips are one of my favorite memories, full of stories and sage advice from my grandfather who I adored, and I'm sure a fair share of eye rolling as I hit those pre-teen years.  The tv my grandparents bought for me for the trips a good 30 years ago still sits in the top of my closet.  It plugged in to the cigarette lighter, and if we weren't in the mountains I could sometimes watch a few minutes of a cartoon here and there.  I just can't bring myself to get rid of it.

When we arrived, I would stay with my great-grandma in her one bedroom apartment in the retirement complex.  A few dozen ground floor apartments in a row, with widows and widowers sitting in their matching lounge chairs by their front door.  I loved it.  During the day, we would read tabloid magazines that she bought with the spending money her grand kids would send her, a sweet way to thank her for the years of two dollar bills she sent all of us for every holiday, a pile of which I still have in my bottom drawer.  In the evening we would watch the live line dancing show on the country music channel. She used to make a mouse out of her hanky that might randomly jump on you when you pet it. I can never get my mouse to "jump" as perfectly and subtly as she did.

"How to make a napkin or handkerchief mouse"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe_RQxz_s9Y

So now every time I crochet, I get warm fuzzies thinking of road trips, family, hours spent "making the rounds" and visiting on couches, my grandma teaching me to put on lipstick in my great-uncle's attic bedroom, those orange shaped chewy candies my great-aunt always had out on her coffee table, and my great-grandma.  I think I'll have to try out my skills at the hanky mouse on Bean and Sprout again tonight.