Box of Love

The box arrived in the mail a few weeks after Thanksgiving. The contents:

1 bag of shaped chalk (a baseball, basketball, and soccer ball)

2 pairs of white socks

3 sets of "Bob" Early Reader books

1 book about spinning tops (?)

1 yard batik fabric

6 crocheted cross-shaped Christmas ornaments

11 vintage hankies

A collection from my mother, of love and faith and memory. Items that we had forgotten at her house on our Easter visit. Books collected during her teaching days and no longer used but just right for one grandson learning to read and another whose voracious reading habit is hard to keep supplied. And crafty goodness she had picked up at yard sales and thrift stores.

I can imagine her filling that box one item at a time, remembering us as she did so.

The vintage hankies she found at a thrift store in the Great Smoky Mountains, where she volunteered on a visit to a Tennessee friend. She bought a whole box of hankies. She washed them on gentle cycle and carefully pressed them with starch.

The handkerchiefs hang like diaphanous flags on the wall of my craft space. The winter light picks out worn patches and shines through the linen. Red tatting edges cream linen. Openwork crosses a blue linen hankie with a monogrammed "P." Brilliantly colored patterns have faded to lovely shades from frequent washings.

  

Happy birthday, Mom!