It certainly isn’t the best photo of Mouse that ever existed but I’m not great at photographing people even on a good day. But I wanted to post a shot of my Mousey spinning in the back yard here on the Planet Ann Arbor. As you can see, she is spinning fiber with an actual spinning wheel, not whatever that device is that people use at gyms for exercise.

Mouse posted photos on her blahg of The Commander weaving on the beach and herself (Mouse, that is) ironing on the moomindeck beach with her sewing machine at the ready. I definitely wasn’t around to take the picture of The Commander weaving on the beach. I wasn’t born for a few more years. I did take the photo of Mouse ironing on the deck. I was definitely born by then.

But then. One of the things I remember about my aunt Katie, who died in 2004, was that she sometimes used to set up an ironing board up on the bank above the beach and she would iron while she watched her children swim. And sometimes some of us other younger “cuzzints” too. Ironing on the beach? How the heck do you do that? Well, you do it if there is an electricical outlet in the big old pine tree right there at the top of the bank where you want to do your ironing.

I don’t think Katie was out there ironing fancy hand-made clothing or quilt blocks. She could run a sewing machine as well as anybody out there but I think her ultimate job title was something like Small-town Doctor’s Wife and Mom of Four. And that’s what Katie did. With expertise and aplomb! And what can I say? He was one of the most hardworking docs in town in those years. Does that old electrical outlet in the pine tree still work?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.