Skip to main content

A gift from Mrs. Dee

Mrs. Dee was my friend Meggy’s  grandmother. She lived  in the apartment house that was next door to my house.

When my parents used to go out for the evening, Mrs. Dee used to babysit. she introduced us to the wonders of both Lawrence Welk and  Liberace.

 

Usually when Mrs. Dee would  babysit she would also bring  a bag of handwork. Most often she would make afghans, generally doing what I now know is called Tunisian stitch.

 

I used to hang on Mrs. Dee’s arm as she worked and asked her lots of questions about what she was doing.   The two of us really liked one another. Mrs. Dee made me this afghan for  my eighth birthday.   She made it in green, because it was my favorite color, and brown, because that was the color of my room. I actually hated ( and still hate) sea foam green, but I love that Mrs. Dee made it for me.

afgan

This afghan lives on my youngest’s  bed.  It has faded some from the strong sun in my childhood bedroom.

My youngest left for camp yesterday and all of his bedding has gotten washed .

 

My husband and I are child free for about a week.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Meg @ Mood FabricsJune 23, 2012 at 8:05 PM

    Lovely story. Enjoy being child-free. My youngest heads off to camp for a month next week. Am I being a mean mom to say I kinda look forward to the break?!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sarah JacobsJune 25, 2012 at 12:34 PM

    No Meg, you are not a mean mom.

    For us, though it has been so long ( nearly 24 years) since we had a chunk of child free time that it's taking some getting used to.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

  וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים   You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for  giving life to all.  I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of  Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or  the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...
2 comments
Read more

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee.  If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it.    My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid.  I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed.   A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee  and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...
3 comments
Read more

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...
9 comments
Read more