Ardis Journal

I have been knitting some hot pads.  Blake picked up a pan by the handle the other day and burned his hand quite severely.  I asked him why he would do anything so foolish.  His response was, "I don't have anything to hold the handle with."  Gratefully I have Mama's knitting needles, and lots of yarn as well.  I'm making a simple pattern.  I've heard it called the basket weave.  I decided that was a little too simple.  In the pattern I'm making I'm creating triangles in a square.

Mama could make anything.  She didn't need a pattern, or someone to show her how to make it.  It would just show up in her head, and it would be perfect each and every time.  She made me the most beautiful dresses.  I have out grown most of the gowns she made me.  The ones that still fit, well they were torn to shreds as we came from Tennessee to Oregon.

I have saved as many scraps as I could.  I'm going to sew them together to make a quilt for Tom and I to put on our bed.  I am trying to think in a positive manner.  Even though he has not written, I am certain that fighting in a war leaves very little time for letter writing.

Maybe some day, some time our child will put the quilt over their child, and mama, papa, Tom, and I will all live on.  I fear that I am in a melancholy mood this evening.  No matter how many times I try to reach for positive ideas, all that comes to mind are the deaths, the failures, the home that we left behind.

When Blake burned his hand, I did not speak a word to him.  I took him by the other hand and pulled him with me to the well.  I pulled up water.  Next I continued to pull him forward to the ice cellar.  I used the ice pick that is always kept there and chipped off some ice.  I put the ice in the bowl of water.  Next I sat Blake down and put his wounded hand in the cold water. 

Blake looked very surprised.  He said, "My mother always said that butter should be put on a burn.  I never understood.  Butter seemed to make my burns hurt worse."

I replied, my mother always put burns in very cold water as soon as they were burned.  She made us hold our burned anatomy in the cold until it began to feel better.  I was always amazed at how that simple action helped most burns to heal quickly.  Blake you just stay here until I send Red to fetch you.  I'll finish the meal and then we'll eat.  Blake didn't even bother to reply.  It was easy for me to see how the cold water relieved his pain.

Well I don't know that I cheered myself up much, but I'm so tired I'm going to try and sleep anyway.  Nightie night.