The Things You Find

I bet you don't think of me as a souvenir thimble sort of person. I know I don't. But as I was in the midst of going through my old sewing basket and dusting and sorting the contents into my new, lidded one (new to me, courtesy of Saint Vinny), there it was, a long forgotten, twee little icon of tourist tat. It's an awkwardly heavy, pewter thimble, with a bitty bas relief of Stonehenge running around the bottom. It was a gift, I'm sure, from a dear friend whose tastes are often orthogonal to mine. And it was kindly meant. But goodness me, I am so thoroughly not a souvenir Stonehenge thimble sort of person.

In the same sewing basket, I also found my grandmother's old crochet hook. After her stroke, Mormor couldn't knit with knitting needles any more, having lost fine motor control in her right hand. So she took up loom knitting instead, made my grandfather build her a wooden knitting loom, and improvised a tabbed grip on one of her old crochet hooks so that she could hold the hook in her right hand. The first scarf I ever "knitted" I made on that improvised loom.

I guess it's been over 15 years since Mormor died, so I finally took the masking tape grip off the hook before I put it in the new sewing basket. It was time. And for the time being, I can use a crochet hook without the additional gripper tabs. But it was a bit of a wrench bidding farewell to that lump of masking tape. The tape was a problem my grandmother solved for herself, and something she made out of what she had. Still, I have a great many yards of linen she wove as well. I'll put one of her cloths on the kitchen table instead, and think of her.

And Sarah has been fussing at her left fore paw for a couple of weeks now. I thought she must have caught a thorn, or a small pebble, deep between the pads of the paw, but I could never find anything. Hal took her to the vet Monday, who couldn't find anything on the surface either. The vet took some tissue samples, gave Hal antibiotics for the dog, and sent the sample off to the lab. The lab tests came back yesterday. Sarah has a mast cell tumor in her paw. Hal's going in to the vet again this afternoon for a follow-up, and, I imagine, to schedule surgery. Unpleasant scenarios are dancing in my head. Prognosis should be good if it's a grade I cancer and caught early, but outlooks decline from there.

Of all the things I've found lately, the truest is this: I'm not ready to lose my dog.