Auntie Vi, is that you?

Today would have been Auntie Vi’s 97th birthday. Last year bink and I had driven down to Milwaukee for her 96th, the month before she’d died. In Vi’s honor I decided to bake the Italian SOS cookies she and my grandmother always made, to give to my young upstairs neighbor whose birthday, I learned, is this weekend too. 

Here I am, mixing ingredients. (Those Dansk short-pronged forks aren’t great for creaming butter and sugar.)

Vi was always making food to share with friends and neighbors—and to her, almost anyone could fall into one of those categories. She got to know and counted as a friend, for instance, the woman parking lot attendant at the hospital where she went for radiation treatment.

I’ve been missing Vi more since moving into my new apartment—she didn’t think it was boring at all to talk about furniture, and I know she would have sent me a check for a little something special for my place. Its absence makes me feel her loss more.

I’ve gotten most of what I need from my workplace, easily and cheaply of course, but last night I was thinking I want a white cloth outer-shower curtain. (I have a plain plastic liner curtain.) Not too likely one in good shape would get donated—I’d probably have to buy it new.

Today I felt down, sad and sluggish, and didn’t want to go to the grocery for baking supplies. I thought of Vi though—she did what needed to be done no matter how she felt, and that served her well living alone the last 26 years of her life. So I made myself bike to the store, and biking home down the alley, I found lying folded for the taking on top of a trash bin — 

a white cloth outer-shower curtain.

Target brand, waffle weave, seemingly new. Here with a worn old salmon- pink towel I pulled from textile recycling at work and a Royal Copenhagen porcelain dish for my hair bands (99 cents).

In the last years of her life, Vi signed off her emails to me, “Love forevermore”. 

I never doubted her love would stay with me, but I thought the gifts of house furnishings were over. Guess I was wrong.

__________

Happy Birthday, Auntie Vi! Thanks for the shower curtain.
Love forevermore,
your niece, goddaughter, and friend, Fresca