Busy Hands

My mother-in-law, Joann Schulenberg was a hard-working woman most of her life. It wasn’t necessarily that she did hard physical labor, but she always had busy hands. Having a garden vegetable garden all her life, she spent the harvest seasons canning vegetables to provide food for her family. She also canned meat whenever they raised a cow or purchased a side of beef. When she wasn’t canning, she was baking. Her house always had cake, cinnamon rolls, cookies, or some other such goodies for the snacking pleasure of her family. If you didn’t get your “sugar fix” you had only yourself to blame. Of course, that wasn’t always a good thing, because it was easy to overindulge on those fattening treats. Nevertheless, they were delicious, and always homemade. She was one to begin making dinner right after lunch, or sometimes even before. She was an excellent cook, and if you were a “meat and potatoes” kind of person, you were sure to get your fill.

When she wasn’t canning, baking, or cooking, my mother-in-law kept busy sewing, knitting, or crocheting. She made a living sewing clothing for a number of people, including my uncle, Jack McDaniels’ mom, for whom she sewed for a number of years. I only knew about that connection when I announced my engagement to my husband, Bob Schulenberg. My mother-in-law crocheted many afghans, that she sold at craft fairs and then received numerous orders for more. Those craft fairs left her with months of jobs and many referrals. One of my favorite items that my mother-in-law made was the “sweaters” she knitted. I use the word sweater lightly, because the ones she made were of a heavy yarn and equipped with a zipper, making them a coat. We all had one, and trust me, you didn’t need a coat.

Even after my mother-in-law developed Alzheimer’s Disease, she didn’t slow down. Yes, there were some things that went by the wayside. Things like finding store-bought cookies in the house, and less jar canned food, meaning that there were more store-bought canned foods in the house. She just couldn’t do those things so much anymore. We missed those things, but there was no help for it. Nevertheless, her crocheting remained. She had long been able to crochet “in her sleep” and never miss a stitch. That always amazed me, but when she had to be moved to a nursing home, because she required 24-hour care, she still crocheted. Of course, she didn’t use yarn at this stage, but she knew that her hands should be busy, so she would simply “crochet” with her oxygen tubing. The staff had no idea what she was doing, but after all those years, I knew what she was doing. When she would forget to hang on to her walker, because she was “fiddling” with her oxygen tubing, the concerned staff would panic, because they couldn’t get her to hang on. Upon seeing it in action, I simply asked her if I could hold her crocheting while she walked, all she said to me was, “Don’t lose a stitch!!” Once I “held her crocheting,” she would take hold of her walker, and proceed down the hallway…to the utter amazement of the staff. Of course, eventually the use of the walker went by the wayside, because she just couldn’t grasp the use of it anymore. That was sad, but she was perfectly content in her recliner wheelchair, because she never liked walking anyway. While her legs were no longer in use, her hands remained busy until the day she passed away. Today would have been my mother-in-law’s 94th birthday. Happy birthday in Heaven, Mom. We love and miss you very much.