Handkerchief

Handkerchief

There is one remaining drawer.

A Pandora’s box. A flood of anxiety

increases my heartbeats. I don’t want any secrets, no remnants of

any grief or pain of her life.  She had enough with Alzheimer’s.

Let this be a simple walk

through old paid bills and

receipts.

I slowly pull out the drawer. It is packed with cards and envelopes.

Oh no! Outdated checks? A birth certificate of my illegitimate birth? 

No, they are Mother’s Day cards, many browned with age,

collected throughout the years.

 Many didn’t even hold a hand-written message of love.

They were all Hallmarks’ and she had kept them all.

Beneath the cards, a handkerchief. A square piece of now

yellowed handkerchief edged with bright green lace.

Memory sinks in; I had made that fifty-six years ago,

for  Mother’s Day.

Once a week, we spent an hour called Practical Arts

with the cafeteria manager at Kapoho School.

It was probably a way to give teachers, all three of them

in grades 1-6, an hour off. Girls learned to crochet doilies,

while the boys grabbed hoes and weeders.

I was in the 5^th grade: I had  painstakingly crocheted a delicate row of

bright green lace around the edge of a square piece of

white muslin cloth.

I don’t think my mother ever used it. 

My mother liked to save things for a better day. In her closets

robes, sweaters  and nightgowns, with their tags hanging like

upside down bats.

“I’ll save this when I go to the hospital.”  She never did

go to the hospital until she had a minor stroke  before her diagnosis.

This handkerchief  was probably “too good to be used,”

saved for a tea date with the queen someday. Or maybe

an evening out with Lawrence Welk.  Oh, how she loved

Lawerence Welk. She worried when he danced his jig a bit too fast.

 “You’ll get heart attack!” she warned him at the screen.  He was

her weekly Saturday night date. I wished then, I could have

tossed some magical stars  to alacadabra  her on the floor

with Mr. Welk, dancing to his one-ah- two- ah- three.

I toss out the old Mother’s Day cards,  but save the handkerchief.

I use it as a doily  now and each time I see it, I smile, remembering,

 adding my own fantasy: Each time she pulled out the drawer,

 she was on the dance floor with Lawrence Welk, waltzing away

with the handkerchief held gently against his back.

And for a moment,  she was given a life of glamour

in her quiet life in Kapoho.

                        From I Am Somebody by frances kakugawa

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