A Timely Selfie

Dear Diary,

I usually do my annual selfie on April 15th as I start a new year of my photo journal but I decided to do one a few weeks early.  My 50-year-old sewing machine is not working, I’ve meant to have it fix for ages, so I hand-sewed this mask.  I found myself channeling my dear grandmother who nursed through the influenza epidemic in 1919.  1919…2020, hmmm, interesting.  There were no ventilators to help patients back then, they died by the millions.  Women made their own cloth masks.

So, I drew on all the sewing skills my grandmother taught me and the Yankee ingenuity passed on by my grandfather to fashion my mask.  My parent’s Depression era skills of conserving, re-using and making do are holding me in good stead now.  Also, their willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the country is always on my mind as I stay at home to help flatten the curve of this epidemic.