Corona Kimono 1/25/21

A few weeks ago Jon and I stopped at The Mansion and dropped off some things they needed at the front door.  As we drove up, I looked in the windows of the big room where special events were always held and people sometimes watched TV on the big screen the Army of Good bought for them.

I felt a longing to able to walk through the door, plunk down on the couch next to whoever was sitting there and have a casual conversation like I used to.  I thought about how Alice used to reach for my hand when I sat next to her. We would just sit there together, holding hands, not having to say a word.

I always felt welcomed at The Mansion, by the people who live there as well as the staff.

Today I looked on my blog to see when I was last there.  It’s was February 12th, almost a year ago.  We were making a community quilt.  Julie, the activities director, had fabric that had been donated.  I brought in two of my sewing machines and  Ruth, Claudia, Nancy, and Becky chose pieces of fabric then Julie and I sewed them together.

I was thinking about The Mansion today and I wanted to represent the people there that I miss on my Corona Kimono.  So  I did a drawing of Madeline, one of the women who live there, and stitched it on the sleeve of my Corona Kimono. 

Around her image, I wrote about how I missed going to The Mansion and how welcomed and comfortable I always felt there. In my original drawing Madeline was holding up one of her drawings that she did in a class I taught.  But when I stitched the drawing of Madeline onto the sleeve of the Kimono I ran out of room for her drawing.

So now it’s Madeline, representing The Mansion and the people who live there on my Corona Kimono.

Madeline, who would sometimes forget things from one moment to the next, but even in her ninety’s has a beautiful voice and could still sing all the words to “Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend” and act it out like she did in the play over seventy years ago.

I know it will be different when I can go back to The Mansion.  Some of the people I knew won’t be there anymore and there will be other people I’ve never met before.

But I still have the beginnings of the quilt we started in February.  When the pandemic is over and visitors can return to The Mansion, I plan on bringing the pieces back and finishing the quilt.

My Corona Kimono so far.

Corona Kimono 12/29/20

I woke up with the words Covid Christmas in my head.  I knew they belonged to my Corona Kimono.

Little by little pieces of the image became clear in my mind.  A Christmas tree with Covid 19 Vaccines tied with a bow.  Dr. Fauci, the angel on top of the tree, and  Joe Biden’s Covid Taskforce, their names like the kids on Santa’s list.

In my mind, the list flowed like ribbon candy next to the tree, Anthony Fauci’s face grew angel wings and the vaccines took the place of candles on the tree.

Once in my studio, I did a rough drawing.  But stitching on the sleeve of the Kimono is difficult.  It opens on the wrong side to put the image right side up.  And the sleeve is too small to stretch over the flat base of my free-motion sewing machine.

So I had to take the base off, which only allows me to see a few inches of the surface I’m sewing on.  This makes it’s impossible for me to sew large images freehand.  So I drew the tree with a white pencil before stitching it and traced over the drawing I made of Dr. Fauci’s face to make sure I got it just right.

I listed the first names of the people on Biden’s Taskforce.

At 2:30 Fate plopped her head on my knee, trying to convince me it was time to feed the animals.  “Not yet,” I told her.  I still have a half-hour and more work to do.”

 Once I fill in the back of the left sleeve, I’ll only have the front edging to do.

I’ve been looking at my Corona Kimono for so long I don’t even know what it looks like anymore. But when I look at my first drawing from April, I can still remember the fear I felt of now knowing what would happen.

And now there’s a vaccine.

My friend and poet Jackie Thorne, who is also a nurse, got the first part of the vaccine this week.  For her, it had the same effect as a Tetanus shot. A little pain at the site.

This is probably my last entry on my Corona Kimono for the year.  And I’m feeling pretty hopeful.

You can follow my work on my Corona Kimono back to the beginning here.

Detail of the Vaccine “Candles” and Santa Biden’s list.

Corona Kimono 12/8/20

Corona Kimono

When I heard that the first Covid-19 vaccine was given to a 90 year old woman in the UK today I had to put it on my Corona Kimono. And it fit perfectly into the small space on the bottom of the left sleeve.

The left sleeve of my Corona Kimono
The front of my Corona Kimono

Corona Kimono 11/19/20

Covid Winter

There were just three of us in my Bellydancing class last night.  The rest of the class stayed home for reasons due to the Coronavirus.

The facility where we dance is still open, but we’re expecting it may close any day. So we’re figuring out how to do Zoom classes to keep everyone dancing.  It is interesting to me, that like most gyms,  that it is actually one of the safest places, besides staying home, to be.

The space is sanitized between each group that uses it.  There is an air filtration system and high ceilings, we sanitize our hands and feet (since we dance barefoot), keep at least six feet apart from each other, take and record our temperatures and, of course, wear masks.

Winter is here and, as predicted, cases of the virus and deaths from it are rising.  It’s a Covid Winter.

So I stitched an image of the coronavirus with a hat and scarf.  The words Covid Winter and 232,639 the number of deaths from the virus as of today.

You can see my Corona Kimono from the most recent entry to the first one in April, here. 

The sleeve where I stitched today’s Corona Kimono entry
My Corona Kimono so far

 

 

Corona Kimono 11/2/20

Working on my Corona Kimono

I had a scare yesterday when I thought that Jon and I had been exposed to the Coronavirus.  But, this morning, after talking to the nurse at our doctor’s office, we found out that we weren’t at risk.

There are so few cases where we live (although like most places the numbers are rising) and we are careful to wear masks and wash our hands,  socially distance and stay away from groups of people.

The virus seemed so far away from us recently and then, suddenly it was at our door.

Waiting for our doctor to call us back this morning, I did what came most naturally, what kept me from thinking the worst.  I put the experience into my Corona Kimono.

I drew our house, the back porch, the doorway we use most often to go in and out of the house. Our home. I wrote that the Covid scare hit home.  And it did.

Yesterday and this morning were the most personal and real that I’ve felt the virus since it first began. It was a reminder to me that I won’t soon forget.

My Corona Kimono So far.

Corona Kimono 10/21/20

I sit in a cushioned chair at the end of two industrial dining tables pushed together waiting for my mother.  After a few minutes, she comes through the door pushing her walker, looking small in the cavernous room, a young woman with long brown hair and wearing colorful scrubs at her elbow.

Before the pandemic, it used to be the dining room.  Now the tables and chairs are piled around the edges of the room.  A temporary wall divides the space so two residents of the  Assisted Living Community can have visitors at the same time.

I already had my temperature taken and signed the papers with all the standard Corona Virus questions.

“I feel like royalty,” I say to the tall woman orchestrating it all, as she leads me to the long table with a chair at either end.   It’s like one of those British movies where the rich couple sit on opposite ends of the long table meant for more than two people.

She laughs almost relieved,  “Oh that’s good,” she says “I like that”.  I get the feeling she expected me to say something else.

My mother had been in Assisted Living about a month.  This was the first time I visited her since she moved.  I had to put my glasses on to see her across the table.  I felt like we were yelling trying to be heard through our masks and across the distance.

Talking has always been difficult between my mother and me.  In a way, these new obstacles at least gave a tangible reason for it.

We talk for forty-five minutes until the tall woman comes back in the room and says it’s time for my mother to go. I wait for the aid to come in and lead her out of the room before I leave.

Although the place where my mother is living is very nice in so many ways, and she seems to be very comfortable, even happy there,  I was reminded of the time visiting my ex-brother-in-law in prison.

I didn’t cry till I got back in my car.

In the past few years I haven’t seen a lot of my mother even though she lived only a little over an hour away.  Now she’s now living in a very nice place where she’s getting the care she needs.  So it isn’t as if our relationship is much altered by her move.

But it was sad to actually see her in this new and final stage in her life.

I visited my mother about three weeks ago and knew that I wanted to include the visit on my Corona Kimono.  But it wasn’t until today that I could get myself to draw the image that came to my mind and commit it to thread.

My Corona Kimono so far

 

 

Corona Kimono 10/2/20

There was no question about what I’d be doing in my studio this morning.

It was like finding the lost pieces of a puzzle.  The words fit perfectly around the thread drawing I had done of Trump playing golf standing on the number of people who had died of the Coronavirus through September 17th.

Then around the image and words, I did a thread drawing of a cross-section of the coronavirus.

 

Corona Kimono 9/23/20

What just months ago would have seemed like a scene from a bad Sci-Fi movie, is now normal.

On Saturday I went with Jon to get a COVID 19 test before his surgery.

We drove into a parking lot behind Saratoga Hospital and waited in the car under a canopy for a nurse covered from head to toe wearing a blue gown, mask, face shield, and rubber gloves.   She came out and stuck a swab in Jon’s mouth then retreated to the storage contain/makeshift lab with the specimen.  We never got out of the car.

Jon had done this already before his first surgery a few weeks ago, so he knew what to expect and luckily wasn’t worried about a  positive test result.

It was the strangest drive-thru I’ve ever been to.

You can see my latest entry on my Corona Kimono on the right sleeve.

Corona Kimono 9/17/20

 

It came to me last week that President Trump didn’t have a place on my Corona Kimono.  Although I’ve referred to him with some images, I didn’t have an entry that spoke directly to his role in the Pandemic.

The idea came to me this morning. The image of Donald Trump golfing while people are dying of the Corona Virus.

I used my newly found technique of stitching around a drawing that I made, of Trump playing golf,  from a photo that I found online.

Under him, I stitched the number of people that have died in the United States, 196,277, and the date beneath it. Alongside him I wrote out the number of people infected with the Corona Virus,6,613,331 in the United States.  These figures are according to the CDC.

 

The drawing that I stitched around on the sleeve of my Corona Kimono
The back of my Corona Kimono. Today’s entry is on the right sleeve

 

 

Corona Kimono 8/24/20

I dropped Jon off at Saratoga Hospital, watched him walk in, and drove away.

He is having a Cardiac Catheterization.  It’s a common outpatient procedure, where it will be determined if he needs a stent placed in a vein to open it up and help pump blood to his heart.

He’s had this procedure before, about four years ago.  That time I was with him, drawing my sketch pad in the hospital waiting room.  That time Jon needed Open Heart surgery and I followed the ambulance that took him to Albany Med about an hour away.

This time there’s little chance he will need anything other than a stent and I’ll pick him up in five to six hours right where I dropped him off.  He’ll be hungry since he hasn’t eaten all day, so I’ll bring him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some water.  We already have plans to get ice cream on the way home.

It was strange not being able to go with him into the hospital.  Normally I’d spend the day with him as much as I could, waiting with him between tests and procedures, drawing in my sketchpad in the waiting room when I couldn’t be with him.

Of course, I can’t help but think of all the people who have and still will die in hospitals without the people they love around them, because of the Corona Virus.   I think of the people who can’t be with them.

I am getting a tiny taste of what that might have felt like.

So although I sit here wondering how Jon is doing at this moment and the next, I am truly grateful that he is at a very good hospital, getting healthier as stitched the images and words on my Corona Kimono and as I write this.

You can see my Corona Kimono entry with Jon waving goodby at the hospital on the upper right shoulder of the kimono.

 

Full Moon Fiber Art