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The Twist, the Turn, the Leap
More than 40 years ago, when I was just 28, my mother died of a very curable illness that never got diagnosed or treated. I’ve looked beyond that, to the alcohol abuse that dogged her life, and the torment she experienced thanks to my father’s infidelity and that justified her drinking. (Note: All perceptions mine only … my siblings might tell the “story” very differently.) It’s been very sad to do that.
This summer, I decided to look for her again, through trying out one of the crafts she’d pursued: creating greeting cards from pressed flowers, using Japanese rice paper for an overlay, and heavy paper for the cards.
It took a while to pull all the materials together, ordering them from different suppliers. And then of course I needed to cut and press the flowers — it only takes two or three days for the flowers to be ready to remove from the “flower press,” but I needed to repeat this (it’s a very small press, a beginner version) to have enough of them to work with.
Mom made these cards around 1970, I think — more than 50 years ago. But I recalled enough of her process to create some that pretty much matched what she had made. Perhaps hers used fewer flowers per card, and…
