From the Vault: Woolly

By Eilene Lyon

Breaking up is sometimes made more difficult by the fact that, just because you want to lose the partner, you don’t necessarily want to lose their parents, too.

I met Doug in the Mountaineering Club at The Ohio State University. By the time I graduated, we’d gotten engaged. It was a spur-of-the-moment proposal that I rashly accepted. Doug wasn’t a bad guy, he just wasn’t quite ready to grow up and be responsible, even though he was seven years older than me.

He came from a family that was self-sufficient in an early-20th-century sort of way–maybe even earlier days. With Doug’s help, they had built their lovely Cape Cod-style home in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. Doug and his father hunted to fill the freezer with meat.

His mother canned all manner of food, even condiments such as mustard made from scratch. She carded wool, spun it on an old-fashioned spinning wheel, and dyed the yarn. Then she knit and crocheted sweaters and other items. She was also a tole painter.

Once, she tried to teach me to spin wool, which is much harder than it looks! She also showed me how to make these cute little sheep. I made some myself, but the only one left is the one she gave me.

First you make the legs, head, and tail from black pipe cleaners. Then you crochet a woolly cylinder and stuff it to fill out the body. She made them all sizes and sold them at craft markets. This one is not even two inches long.

Doug and I wound up in Durango together, but our relationship never progressed to marriage. It was over about six months into our residence. Though I had not planned on living here, I fell in love with Colorado and am committed for 37-years-to-life.

But I never saw Doug’s parents again, and that is a shame.