“I’ve bought you a loom,” said Dad, fancying self-sufficiency.
Mum was planting potatoes, while his thoughts shuttled off, wondering about getting a pigpen.
Indoors, my mother, tense as warped yarn, wondered how she was could cook with this monstrous machine filling our dark kitchen. Selvedges would run parallel to cupboards while the beam abutted the range and to weave the weft she would have her back to the sink.
One day, the loom was gone.
Despite Scots blood, Mum never wove the tweed suit Dad planned. I think she made a table mat.
He’s lucky it wasn’t a shroud.
Copyright 2016 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission
Prompted by the word “Yarn” in the Thin Spiral Notebook. (NB this is a true story.)