All Wrapped Up

Easter is Sunday, and I wish all a happy one. Chocolate bunnies, jelly beans and… masks? Yes, we’re still sequestered at home, masked in public and entrenched in the unsure and unknown. This is not a typical Easter, but the promise of resurrection has added appeal this year. We’re all hoping to resurrect our lives once the novel coronavirus subsides. In the meantime we wear masks in hopes of maintaining life, and so this week’s story is a repeat of that of an earlier week.

After last week’s self-pity-party blog post, I realized that I needed a project to keep my spirits up, and per the CDC masks in public are recommended to preserve life (if not our own, those we may expose to a virus we may be carrying). I need a project. People need masks. I can make masks, and so I’m back at the sewing machine (I was able to finally get it back together after cleaning it following my last mask-making endeavor).

This time, I decided to use Phil’s (and some of my own) old T-shirts to make masks for my kids and grandkids. I went through the drawers and found T-shirts with images that I hoped would appeal to the grandkids, thereby increasing the likelihood of the masks being worn. With elastic sold-out at stores that remain open and carry it, I turned to hair ties for securing the masks behind the ears of the wearer. I cut as many appropriately-sized rectangles as possible from the T-shirts and pinned, sewed, ripped apart, wrestled elastic, and sewed again. Eventually, I came up with twenty hopefully functional masks. I did not feel sorry for myself once all week.

Spring is as beautiful, inspiring and full of promise this year as it is every year. The promises of Easter are the same whether or not we gather together at church, with family at home, are masked or unmasked. Joy, chocolate bunnies and masks to all!