“I’m not elderly,” Carol says. “They’re calling 60 and over ‘elderly.’ I don’t feel elderly.” And yet her plans are on hold, she says, until the medical community finds a vaccine for the coronavirus. Two years ago Carol retired from 37-year career at the post office. She loved it, but when she turned 70 she decided it was time to start another phase of her life.
World Traveler
After her retirement, her life was busy. She loves to travel, and spent last year in fantastic locales all over Europe. Her sister, who lives on Treasure Island, owned a boat she sold to a man who lived in France. He couldn’t get it right away, so she kept it behind her house for two years. In gratitude, the man, who owns a chateau in France, told her she could come to visit any time. Last year they took a transatlantic cruise out of Cape Canaveral to Barcelona. They spent some time there, then flew to Paris to stay at the man’s chateau. Though it served as a bed and breakfast in the summer, he offered lodging there for free if they stayed before mid-May.
They stayed at his chateau for a week, and he liked them so much he let them stay in his condo in Cannes during the time of the Cannes film festival. It was delightful. “The people were walking up and down the street all dressed up in ball gowns with signs that said, ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – please get me tickets.” She says it was quite a sight to behold.
They were still in Europe at the time of the Monoco Grand Prix, so after the Cannes Festival they went to Monaco. Carol has wonderful memories of Southern France. She didn’t really know what to expect at first, but there were cool old villages from the 1700’s. After their time in the countryside they took the fast train back to Paris and spent another week seeing everything. They had a truly wonderful time.
When not traveling, Carol had spent her time assisting other voyagers. She worked for the cruise line out of Tampa, greeting passengers at the airport and getting them to the ship. It was a part-time job, more for fun than anything else. It’s not something she can do now, though.
So what’s an involuntarily grounded retiree to do? Why, sew masks, of course.
An Old Focus Made New
Carol began sewing in 10th grade home economics class. She didn’t find it fun at first. Her mom always sewed, though, back in the day, and they often made all their own clothing. In the beginning, Carol was most drawn to knitting and crocheting, but found a lot of value in sewing after she got married. She liked coming up with an idea for something and putting things together. To this day, creating gives her a sense of well-being and makes her feel good.
When her daughter was in the high school color guard, Carol made flags for them. She loved seeing what she had created out on the field, flying around. Their team wore black tuxedo costumes, so for their graduation gift she came up with the idea of buying each team member a teddy bear and sewed a tuxedo outfit for each bear.
Her creativity manifests in a variety of ways. For instance, Carol loves to go on cruises, and about a year ago she discovered the concept of “cruising ducks,” where people hide ducks in nooks and crannies of cruise ships for others to find, with sayings along the lines of “Today is your lucky day! You found a duck!” Those that find them can either keep them or hide them elsewhere for others to find. Carol was heading out on a transatlantic cruise, and instead of bringing rubber ducks, which most use, she started crocheting some ducks to leave around the ship.
In October/November she started making gnomes, which are crochet covers she puts over old pill bottles. She makes gnomes for all holidays, and was working on St. Patrick’s Day gnomes and Easter gnomes when she chose to step away to help with masks for this group. She’s hoping that when this need passes she’ll have a chance to create Fourth of July gnomes.
Community Effort
Carol started making masks even before she saw Medical Masks for Tampa Bay. Two months ago she’d gone to the thrift store to get a bunch of material for the gnomes. A quilter had gotten rid of a bunch of material so she started working with that to make masks, but she didn’t know what to do with them. On the first day the group formed she saw them on Facebook, and got all her buddies to join. She says this group helps her so much. She can only imagine the time they must be spending putting together the fabric kits, requests for masks, and deliveries.
Carol is incredibly grateful the group has drivers to help pick the masks up so she doesn’t have to worry about bringing them anywhere. “Say what you want about Facebook, but it brings people together,” she says. She wouldn’t have known how to get her masks to people, but sewing is something she can do and it’s been amazing. Sometimes she’ll stay up to midnight or 1 am sewing. Carol feels that the mask-making process is best if she works in stages—she spends some time cutting, some sewing, some pinning. Though her house looks like a tornado has hit, her husband is very understanding of her need to switch up her sewing tasks in order to keep herself interested, engaged, and working hard.
She doesn’t want to stress herself out over it, though. When we spoke she was producing an order of 25 masks for a pediatric opthomology group. She wanted to do something for kids, so she found some lovely ladybug fabric and decided to make the masks with that. She feels so much joy in making the masks at the same time she feels so much sorrow for those going out and putting their lives on the line, and in danger.
She feels making masks is the least she can do. She says, “I think of my ancestors during the world war. They were sewing things and working in factories while men went off to fight the war. Now, the nurses and doctors are fighting a war and everyone who can should do something to help. Even if it’s just a cool-looking mask that brightens their day and their patients’ day, I’m contributing something useful.”
There has been a shortage of elastic, and while that has been frustrating she has been using strips of t-shirt fabric. She feels they stretch out better than the elastic. She is incredibly grateful she’d taken her sewing machine to get serviced—nice and fresh and ready to go-before all this happened, because it would be frustrating if the machine wasn’t working. She’s so glad her machine is behaving.
The quilters have a lot of people who give them material, so yesterday they had tubs full of material and she got a bunch. She has friends that don’t sew and are cutting material for her so all she has to do is sew and put things together. It’s wonderful how much people are pitching in. There’s an 86-year-old lady who would sew, but her machine is broken, so now she spends her time cutting material.
Carol encourages anyone who is thinking about joining this group: “Definitely do it. Don’t worry about your masks being perfect – some people are very critical of their own work and afraid to do it because it won’t be perfect. It will give you pleasure even if you make them and never give them out. The process of doing it will give you satisfaction. It’s a simple thing to do.”