Crochet

Decades ago Anna, mother of my friend Verena, gave me a set of four crocheted placemats. A gift that is a memento of an extraordinary woman.

Verena recounted in a 2006 Associated Press article that as a teen-ager, her mother joined the resistance against the Nazis and their Italian allies, the Fascists, in a part of her native Slovenia that was then part of Italy. Anna was arrested in 1944 with other young people, tortured, and sent to a concentration camp known as Ravensbrueck north of Berlin. As the Allies advanced in 1945, the German army moved Anna and other prisoners to Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Anne Frank died. Anna was among the prisoners liberated on April 15, 1945. She later married, gave birth to Verena -- with whom I would later work at AP -- and emigrated with her family to the United States. She died in 2019, three years after my mother died.

Verena says that when she was a girl and suffered a sore throat, her mother would direct her to gargle with salty water. Verena hated the taste, but her mother insisted, telling her that a fellow camp inmate had found salt to make her a throat rinse that saved her life.

My kid's grimaces when fighting childhood sore throats with salty water prompted retellings of that story.

Along with Anna's place mats, I've kept a sheet of lined notebook paper that came with them on which she had written her name and address. The note was an old world gesture, meant to make it easy for me to send her a thank you note. My own mother had impressed upon me the importance of sending thank you notes, and I'm sure I sent one to Anna.

Needlework. Home remedies. Good manners. The things women do are often minimized. When I look at Anna's place mats, I remember that women's work, done steadfastly and well, can change the world.