Linda Petrovich
Some weeks ago I drove Linda to an appointment and we exchanged news. Most of my riders are enduring age-related diminishments, just as Linda was. But her story of how she approaches a host of challenges was inspiring, a fine model of “making do.” Later, I asked Linda to retell her story for Village Voices. – John Harkey.
Linda: “The last time you and I worked together was on Petal Possy, my flower project. You took some beautiful, lovely pictures of those. We were making bouquets to brighten the day of elderly residents in homes where they don’t have anything. That project concluded but I had so much fun with it. Through the subsequent months, I learned that I have macular degeneration. I lost sight in one eye and the other one is going. I used to crochet but can’t now because my sight is so poor. I had to think, “What else can I do?” I’m certainly not going to just sit here.
“I looked online to see what kinds of affordable projects were available. I got interested in what the Mormons were doing years and years ago, in the 1800s, and how they made rugs. They used any piece of old fabric they had. But for me, sheets are easier to work with than old rags. So I’ve been going to Salvation Army where you can pick up an old sheet for a buck or two. Or I beg people for their old sheets. This was so perfect – cheap, and you don’t have to see for this; you can work on a rug just by feeling it.
“After you snip into a sheet, you just rip ‘em. The measurement as to how wide you want these strips is just from your thumb. It’s maybe an inch or three-quarters — there’s no problem with making them the wrong size. The hard problem is plucking the loose threads from a strip. You take two strips that you knot together with this knot I’ve learned.
Say you’ve got a strip here, and another here. With one you make a ‘nine’ and you pull the other through it and you have one stitch.
As I started working, the first few rugs were terrible.
But I got the hang of it after a while. Soon they turned out lovely and people seemed to really like them. It’s so much fun.
“You do that for as big or small a rug as you want, if you want it round or oval. I’ve tried oval but haven’t figured out the pattern yet. The ones that come out perfect are circular. There’s more for me to learn and I intend to. I want my stitch to be perfect. The more I do it, the more it comes out correct. I’ve gotten to the point where my stitches are even all over. However, I can’t really tell, John. [laughs] I judge them by feel. They can be used as placemats or bowl holders. There’s a lot of things you can do with them.
“In the building I live in, in the laundry room, we have an exchange table. Anybody can leave something they can’t use or don’t want. So I’ve been putting my rugs down there and between the time I put in my laundry and go back for it, they’re gone. That surprised me. I’m thinking, ‘Good. Somebody is getting some use out of them.’ We have a maintenance man here who loves my rugs. He owns a couple of apartment buildings where many people don’t have anything. He may be taking all the rugs, for all I know. He’s such a sweetheart.
“I’ve asked my whole family for materials: ‘Give me your old sheets, please!’ None of them seem to have any old sheets. But Gary [Sargent] from The Village Common went to a garage sale and found sheets that he sent to me. That was so kind. There’s a rug with pink running through it — that’s because of him.
He’s backed me many times. Even when I was doing the flowers, he helped me with that. He always has great ideas when I can’t figure out how to do something. He’ll say, “How about this? How about that?” He’s a very, very nice man. Very compassionate. It’s nice to hear from him anytime he calls. He makes a lot of people who are dependent happy, too.
“There are many complications when you can’t see. They’re silly but they’re also kind of aggravating. Like when you go to cook…One day I used Cayan pepper instead of cinnamon. That dish went straight to the garbage. I thought, “I’ve got to do something about this.” There’s an outfit called In-Sight that was very helpful to me. They taught me to make some labels with a black-ink marker, which I have done and it’s certainly helped me.
Also, you can put these little dots on a stove that will tell you when you’re halfway to full blast. My microwave is a problem too because I can’t see what I’m doing with it. I do have a magnifying glass with a built-in light, but then the problem is going to find it: “What did I do with that? Where did I last use it?
“What else I can do? I’m thinking about getting a keyboard if I can find a place for it in this small apartment.
I love music so I’ll just learn to play it. That’s what my next project will be and I’m excited about it. There’s a lot of unaccompanied vocal material online. I know what a keyboard is because of my mom. I was brought up with music. We didn’t have a lot of the things that are available now for children. We danced and we sang. Mother was an organ- and accordion teacher so we used to sing around the accordion while she played. We each had our part and it was so much fun, you know? I miss those old days. It was just simple stuff but so much fun.
“I grew up in Chicago. My father had built a home for my mother in exactly the way she wanted it. For her part, in making money, she became a foster mother. We had a lot of kids in and out, many with problems. We were brought up to help: You know, ‘What can I do to help this person?’ One was deaf. One was borderline…she couldn’t think straight. Another one came to us, a little Indian girl. She had bite marks all over her body. She had been transferred from one family to another. One family had a child who used to bite her. So she’d sit in a corner just like a little Indian with her short hair and arms folded across her chest. She didn’t know what a birthday was so we got her a cake and presents. She was only two at the time but she grew up to be one of my favorites. She was a sweetheart. The deaf girl was hard to raise but she did something that I always wished I could. My father was a ranting, raving Italian. He’d come in demanding this and that, and we’d better straighten up — that kind of thing. Everything had to be immaculate when he walked in from work. He was mad at my sister who was deaf. Her name was Luella. She simply turned her head away. I thought, “Gosh, I wish I could just do that.” There were a lot of hardships with the kids who came in. I realized how very lucky I was with the parents I had. They were stable and hardworking. They had their quirks and I wasn’t always happy with them, but what teenager is happy with their parents anyway?”
John: Linda, considering your early history of living with people with disabilities or disadvantages, did this prepare you in any way for your life with macular degeneration?
“Yeah, I think so. As a family, we all learned to adjust to things that weren’t normal. When I found out about my eyes, I decided that I had to keep moving on and doing stuff that I loved. Being retired can sometimes be very boring and I like my life filled with things. I used to sing in front of crowds but now I have another problem with that. I have a thyroid that’s wrapped around my vocal cords so I can’t sing anymore.
“Another thing is my love for decorating. I used to paint. I’m finally going to put some finishing touches on my new apartment hoping that my colors are okay together because I am color blind. That presents a problem with dressing as I can’t see the difference between black and navy. I’ve learned how to put safety pins on the black one so I can easily tell them apart. There’s just a lot of things for the blind now, and they’re so simple. There’s a library here that gives us audiobooks for free. What I do is work on the rugs and listen to a book. That’s very entertaining and the work goes fast.”
John: The way you’ve learned to accommodate yourself to your limitations…I can imagine hearing some others telling the same story but with bitterness. Instead, it sounds like you’re engaging blindness almost like it’s another one of your projects.
“It’s a challenge and I like challenges. So, okay, there are a lot of blind people in this world and I’m going to make the best of it I can. Being bitter is just not my nature anyway. I just have to find a way around the things that are aggravating me. Like this morning…you know those pill packets that have foil on the back of them? I have to take one a week and it took me twenty minutes just to open. I stabbed myself a couple of times with a knife so I said I’ve got to find a better way to do this. I haven’t found the answer to that yet [laughs] but I will. I’m slow-moving normally and I have to be very careful about walking so that I don’t trip and fall. There are a lot of other physical problems that I have that I’m trying to straighten out also. It keeps me busy.
“I have a lot of friends and family who are going to be visiting next month. My daughter is a constant for me. She is the CEO of the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island and is fighting for women’s rights all the time. I’m so proud of her. She has little time to spend with me but whenever she does, she finds a way to help or gives me some information I might look up to find ways to straighten out something I’m having trouble with. You know, life is what it is. I’m a happy person. I like people. I like being around a crowd, just talking to them and finding out what’s going on in their lives. I think, ‘Can I fit into that?’ And many times it’s, ‘No, Linda. You cannot do that.’ [laughs].
The rug-making is simple but it takes learning, like any new project. I think I’ll be doing it for years. I can’t see ever needing to buy another rug! A lot of people just sit all day watching TV. I don’t want that for my life. I want to be active. I have this great chair. It’s a mobile chair that I ride down to India Point Park. I make rugs while I’m down there. I exercise. I read.
Linda with Inga, a RISD student
And while I’m working on a rug, people will come and want to know what I’m doing. I explain it to them, we have a conversation, and that’s very much fun for me. These are my days. They’re simple and I’m alright with that.”
Editor’s note: This is the final edition of Village Voices for the season. I look forward to receiving your new submissions for our return in the fall. I also want to take a moment to thank Jim Fredricksen for his outstanding work for Village Voices. Each month Jim receives from me a folder with my words and photos, then turns them into the elegant pages that we all enjoy. Jim, “Thank you” from me, the participants, and the readers of Village Voices. – John Harkey