Vivacious, versatile, victorious Viney

I called her the Bag Lady at first. Affectionately, of course, for she is my dear Viney.

When it became too difficult for me to carry the weekly groceries up the back walk, up the five steps, across the porch, into the kitchen, she volunteered. She is a prime example of one who sees a need and fills it.

Diminuative Viney, bulging at both sides with arm-held, overstuffed plastic bags, did it with good cheer, even indicating that, if need be, she could balance a basket of eggs atop her head. Balanced and poised, that's Viney, in more ways than one.

Then I called her the Sock and Paper Lady. This was when I became a "broken hippy" who didn't care whether I wore any socks at all, ever.

Somewhere in the collection of doctors, nurses, therapists and manufacturers of aggravating but supposedly helpful leg apparel, someone suggested I wear elastic stockings. Not support hose that come in different colors and are manageable, but thigh-high elastic, as in rubber, and only in chalk white.

Remember the old red inner tubes that fit into the small gage tires of long ago? It was like trying to get your leg through one of those. By hook and crook, tug and pull, strain and toughness of determination, I managed to get one on my good leg only to discover there was a hole in the toe of this brand new, expensive, ultra-white stocking through which four bare toes could be seen. I quickly examined the other stocking to see if it had the same defect. It did.

I couldn't begin to get the other stocking on. This is where Viney got her new title. Early in the morning on her way to work as a manager of a bank, she stopped to pick up my daily paper and came on in to see if I'd taken my medicine, ate something, and was settled in comfortably for the day. We set in abject amazement looking at the toe holes until we noticed that they were neatly bound as one would super-strengthen a big buttonhole. So we struggled the other stocking on, Viney changing her tug-and-pull position quite often to achieve maximum leverage.

As time passed and we made inquiry we learned the reason for the toe holes. A nurse said, "They're so we can see if your toes are turning blue." I countered with, "And what if they are?" "You take the stockings off," she instructed. There was a short silence followed by further instructions. "And after a while you put them back on again."

Now when I hear the Bag Lady, the Sock and Paper Lady coming up the back steps, I say to myself, "Here cum de Find-it-all Lady," for this daughter-in-love has an uncanny knack of knowing where things are -- things that must come out in the nocturnal hours to play their version of musical chairs.

Viney finds and replaces burnt-out fuses, climbs on ladders to replace bulbs, un-sticks drawers that are stuck, sticks back together again things that have become broken. She cooks too -- good stuff to tempt a jaded appetite.

Madam Improviser I could call her when she sees a pocketed thing to wrap around my walker is needed. A thing in which to carry a bottle of water, the traveling telephone, nail file, comb, pens and pencils, cookies, tissues, pet rock and other necessary things.

I could call her Lady Ball of Fire, but that is too common, I need something to fit the Internet space age.

I've got it! vmballo'joy@capetown.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.