MORGANTOWN — Funny how a ball of yarn can compress things down, and even stop time.
Thursday morning at Mapleshire was typically brisk.
The nursing facility on Mon General Drive offers everything from rehabilitation services to long-term care.
That means if “brisk” isn’t part of the doings, the whole deal revs but doesn’t go anywhere — like, say, a Ferrari with transmission trouble.
On this morning, two staffers were discussing paperwork at the nurse’s station, while three more were convening in a nearby office for quick meeting.
Another staffer called an equally quick “Good morning,” over her shoulder as she bustled down a hallway.
Then, there was Josie Konchesky.
And that ball of yarn.
And that sweet, silver-haired lady who wasn’t having any of it, at first.
This was in the Memory Unit at Mapleshire, where residents afflicted with Alzheimer’s and dementia get their care.
Josie, a fifth-grader at Suncrest Elementary School, wasn’t brisk. She was patient.
She gently connected the woman’s hand with the crochet needle and the yarn.
“OK, so you loop it around like this … ”
“And then you bring it through where it kinda looks like a pretzel … ”
“You have to put your finger down and press on it, so it stays in place … ”
After several moments, and several overtures from Josie, the woman took the needles and the yarn on her own. And she started stitching.
Josie looked up.
“Miss Schnied, she’s doing it,” she whispered.
Adeline Schneid, a Suncrest Elementary teacher and advisor of the school Crochet Club, smiled in response.
“You’re a good teacher, Josie.”
Schneid came up with the idea for the club after she received a crocheting kit as a Christmas present a couple of years ago.\
She had never crocheted before.
She taught herself with YouTube videos. She just wasn’t a good student, she said, with a little laugh. Not at first.
“I wasn’t patient at all,” she said. “I got frustrated. I got mad.”
Then, the needles clicked. She achieved Slipknot Zen and the delayed gratification of the Granny Square.
And the teacher stitched together a lesson plan.
In this uber-accelerated age of instant feedback and payoff, she would teach her kids how to slow down and learn something that was the province of their great-grandmothers.
“Crocheting is like a lost art,” she said.
“And kids today really like this stuff, if there’s somebody to teach them how.”
The teacher researched the benefits of the activity for people with Alzheimer’s, or other age-related cognitive impairments.
Crocheting can be a stress-reducer for people in the early stage of Alzheimer’s, she learned.
Working those needles also makes for muscle memory and snapping synapses.
Same for the quelling of fidgety hands — a byproduct of the disease.
Twenty of the club’s 23 members came out to Mapleshire on Thursday.
Before, the club spent the past several weeks crocheting “Lapghan” blankets for the residents.
You loop it around like this.
You bring it through where it kinda looks like a pretzel.
And you press down a memory in a place where such things are precious.
Twitter @DominionPostWV
JBissett@DominionPost.com
