The Foggiest Notions
By Karen Krueger

The fog comes
On little cat feet.
It sits looking
Over harbor and city
On silent haunches
And then moves on.
~Carl Sandburg

Spain. It was exactly as I had dreamed it. Driving into Barcelona from the south I could see the Villas nested into the hillside their dimly lit morning windows gazing with wide eyed awe over the vast expanse of the Mediterranean Sea. And there, at the waters edge, twinkling in the new day were thousands of tiny lights strung in and around the trees. Shimmering on the quiet waters that stood still in homage to the statues of the great patron saints….Paul and Babe.

Well. Ok..so it was Bemidji not Barcelona and it was the lake and not the sea, but through the fog this morning it could have been anywhere I wanted it to be. I like foggy mornings. I learned to like them in my mothers bedroom when I was a small child.

Mom's room was a full of treasures waiting to be discovered by a small girl. I liked to play there alone. It was as if I had found a cave full of treasure and wanted nothing to do with sharing the riches with anyone. Mom had little collections of things in and on her dresser. Things like beautiful lace hankies rich with hand embroidery. Silk ones with hand painted violets and cotton ones with daisies on them. When I was in kindergarten I would wear one everyday, pinned to the left side of my clothing, like a corsage. Other girls had pockets stuffed with Kleenex I had a beautiful hankies. I only used them in dire emergency. It seemed a shame to me to dirty something so lovely. I didn't think twice when my father would pull his handkerchief from his pocket. He'd present, I'd blow, and he'd pocket it. His were plain white cotton and went into the pocket of grease stained work pants but these little squares of fabric had an elegance to them and using them to wipe the runny nose of a child seemed a gross violation of their beauty.

Mom also had jewelry and jewelry boxes. I was more intrigued by the boxes than the contents. She had one lacquered black box with oriental designs on it. My father had brought it home from Japan for her. It was the size of a cigar box but deeper. Inside the salmon colored crushed velvet patiently cupped my mothers favorite jewelry. It wasn't the sheen of the velvet or the shine of the baubles that held my fascination. It was the spinning ballerina and the music. Inside the cover were angled mirrors. If you stood directly in front of the box you could see her dance from all angles. Step to the side a few inches and you had a full troupe of ballet dancers dancing in perfect precision to some hauntingly beautiful Japanese song

The surface of mom's dresser was covered with a piece of glass the same size as the top. Small thick, dark rectangles of felt kept the two surfaces for consummating a union. The glass was covered by a long white lace runner. The jewelry box sat on one end and a mirrored tray with perfumes sat on the other. There were always 7 or 8 bottles of perfume. I never understood this. The only one I ever remember her wearing was Emaraude.

In the top drawer, on perfume side of the dresser, were my mom's scarves or "babushkas" as she called them. She had a scarf to match everything. I can scarcely recall seeing her outside without a babushka on her head. Sometimes I'd get to wear one but, mostly I liked playing with them. They became ball gowns and wraps for my Barbies, they were neck ties, hair bows and, if you tucked enough of them in your waistband, gypsy skirts. It was while I was playing gypsy I discovered something wonderful about scarves. They could change how you saw things.

If you picked the sheer ones and held them in front of your eyes they created an artificial fog. They muted and softened lines. Veiled the obvious. Veiled the details. All that was left was a hazy image for your mind to twist and play with. With the scarves you could even change the color of your world depending on your mood. A lovely green scarf could transport you to a different country or planet. A delicate shade of red and indeed your world was rose colored. You could go anywhere or be anyone with a little imagination and mom's scarves.

I, personally, don't own a lot of scarves. Occasionally, I'll drape one over a shoulder, but that's about the extent of it. I don't own any of those filmy, translucent scarves. They all moved to Florida with my mom.

I know most people find them a bother but I love foggy mornings. They only happen on the quietest days. It's like Mother Nature dropping a translucent scarf on out heads and in that thin veil of milky white is a silence. Oh, I know it makes the trip to here, and there, and back again a pain. Drive time increases as does stress and tempers at not being able to see past the front bumper of your car. That dog jumping out in front of you turns out to be the fire hydrant in the middle of the sidewalk you are now driving on because the lines of the road have mysteriously vanished. But I find there is something soothing about these foggy mornings. Fog makes us slow down stills us. It gives our other senses a chance to work and it gives us chance to play with imagination. An imagination that will allow us to drive to Barcelona on our way to work.