by Patrice Lockhart
It is, once again, the season of knitting.
I learned to crochet this past summer, and made several airy, hole-y market bags with breezy cotton threads dyed in rich, bold colors. Now, as the days grow shorter with alarming speed, it is time to return to the knit and the purl.
I have been a knitter as long as I have had children. Almost 40 years now. I learned out of a need to feel better about the chapter of mothering. My first child was an advanced graduate course in keeping a tiny being alive when it seemed that all she could do was scratch and scream at how unfair it all was. Poor kid. She, like so many of us, had a scared, ill-equipped mother just trying her damnedest and feeling like an utter failure. I haven’t quite gotten over it, still. Maybe today’s the day.
I never asked my mother if I was a “difficult” baby. I doubt she would have told me. My Liza has heard it all. How hard it was. How her dad had the patience of, well, a more mature parent, one who had not gone through 36 hours of back labor with a doctor who was far from nurturing, who said, when I exhaustedly admitted that I wanted an epidural, anything, to relieve the pain before I gave up entirely, “Well, I guess if you really can’t take it, we can call an anesthesiologist, but it’s Sunday, so it will be awhile.” Say that to a young woman who has had to perform for love and care her entire life. I think I am finally feeling compassion for myself.
Liza’s difficulties with adjusting to life on this planet didn’t fade. Her mother was advised, by “experts,” to feed her every four hours; she needed the boob every ten minutes. She did not accept that day was for being cute and awake and night was for sleeping. She taught me, and still does, that conventional rules must be examined and challenged, not blindly adhered to because somebody else said so.
My life, previously over-busy with concerts and travel, learning to be a wife and feeling as if I was only as good as my next performance, was plummeted into focus on one thing: if I was able to keep my baby alive and take a shower once a day, that was going to be enough. It had to be.
By the time Liza was five months old, we started to emerge from the depths of hell together. She was content if she was upright, cocooned in my lap, receiving full attention to her needs and able to look around from a vertical position. She couldn’t sit on her own yet, but I could see it coming.
In anticipation and self-preservation, during long days of sitting on the floor, cross legged with a curious but easily agitated baby tucked into my arms and legs and heart, I learned to knit.
Still in performative thinking, I decided that one row a day meant I had succeeded at life. I didn’t always complete one row a day, or even one stitch, but I did complete a sweater, bright blue with an electric pink stripe, a sweater that kind of fit me except at the neck. By the time she was speaking in full sentences and toddling around, I had me a sweater to show for it all. It was the push and pull of grabbing on and letting go.
Over the years, I have knit several sweaters, a few of them fit to wear. One was a snuggly sweater/coat requested by Liza during her college years. I was so pleased that she liked it, its deep blue color, the way it felt on her skin, and that she actually wore it on purpose, not out of obligation, like I wore things demanded by my own mother. Liza might have occasionally been torn by that dilemma, but she was not broken by it. Her ability to stand true to herself is still my inspiration.
In this new Fall season, I am knitting a blanket for my first-born grandchild, another strong girl in a lineage of strong women. She picked the yarn, bright pinks and purples blended in soft, supple yarn. I am learning to knit Continental style, as opposed to American. I was teased about my inefficiency (“why do you throw the yarn when you can just waggle your finger?” said my expert knitting friends in Iceland.)
It is a tough switch, as new skills often are, but I am getting the hang of it. I went to the Stitch and Bitch group at the local yarn store to join other women in camaraderie last night, my new Thursday evening adventure. Judy and I walked there in daylight and home in the dark. Soon it will be dark both ways. We will hunker in for the winter.
I just now caught a dropped stitch in my project, 4 rows back. I saw the repair process more clearly than I have in the past, when I would fumble and try it this way and that. It seems clearer now that I have taught myself to crochet. Funny, how learning one new skill makes another easier. I finally understand how my youngest, Dexter, can knit backwards and forwards. He relaxes and sees the same stitch from different perspectives. It took me decades to recognize that a knit stitch was just a purl stitch in reverse. Like an inverted melody, sharing a different tune, up also being down, depending on your perspective. Dexter has always loved being left-handed and being named the Latin word for “right.”
“What if you had named me Sinister? That would have been cool,” he muses.
I am seeing a whole new world at 5 am with a dog warming my feet and salty tears bathing my face. My oldest grandchild is going to love her blanket, because I am loving making it for her. In the process, I am learning to forgive myself for not learning faster, and better, and easier.
I skipped that step, the forgiveness, in my younger years. It’s a stitch that needs rescuing.
Read more of Patrice’s writing for Boshemia here.
