Scarves to Treasure

My grandmother knits. Knit isn't really the right word. I knit. After Hadley was born, I needed a new hobby so I took a knitting class. And for about two years, I knit standards like dishcloths. Truthfully? It was drudgery. And the results screamed, "New, impatient knitter."(Though I did teach who my sister-in-law to knit and she is quite talented.)

My Grandma though, she creates art through knitting. Growing up I remember watching her. She tore beautiful fabric into giant balls of "yarn" and then knit with that. Her work was creative. The clothes she knit were different and beautiful, but too daring for a peer-concerned tween to wear. And when she knit with real yarn, it wasn't standard, from-the-sale-rack-at-Joanne's yarn. It was always luxuriously soft fiber knit into a one-of-kind blanket or table cover, the kind you proudly point out to guests.

I remember the transformation of my mom's childhood bedroom at the farmhouse. ( I must confess that I don't know if my memory is very accurate.) It was a gorgeous room with huge windows, lots of natural light, and on sunny days, delightful rainbows from the prisms in the pane glass.  Grandma transformed that room into her studio. She painted the ceiling turquoise (at a time I remember walls as being either white or wall-papered) and then put lattice all over it. And the walls were a warm shade of orange. Light, color, and knitted art. It was a room to escape to. I remember lingering with all the pretty things: newly knit outfits, soft balls of yarn, gleaming, colorful knitting needles and displays of personal treasures. An artist's studio.

For several years now, my otherwise healthy Grandma has been losing her sight. Doctors can't stop the loss. It just is. Like diabetes or Parkinson's. I don't know what it's like to slowly have the world darken and to lose the ability to do things you love like read and make things pretty (or make pretty things). I don't know what's like to not be able to drive or to see your own writing clearly. I imagine it's lonely, especially when added to the constant loss of friends and family experienced by all octogenarians. Even as I grieve for Grandma,  I still don't call or write enough. Even so, despite a distance of almost 800 miles and a lack of face to face time, Grandma remembers us often and recently sent us a new, silken treasure.

Last week, a package of Christmas presents arrived in the mail. Wrapped in tissue paper were two scarves. Christmas presents for the girls in March. Warm scarves in time for spring. Beautiful, silken scarves. Knit by my grandma. Made with determination and sacrifice. She couldn't strain her eyes to do the knitting for more than five or ten minutes a day. And she had to wait for her friend to visit to tie knots and do some finishing work. And all winter it snowed and snowed and snowed some more so the friend couldn't come often. So December came and went, but Grandma kept working and eventually those scarves arrived, unanticipated, in my foyer.

Grandma's note said the girls were to use the scarves in their creative play (she knows they dress up and pretend to be all sorts of things). I struggled with the note. I wanted the girls to love the scarves and play with them. But that meant some level of scarf abuse, which horrified me. I wanted to snatch up those scarves and make the girls understand the effort involved in their creation. Admist all their sparkly, cheap things, I wanted them to see that the scarves are truly beautiful. I did speak to the girls about the effort the scarves required. But I let them play as they wish (No leaving the scarves on the ground though).  I know that some of the creative spirit in my girls comes from Grandma and it is fitting for these girls to use her creativity to foster their own.

A million thanks Grandma. You blessed my heart. The thank you notes are coming. Love you.

Mom and Grandma, 2007













In 2006, in Montana

Reading to Kassy, Montana, 2005