Good Yarn

“Given good yarn, good workmanship, and good care, a knitted shawl can outlive its knitter, providing warmth and pleasure to several generations of family and friends.”  - Martha Waterman

“... everyone has to knit when they're here. ... But not every person has to use yarn.”  - Kate Jacobs

There must be hundreds of profound, metaphor-filled essays I could write about knitting, threads, and my grandmothers. But tonight, just this.

Recently, I was ensconced next to the fire with a good book, covered by my two dogs and a knitted throw. Nudging the dachshund to the side, I tugged the blanket up over my shoulders and it occurred to me that my grandmothers’ knitted throws are as enduring as they were.

The blanket that covered me when I had this thought is a generous and beautiful creamy confection of braids, cables, bobbles, and other twists and turns of thread that I’m sure have names. I just don’t know them. It has comforted me or some one of my friends or family every day for the last twenty-five years. It has covered babies just beginning, and old people getting ready to end, and sick kids, sick dogs, and homesick guests.

But it’s a magic blanket. Once a month, I toss it into the washer with a load of towels, dry it in the drier, and it comes out fresh, beautiful and if anything, even slightly cozier than it was before. It’s suffered only one bit of trauma over the years (a bobble chewed apart by a puppy) which was repaired by another of the Grandmothers, the one who had knitted it having gone to be in His presence.

In fact, the lady who I received this blanket from wasn’t even related to me. She was my father’s brother’s wife’s mother. The anthropologist I married twenty-five years ago tells me some cultures have a kinship term for that relationship, but I called her what my cousins called her - "Grandma Miller." My memories of her are restricted to a few childhood interactions. In my mind she is an older version of her daughter, my Aunt Helen – a country woman, ever efficient, always prepared, with an infectious laugh and a deep love of her family and her Savior.

One day, not long before my marriage, my mother was having a visit with Grandma Miller and Aunt Helen. Mom mentioned my impending nuptials, which were ever on her mind at the time. Though third in line, I was the first of my siblings to take the plunge, so this was a big deal for my mother and she was very anxious and a little excited. I’m not sure if Grandma Miller started the blanket then, or it was already in process, or one that she had finished. At any rate, it appeared as a wedding present and has outlasted the stoneware and the kitchen appliances and the cutlery.

It makes me wonder - what was she thinking? She couldn’t have known how enduring her creation would be, but even so, what an amazing gift. A present for a child that she must have remembered as extremely shy. I'm sure she was one of my many relatives surprised I’d managed a life that would result in a union with a man. Crazy spinster librarian or writer, along the lines of Emily Dickinson or Donna Reed in the scary part of It’s a Wonderful Life, were more my expectations for myself. One only wonders what Grandma Miller must have thought.

Was the afghan a celebration of the improbable? Perhaps. More than likely, given the knowledge of an opportunity to be generous and celebrate the joy and sacredness of marriage, the dear woman seized the moment and claimed it with lavish kindness. That’s the sort of person she was, I think. And this blanket reminds me of her every day, and every day encourages me toward lavishly kind gestures, given the opportunity.

Oh, and here comes a metaphor. When I wrap this blanket around me, I can’t help but think of my wedding day, and all the days after. My marriage - a little chewed here and there, sometimes soiled, cleaned and repaired. But with just a little care, it keeps me warm, reminds me to be generous, and year by year becomes ever cozier.