Update

Gave the blanket to Rebecca this morning... she cried.  She's decided that she is giving it to her first grandchild.  Who is on the way. The beat goes on and on and on and on...and that is exactly what I was talking about, you know?

Finishing what's been started.

Do you know what this is?

This is Michelle, knitting on an afghan in 85+ heat, in a car, see?

Why you may ask?  It's kind of connected to the last post.. kinda, you see, I have been 3 times honored.. I have had people come to me and say,

 "My mother started this blanket, and she didn't finish it before she died, Michelle, do you think you can look at it and see if you can finish it for me?"

Actually one of the times was a man who's grandmother had made him an afghan for his high school graduation and it was unraveling.. Les is a grandpa himself now, mid 60's I patched it up, and I hope he will have it for the rest of his life.  He treasures it for what it is.

Anyway the point is that a friend handed me this garbage sack with a blanket in it (they have all brought them to me such... I wonder why?) and Rebecca-- who is a master baker, master canner, and master gardener.. among other things (I admire her greatly, I can tell you) said that her mother had it almost finished and just didn't quite get it done.  I opened this up today on the way to a family birthday party, knowing that I would have at least an hour both ways to work on this with no thoughts of "I should be doing the dishes" getting in the way, and I found that Rebecca was right.. there was only one row and then the casting off.. I wonder if she knew how close her mom really was to done.

As I finished this, I thought to myself, over the centuries, how many women have quietly picked up their mother's unfinished work, and stitch by stitch, completed it for her.  Not just because of the waste of the unfinished work.. that would be bad too, but because of the connection of the loved one.  The shared effort of the completed work. Mom would have wanted it to be finished, she was still working on it after all.  How stretching out over the time of humanity this compulsion must have happened again, and again, and again.  As a very private mourning between mother and daughter, or even father and son, they had work to be finished too. This compulsion is so strong, that even when the skills are not known by everyone, and every house no longer has a work basket, people reach out to someone who does have the skill to see the work completed.

I'll tell the truth here, tears slid down my checks as I cast off that last stitch today, and I prayed for Rebecca and her mother.. I don't even know what her name was, but I found one of her hairs knitted into the afghan and smiled.  I came home this evening and washed and dried the completed blanket. 

I feel a deep and true satisfaction that nearly no one can tell where her work started, and my ending came. 

After all, it was mother's work, and I was just finishing what she started, honorarily.

Amuma (Grandmother)

Amuma is Basque for Grandmother. (pronounced a moo ma--short a sound both times) This was my mother's mother, and June 1st she died.   We had gotten a call the day before to let us know that her kidneys were shutting down, and my mother called to let me know that she and my dad were going to drive to Eastern Oregon the next day.  I really wanted to go, but my husband was supposed to go to North Carolina for a Knug Fu Testing.  (He is a 6th degree black belt and was to sit on a testing board)  My wonderful husband cancelled his trip, and told me to go to the funeral.  So within an hour, I had called work let them know I would be gone, told my mom to pick me up on her way out of town, and had started to pack.

You see, my Amuma had a really rocky path of a life.  In a time when mental frailty was just not spoken of, and handled even worse, my Amuma had to deal with everyday life with what would have been called "having had a break down"  (my other Grandma Alice always used to say of the subject  "What did we know?  We knew nothing about mental illness, and we still know very little--Grandma Alice was very wise.)

Don't get me wrong, this did not define my mum (pronounced moom) She was in so many ways the most generous of women.  She loved fiercely, but often did not show it as easily, mum's way was to make sure that you had peaches when they were in season, or some money to take to the store to buy candy.   This, of course, was my perception as a child.   When I was a young woman, Mum and I went to the movies together, and my perception changed.  This is the story I told at her funeral.

After my Ichica (I-long sound cheecha) (grandfather) died my mum and I went to see the movie Ghost
and when the scene with Patrick Swazyee and Demi Moore came on with them working with the pottery wheel.. you know the one right? I was getting worried.  I thought to myself.  "Geesh, this is a little hot and heavy for my mum." and I looked over at her to see how she was taking the scene.  She had tears running down her face.  I was really worried, I said
"Mum, are you okay?"  she answered me without taking her eyes from the screen.

"I had the world's best lover."

This was spoken so softly, with such passion. I was completely floored.  My perception of humanity changed at that very moment.  Grandparents had lovers.  Mothers and Fathers had lovers.  Not just the knowledge of this that our heads have.. that in our minds we know this must be so because we ourselves are here.. but the heart felt, soul touched surety.  That before I felt the pull of passion, before I cried tears of joy from the beauty of my lover's embrace, my grandparents felt this same desire, the same pull toward each other.  I have never looked at any one person in the same way.  That moment with my Amuma changed my entire world view.  Every one of us, Grandparents, Parents, everyone you meet has had hopes, dreams, aspirations, despairs, and lovers.

My Grandmother lived  23 years after the death of her lover.

I had said to one of my cousins the day before the funeral that I was feeling guilty that I wasn't more upset (of course I started crying then when I said that at the funeral) but what came to me the next morning, and what I said at the end was that I knew that at the minute of my mum's death, my mum and cheech shared a kiss that shook the universe.  How could I be sad for that?

This isn't exactly how I said it of course.. I didn't write it down, and I was speaking to family, they all knew the love that my grandparents shared. At that country funeral, with their best wrangler jeans on, and their Stetsons covering their hearts, many of those still there witnessed that love from beginning to end.  What did I know?  I came in kind of late in the game after all.  But on that very windy hill, with the sun just peeking through some fluffy white clouds in a little town called Jordan Valley, Oregon it seemed the right time to point it out again. 

Almost Summer

Tomorrow is the last half day of school... I am so very ready.  I think I'm more ready than my boys. 

summer, summer, summer, summer, SUMMER!

Take that you lacey blue thingy...

Well.. I do hate to lose.  

Now I just need to run it to my friend Melissa.. and be done with it.   I think I just stuck my knitting tongue out at it.

So you think you can knit??

This is for all of my readers (the two of you) that always go on and on about my ability to knit absolutely anything, and with the apparent thought that I never, never get frustrated with it.  I envision you thinking that I serenely sit back, knitting, without looking at my hands, with a beatific smile on my face, and a glow to my skin.  

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!

I have been knitting for over a week to try to work on a little lacy cowl for a friend of mine.  She has a Bar Mitzvah to photograph at the last part of May.. the 20th to be exact.   The family is Orthodox, so she will need to have her head covered in Temple.  This will be perfect for her.  A cowl will lay around her neck outside, be lovely over her head inside, and is so, so light that she can wear it, even on the hottest days of the summer. 

I hate this thing.  It is a very easy little lace pattern.  Really it is. Two rows, one pattern row, one knit row, and every damn row I was off on the stitches.   I HATE to count stitches on each row.  In my arrogance I checked the errata on line to see if the pattern was written wrong, you know, missing a step?   I found out that I was reading the pattern wrong, and then was okay.. like, "All right, I was just reading this wrong.. I'm such a goober, but it happens." 

So I sat down to work on this again, and yet again... YET AGAIN I am off on the stitches... I was so mad, so fire breathing dragon mad that I did this.....

I cut the whole thing off the needles and recast on the damn thing.. 90 new, long tail cast stitches.  I will start working on it again tonight sometime,  but I had to knit on some socks just to settle my nerves.      

Update on Grandma.. and stuff

Just to let you know  Grandma Betty is doing really well, she had a couple of pins put in, she spent 3 weeks in Rehab and is back home... that woman is my hero.  Actually she is stronger now after 3 weeks of forced labor.. no rest for the wicked I told her.  Things are really great around here, except that I have had no time to pick up my violin, and I have to be the homework Nazi tonight,  helping the 14 year old Sam write "Six and one half paragraphs" (the original assignment is 8 paragraphs, which is an insurmountable task for any spectrum child) this was due on Friday... Last Friday... it's Tuesday.  He has not started this assignment, and will not until I go over, start yelling, cajoling, threatening.  Frankly I'm ready to drowned my angst in the copious amounts of sugar left over from Easter baskets.. I am really looking forward to summer.  No homework.  I bet Pam is looking forward to Summer too.  OHHHHHHH   I am being called into the dark void of homework.. the excuses are starting.. ("I cannot read the notes" is the big one right now) and "Mom, do you know what this says???" was just yelled from the other room.. 

Let us bow our heads and pray for the sanity of  Chelle.