A few times I have started to knit a square without knowing the story, trusting a story to come to me in the process. This week I had my mind on many things, but no story came. I still did not know what this square was about when Danny arrived for the weekend. He offered to suggest one, but after looking at it and thinking overnight, he couldn't come up with anything specific either.
"Maybe it is the square of hidden desires," he said.
Remember in grade school how we would exchange valentines with all our friends? My mom encouraged me to make my own, though I didn't need much encouragement. All she had to do was provide craft supplies and I would go to it. Actually it was one of my favourite times of year. Yes, making valentines was just as good as receiving candy or presents. I was always excited to see what she would bring home from her shopping trip: white and gold paper doilies, red cardboard hearts and cupids, ribbons and colourful stickers.
As I cut and pasted the parts together, I did not know I was evoking antique valentines. Now I realize Mom had taught me how to make the kind of cards her own mother must have received from sweethearts around 1930. This square is also inspired by those.
It is underpinned by the outside row of handspun yarn from my sweetheart, Danny, because I am well-rooted in him.
This is a special time, because I am also newly in love. How far we have come from the the time of doilies and parlours to a society where I am free to love a man, and free to love more than one person. I don't know whether I would call it "free love"; the phrase trivializes a journey that should never be begun without care, consideration, honesty and integrity.
Fresh emotions can lead us to speak and act without thinking. Inevitably we misstep, but such is the quality of being human, and without our frailties we would be less endearing to one another.
At the same time, I do not believe it is imperative for a thoughtful person to restrict his or her romantic feelings to one other. Some derive special meaning and strength from monogamy, no doubt. To me every friendship is a different adventure. No two are the same. I am enriched by the opportunity to explore deeper levels with some people.
To the ones I love—lovers, friends and family—this valentine goes out.
Mom gave me an Amaryllis bulb for Christmas in 2007 and it bloomed that winter before she died. I had not been reliable at maintaining houseplants, but after the flower faded—and with Mom gone—I tried to keep the plant alive as long as possible.
She used to plunge her Amaryllis pots in a shady place in the garden for the summer so they could rest and store up nutrients, but I did not have an adequate garden space.
So I just left it sitting on the back of the toilet, a sunny place in my old apartment. Finally late in the summer its last leaves faded and fell off. I tossed the pot on dim shelf in the hall, unwilling to throw it out but not knowing what to do with it, and forgot about it.
A few months later (this is a year ago now) I was surprised to see new leaves. I moved the pot to a sunny place, and the plant produced another flower.
I had hoped to repeat the miracle. Last August I offered the plant a sunny home in my new bathroom, then moved it again a few weeks ago to a dark corner of the living room.
This week it began sprouting leaves, but I see no evidence of a flower bud. Did I not give it a long enough rest? If I care for it properly this year, will it have another chance?
I remember a few years ago when my friend Lisa lost her mother she commented how strange it felt to find herself at the top of the family tree. I'm not there yet (my father is still alive), but it hit me recently that when I die, some people who live on in my memory will vanish even from there. My children never met my grandfather, Van, whom I was so fond of. Someday when my children die, no one will remember my mother. What happens to people then?
Friday evening while walking home I saw the full moon, Mom's moon, gazing down from a velvet sky. She went away during the lunar eclipse two years ago this month. She is still there now, dropping by once in a while to say hello, and for now, for me, it is enough.
I'll keep coaxing the Amaryllis to bloom. We grasp eternity however we can.
It's the Sunday morning of Thanksgiving weekend at Lake Fletcher. Hard frost during the night. Mist rises from the lake, and long beams of the rising sun highlight brilliant maples on the far shore. The dock is slick. Each leaf fallen there is beaded with pearls of ice, or laced around the fringes.
The air is perfectly still. Leaves sift constantly downward, tickling their sisters, whispering, “Come with me!” Two chipmunks chase one another through the undergrowth of bunchberries. A pair of nuthatches visiting the feeder utter soft, staccato syllables to keep in touch. There is no other sound.
I had a childhood friend named Morgan Lewis. She lived with her parents in Huntsville, Alabama, but every summer she and her sister, Gillian, came to visit her grandparents, who had a summer home down our road. We were both interested in books and nature, and would tape mock radio broadcasts to entertain our families.
Her father, Chuck, worked for NASA, and I will never forget the night he showed us the Perseid meteor shower. The day before, we made a map of the night sky showing major constellations, so we could chart all the meteors we would see. After dinner we went for naps so we would be able to sit up well into the night, but I couldnt' sleep.
Around 11 p.m. our families gathered on the edge of the golf course across the road. There were no large trees around, so we could set out lawn chairs and view the entire sky. It was a clear night with no moon. Mr. Lewis knew more stars and constellations than anyone I had ever talked to, and he identified them for us. I have remembered many of them, like the Summer Triangle: Deneb, Vega and Altair. Deneb, the brightest of the three, is 70,000 times more luminous than the sun and 1,550 light years away.
At first we saw a few small meteors. Mr. Lewis had a good reason for teaching us the names of the stars and constellations, because whenever we saw a meteor, people would call out where it had appeared in the sky, what direction it had taken and how far it had travelled. Morgan, Gillian and I would plot them on the map we had made.
After midnight, as our place on the planet turned to face its direction of travel, the meteors became faster and brighter. Some were distinctly coloured, and some left a momentary tail in the sky. We marked them down furiously, and had to start skipping some of the fainter ones.
In the wee hours a brilliant pink meteor appeared from behind some distant trees and slowly traversed the sky, leaving a long, scintillating tail. It must have taken 10 seconds to cross, finally disappearing near the western horizon.
Our group slowly dispersed to sleep, first my parents and then the Lewises, but Morgan and I stayed out all night until the pale edge of dawn appeared. We had seen hundreds of meteors. Our map showed that most of them appeared to originate near the constellation, Perseus, and radiate outward. This perspective is an illusion caused by the Earth's movement as it passes through a cloud of debris stretching along the path of Comet Swift-Tuttle.
The Perseid meteor shower can be viewed every year around August 12. I have watched several times, but never seen such a spectacle as that night with Morgan and her family. A few years later I visited Huntsville, and Mr. Lewis gave me a tour of Marshall Space Flight Center. I have since lost contact with Morgan, but maybe sometimes we are watching the same stars. I hope we reconnect someday.
When this idea started to roll, I was fresh with enthusiasm and pumping out four squares per week. I planned to make a full-size blanket, perhaps five by six feet in dimension, and calculated about 14 by 17 squares would be about right: 238 in total. It would take me well into next year.
Then full-time work started lining up and I became busy with other things. I couldn't keep up the knitting pace. At the current rate it would take several years to make that many squares. I balked. I wanted to stop and finish the blanket right away. I was ready to give up.
But new stories kept suggesting themselves. I realized I didn't need to have a definite time frame; I could work until the blanket told me it was ready.
A few days ago when I had completed 63 squares, I laid them all out, nine by seven. It was a great size for a wall-hanging. Once again I contemplated making just a few more squares to round out the stories, finishing, and moving on to a new project.
But whenever I start thinking that way, the squares tell me, "No, we still have more stories to tell." It is like any pilgrimage. It is like life. You can't see where you are going in detail, because you have never been there. You don't know how long it will take, because you can't predict what will happen along the way. But the destination matters less than the journey itself.
I've learned a lot from this trip. I had never used more than two different yarns in one project before. Now I routinely use nine or ten in a single square. Knitting has evolved into a way of painting a landscape, a dream, or a thought.
I have explored the way colours interact, and it's different from coloured pencils or paints, which you can combine to create any colour. The colour of the yarns is immutable, but I am beginning to discover how to use similarities and contrasts to draw out highlights and undertones. A variegated yarn looks very different whether laid alongside a deep red or a muted red.
Perhaps the most obvious change has been the shift from cool, dark colours to neutrals, and warm and bright (inspect the gallery). This is not just superficial. My favourite colour has always been deep blue, followed by green and purple, but I am actually becoming enamoured with orange and its allies. This blanket began as a way to use up yarn in my stash, but has evolved into an excuse to acquire single skeins of anything that catches my eye. This square incorporates several new acquisitions.
I don't regret that, because I know they'll all come to good use over the long haul. Long after finishing this blanket, I'll continue using yarn to tell stories. Hats and scarves will never be the same.
