Things My Mother Taught Me

My Mom has been gone for almost 21 years.  I don't have any pictures of her, nor do I have a collection of family heirlooms that were passed down to me. What I did have, I lost to a house fire that destroyed most of my possessions several years ago.  Not that it matters.  I'm not really a "thing" kind of girl anyway.  Even without pictures, her face has never faded.  Not even a little.

I remember the white cats eye sunglasses and frosted pink lipstick she wore in the seventies and the power suits she wore in the eighties.  I remember the scent of her signature Oscar de la Renta perfume, the fuzzy pink sundress she wore when she did the laundry, and the way she smiled with her mouth closed to hide the little gap between her front teeth because she was self conscious about it.

I remember her voice because it is the voice of my conscience and the source of my moral standards. When I run to the grocery store in my boyfriend sweatpants and well worn Canada Day t-shirt, I still sense her disapproval. And when my son smiles it is doubly special because he is smiling with her lips and I feel warmed twice over.

I think about her a lot when I knit for two reasons.  First, because she taught me how and second, because my hands are her hands.  When I see them holding a book or a pair of knitting needles, I am transported back to our overstuffed apartment where she sat in "her" antique chair and blocked out the sounds of our squabbles and the television which was always too loud because my Father was hard of hearing.  She created her own bubble of stillness in the chaos.  Her only contribution, the turning of a page or the click click of her needles.

After I flunked out of Brownies due to my inability to knit, my Mother finally taught me how.  Before would have been better, but I'm not bitter.  Strangely, although she knit continental style, she taught me English style.  She was a picker, I am still a thrower.  There seemed to be no knitting instruction she couldn't interpret but I only saw her knitting three things:  plain socks for my Father, an impossibly old fashioned and frilly baby cardigan, hat and bootie set, and Icelandic sweaters.  All of these in unthinkable multiples.

Not my hands.  My hands are incapable of this.

Socks are hard.  You have to knit them on sets of four double pointed needles to create the small tube shape.  You have to use short rows to shape the heel.  It requires patience and manual dexterity.  I have never mastered either.  Especially when socks are widely available for purchase at reasonable prices and I rarely wear them.  My husband is welcome to buy his at WalMart.

It was sort of like this but frillier.  Really.

The baby sets were intensely feminine but my Mother made them for baby boys and baby girls indiscriminately, changing from pink to blue yarn as the occasion demanded.  Seriously, these things were so elaborate and fussy they would not be out of place at Royal Christening.  She made so many that there are probably a few still out there somewhere.  At least I hope so.  She was too ill to knit by the time my son came along.

She made exactly four Icelandic Sweaters.  One for my Father, one for herself, one for my sister and one for me.  Matching naturally.  These sweaters she knit with extremely scratchy, chunky weight yarn.  (That's thick for those of you unfamiliar with the terminology).  They also required the carrying of three different colours of yarn across the back of the Fair Isle pattern in the yoke.  This translated to four layers of extremely thick yarn across the chest.  It's an elaborate technique and it also requires time and patience.  After the first one turned out virtually unwearable, even in our Canadian winters, I am uncertain why she soldiered through three more.  I suppose she wanted to be fair.  Or perhaps she wanted to share the experience of Menopause with her family because that's what wearing one of those sweaters felt like.  We all dutifully stored them in our closets and took them with us when we moved, but no one wore one more than once.

Not the actual sweater but are you hot just looking at it?

So not only did I learn my love of knitting from my  Mother, I also learned the following "Purls" of Wisdom:

• Socks are hard.  Buy them at WalMart instead
• The patterns that are fun to knit are often completely impractical to wear.
• Use the right weight yarn for the garment you are knitting if you ever want to wear it.
• A handmade knitted garment is an act of love.  It is the product of hours of patience, sweat, and sometimes cursing.  If you are lucky enough to receive one as a gift, you should treasure it forever.