Take Me For Granted

I have a confession to make. I'm not a crafts-y person. When I was little my great-grandmothers taught me how to cut out pieces for quilts, and I even did a little piecework of my own. A very little. I always got frustrated because inevitably I would lose track of which side the seam needed to be on. Teaching me how to knit resulted in a knot of yarn. Crocheting with my grandmother was more successful: I wound up with 8 inches of afghan to keep me warm on cold nights. My mother decided one year it was time for me to learn how to use the sewing machine so we went together, picked out the pattern and material, and I made a shirt. A whole shirt this time certainly but it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Nevertheless, my partner and I decided that it would be good to learn (again!) how to knit, and to knit with friends. Last night found us, needles in hand, working away. (I showed off my one knitting accomplishment: a whole sweater! Granted, it took me a year, living in a cold flat in Scotland, in the company of my flatmates who were also knitting, without the distraction of a tv or a computer, but it is a sweater!) Every time I pick up one of these womanly tasks, I feel that thread through time linking me back to my experiences with the women of my family. A girl growing up in Texas is expected to learn certain skills, even if she learns them badly, and I had multiple generations of women conspiring to teach me.

Earlier this weekend my aunt had called and left a message on my voicemail. She was glad to hear that I was planning to make a trip to Texas soon because my grandmother is in the last stages of kidney failure and will likely need to go on dialysis soon. I called and spoke with her in person later. She mentioned that my great aunt and uncle are trying to sell their home so they can move into an assisted living facility in Georgia, closer to their kids. She laughed talking about the garage sale they had, trying to clear out the clutter of decades, and how they were stubborn and immovable on their prices. I felt saddened by all the news but hardly devastated. None of this comes as a surprise. We are all aging; things are changing. We had a cat once who died of kidney failure; as deaths go, this is not a terrible one for my grandmother to face. We are all always in the process of losing one another.

We knitted last night and it came back to me quickly, as did the boredom of the task. Luckily I had good company and we laughed and talked together for a good couple of hours. As I worked, though, I would hear occasionally resonating through my mind, "My grandmother is dying." I thought of the generations of family I have lost already, my first great-grand dying when I was in fourth grade. I remember my second death in fifth grade as well because I finally had a year of perfect attendance, except for the day I missed for the funeral of my great-grandmother. My grandmother, my great aunt and uncle, they are the last of this generation for me, the threads of my experience unraveling behind me, coming a little closer to my own undoing from the pattern.

This morning the alarm came hard and brittle, jolting me into my day. As I ate breakfast I found myself weeping into my GrapeNuts, thinking of the woman who held me as a baby and who has loved me for 42 years for nothing more spectacular than my existence on the planet. I have felt frustrated before by this unconditional love, wanting to be loved for what I have made of myself since birth, feeling unseen and unrecognized for the things that I value beyond my mere existence. But I begin now to feel the value of these people who are woven so closely into my reality that I don't question them, I can struggle and flail all I want, go away and come back, and they are still just there; I can take them for granted.

I hope there are people in my life to whom I have given this gift, that I have knit my stitches straight and true in my attachments so that I can be relied upon, wound myself fully into my life to be taken for granted as part of the fabric of the whole. The stitching together of people is impermanent and fragile. It never lasts and it is also the only thing worth doing.

copyright 2009 J. Autumn Needles