We often refer to Dangerous Knitting at Yarns in the Farms. Here is the background story.
There is a wonderful game called fictionary, where one person looks up a word no-one has ever heard of, writes the word and the real definition on a slip of paper, announces the word to the rest of the group, They write down a definition they hope will sway others with its veracity, then the person with the dictionary reads all the definitions and everyone votes on which they think is the correct one. Gabbro. Guipur. Raree.
Sometimes when I am writing an essay or monologue, and I crave some clarity, I turn to the dictionary for guidance. It helps me interpret what doesn’t make sense. It helps to outline the shadows and the dyslexic air. What I am searching for is precision.
So this morning I looked up “insanity”. I hit the jackpot, with all the synonyms.
Insanity: Grave, often prolonged condition that prevents a person from being held legally responsible for his/her actions.
Lunacy: Often denotes derangement relieved intermittently by moments of clear mindedness.
Madness: Often stresses the violent aspects of mental illness.
Mania: refers principally to the excited, or manic, phase of bi-polar disorder.
Pick your poison.
Dangerous Knitting: Fall 2007
So I pull into the small lot in front of the yarn shop and immediately notice the litter of paper among the autumn leaves and weeds encroaching from the vacant lot next door. Sourly, I scold myself for never having built a summer garden in place of the weeds. This disorder will never do. The yarn shop itself is tidy and welcoming with its bright shutters and flower pots and fountain and pom-poms on the umbrella, but these leaves and litter lazing about like varmints sunning themselves on the stoop? I don’t think so.
I flutter about, collecting the trash among the leaves, noticing that the bits of paper scattered around are actually small vellum cards with some typed message on one side, which of course I can’t read because I am blind as a bat without my reading glasses, oh well. I collect them all into a stack, sloppily rake the leaves and unlock the shop, and step inside. I always love this part of the day.
The shop air hangs rich with the scent of yarn- grassy and woodsy, like a newborn animal. There are packets of lavender hidden among the skeins of yarn, and apples on the table, giving the whole space a perfume that is like pheromones to the yarnaholic. I arrange the hat tree outside the French windows. I hang the bright handmade sweaters and bags on the hooks next to the front door. I arrange the displays on the large work table, as Louis and Ella sing to me about tomatoes and tomAHtoes, potatoes and potAHtoes, all about contrasts and compromise. The door jingles, and C., my youngest child, slinks into the shop.
My daughter, 18, still warm and baby-faced from sleep, melts into the couch and sighs. She is in morning deshabille, hair every which-way, mascara smudged on pink cheeks. She kicks off her slippers and shimmies her jeans up under her floral half-slip. She is adorned, as always, with myriad charms, her customized icons and amulets: complicated ear jewelry, lip ring, bracelets, necklaces- she is like an exotic flower opening up to the new day. And I wonder, as I always do, how youth itself is the essence of beauty. If a woman my age had her disheveled appearance, she would look like a crazy person, a scary crazy person, a scary crazy person who hadn’t taken her meds. And that thought scares me on so many levels: for me, for my daughter, for all the scary crazy women out there who don’t even have meds to take. And then, of course, I wonder, DID my daughter, curled up here on the couch, did she indeed take her meds this morning? The meds that keep her feet on the ground, that keep her from soaring like Icarus with his resplendent beeswax and feathered wings, flying higher and higher, then hitting the tipping point too near the sun, and falling and falling hard into a bed of wet cement. Oh dear, who gave that kid those wings? His own dear dad! And I instantly want to spit on my finger and fix the smudged mascara that I was admiring only a moment ago.
C. wanders up to the counter and notices the cards I have imprisoned from their romp in the parking lot earlier. “What’re these?” She picks up the pile and reads. She smiles, she looks at me wonderingly,
“Uh… Mom… wow. Can I have these cards? Can I hang them up on my walls?”
Oh dear, what ho.
Just now Jo comes in to teach the Saturday morning sock class. Jo was born in 1944, and she and C. like to talk 50’s fashion… anyone or anything that came of age in the 50’s has instant panache. Jo is, therefore, cool.
“Hey Jo,” C. deadpans, “I’m taking a class and need to ask you some questions”. With the precision of a clinician, she reads from the cards:
“1. What are your favorite associations with food and sex?
2. What are your thoughts about threesomes?
3. Demonstrate your favorite position.”
Jo, with out batting an eyelash, raises on eyebrow, and with perfect Shirley MacLain insouciance replies:
“1. I consider all eating a sexual experience.
2. Sadly, the word ‘threesome’ is not in my vocabulary.
3. My favorite position is difficult to demonstrate with my trick hip and arthritis.”
I watch in wonder, shocked at the content of those vagrant cards, and by the ease and audacity of C’s interaction with this person of such a different generation. This beautiful funny woman, my child, is the reason that I knit. To quote her, “Mom, I went crazy and you learned to knit.” As uncomfortable as that sounds, it is the truth.
I learned to knit the year my child went crazy. Both of my daughters had been knitting and weaving for years, but it never held much allure to me. I have never had that much patience, I’m sort of a wandering soul, always on the move, twitching for action. I garden frenetically, I move boulders, I build cairns. I don’t sit still easily.
Until the dangerous year, the year of madness. I learned to knit because my carefully crafted world unraveled, unraveled like a intricately knitted sweater with a tiny thread caught in the door of a car, and as I wave and the car pulls away, there is the gentle tug, and the car speeds off faster and faster, my stitches pulling apart as I whirl like a top, spinning and unspinning, raveling and unraveling in the blur of a cartoon character, or I Love Lucy, stripped naked. What would Lucy do at her unraveling? Madness. I learned to knit naked.
My child fell apart. That is what happened in actual time. No speeding cars, no spinning yarns, no old TV characters. Those are just props, mixed metaphors that translate the whole mess into a story that has some recognition, that makes some sense. Back in the actual world, the world that makes no sense at all, my child fell apart. Fell so hard that all action stopped and we literally couldn’t move for months. We all broke down, we all went blind. We found ourselves groping through a glaring maze with no metaphorical nuance: hospital corridors, clinical intakes, treatment programs, therapy sessions, psychiatric appointments, insurance adjusters, all flourescent lights and buzzing machinery. Ravel, unravel, they have the same meaning: to become dis-joined thread by thread. Ravel, unravel, ravel, unravel, it makes no sense. Roll the mess into a ball and knit. What else could I do? Back to metaphors.
I learned to knit that year. My daughter calls it dangerous knitting, for the way I hold and pick the yarn from the very tips of my needles; the way it looks like everything is going to fall apart into a tangled mess. The trick is to wrap the yarn around my left hand, just so, not too tight, not too loose, and keep up a momentum. I always have several projects going at the same time. When one piece gets too tough and confusing, I move on to a softer fiber, an angora or chenille. But it can all fall apart, accidentally or on purpose. Everything put together sooner or later unravels.
The year of dangerous knitting. The year of metaphorical thinking. Knitted brow. Stitching up wounds. Knitting with contrasting fibers, with different gauges, without a pattern, making up the stitches as I go along, often dropping stitches and having to pull out row upon row, the mass of color a tangled heap upon the floor, re-gathered, rewound, re-stitched into a tapestry that, while weak in spots and stronger in others, we can cloak ourselves in.
C. thinks we should write a book together. The Year of Knitting Dangerously. She could write about being on the inside of the hospital, and I could write about being locked outside. She thinks it could be a best seller, with the hot topics of knitting, mother-daughter stuff, and the crazy teenager angle. Hmmm. Let me knit a while and see what happens.
