: What
makes an ordinary skein of yarn special? A prayer.
My
neighbor made my prayer shawl. It was dark blue with specks of white
running through the yarn. The random pieces of fringe were threaded
with silver beads and hearts that read “love” and “peace”
and “hope." When I asked her for the inspiration for the
shawl, she told me to Google it. The search brought me to The
Prayer Shawl Ministry Home Page and a story of two women who
combined their compassion and love of knitting/crocheting with prayer
to provide comfort for others. The article gave directions for the
shawl as well as an assortment of prayers inspired by its members:
prayers for someone with a terminal disease or for someone grieving
over the death of a loved one, prayers for celebrating a marriage or
the birth of a child. Or a prayer for someone who just needed to be
wrapped in a warm shawl when the night air set in.
My
neighbor’s shawl arrived toward the end of my mother’s
battle with cancer and my struggle to nurture and care for her in
those final months. I wrapped it around my shoulders and remembered
how much my mother hated the cold. She dreaded the first frost that
came in late fall, refused to put ice cubes in her Coca Cola, drank
her small, evening glass of Knickerbocker ale at room temperature.
Coldness defined her life from the time she was widowed at the age of
25 in 1948 until the day she retired in 1987. She worked at a rose
farm, spending eight hour days carrying rose-filled water buckets
from refrigerated coolers to the grading tables where they were
measured, cut and checked for any mildewed leaves or deformed
“bullheads.” And then she packed those graded stems in
oblong boxes and carried them back to the walk-in coolers where they
waited be picked up and shipped around the country. She warded off
the cold and dampness with layers of clothing: long underwear,
corduroy pants and flannel shirts.
I
decided to pass on my neighbor’s kindness and the ministry’s
mission statement. My first shawl was for my friend’s mother,
a woman I loved from the moment we met and she fed me warm sticky
buns. She was a survivor of the Armenian genocide, having fled her
country at the age of twelve with her father and four sisters. In
this country, she nurtured three children, supported her husband in
his business career and devoted her life to her church and civic
activities. But what fascinated me about this woman was her love of
food. How every day, every occasion, whether happy or sad, revolved
around the food of her native country. Her foods were spicy compared
to the blandness of the meals served in my Irish-Catholic home.
Even the names were exotic: lamejun and babaganoush and bird’s
nest pastries. Her rice pilav was unlike any other I had ever tasted.
“What is your secret ingredient?” I asked. “Chicken
fat,” she said. “Oh, my,” I replied, wondering
where in the grocery store that might be found. In her later years,
chronic pain slowed her body. Her brain remained sharp but the pain
became debilitating, keeping her at home and isolated from her many
activities. Especially her cooking. My prayer for her was simple:
may all these strands of yarn embrace your soul and surround you with
love.
My
second shawl was for a family member. At first, we noticed small
behavioral changes: how she would stand too close to us when she
talked, how she would forget the name of a simple object, how she
complained that the Christmas window candles didn’t smell like
the lit ones on the dining room table. She became upset when she
was not allowed to drive and frustrated when she was told that it was
not okay to be sweeping the front sidewalks of her neighbors. The
diagnosis of semantic dementia was devastating to her family and to
everyone who knew her as a school volunteer or a co-worker or a
school board member who advocated for children. I gave her the shawl
on Christmas Eve. When she opened the box and read my prayer, she
looked puzzled. When I started to explain, I realized that the
explanation might be lost on her. So I simply told her how much she
was loved by everyone and that the shawl would keep her warm as she
watched tv or napped in her favorite chair.
So
now, it’s time for another prayer shawl. I found my knitting
bag right where I left it, on the top shelf of my son’s closet,
next to his baseball cards and Star Wars comic books. The bag is full
of needles of every size: some straight, some circular, some
double-pointed. A smaller pouch holds crochet hooks, needles and
round plastic markers. My yarn is soft and multicolored in hues of
blue and green and rose and gray. “Ocean” the dye lot
says. A perfect color description as this shawl is headed to the
seaside town of Santa Cruz, California. I wind the three skeins into
balls and cast on the fifty-seven stitches. My beginning prayer is
simple: please let this be my best piece of needlework ever. Let
there be no errors, no dropped stitches, no curled edges.
And
so I begin the pattern of knit three, purl three to the end of the
row. I turn the piece and repeat the stitches. I work slowly at
first. It’s been some time since I’ve had these wooden
needles in my hands. But then I develop a rhythm that calms me. The
shawl grows day by day and soon becomes a small lap blanket, perfect
for these chilly December nights. The colors blend from blue to green
to rose and gray. The colors of the ocean waters, a soft sunrise, a
fog softly settling across the beach and eating every tide pool and
outcropping in sight.
This
is a shawl that I never expected to make... a shawl for the mother of
my first grandchild...a baby girl. And the prayer? I find the words
and work them into the simple stitches.
Contact
Nancy (Unless
you
type
the
author's name in
the subject
line
of the message we
won't know where to send it.)
