I-70 WEST AND BEYOND

Don’t adjust your dials… it’s not Bob Dylan… it’s me, still gracing my first decade.

I never really gave aging a whole lot of thought until I turned 59, then I figured I had a year…. a year for what, I’m not sure, but 60 was inching closer and it was beginning to present itself as a much  bigger milestone than the decades preceding it.  The whole decade change has always been kind of  a big one for me,  but it wasn’t turning 40 or 50 that gave me greatest pause, but rather, it was turning 30.  It was a big, damn deal because in my young mind, 30 meant being a grown up to me, which meant that the fun was going to start taking a back seat to responsibility.  This attitude left a whole lot of “finishing up” at the end of my 20’s, or at the very least, just minutes into my 30’s.  My get ‘er done in your 20’s before real life hits philosophy is evident when looking back on my time line – graduated from college (finally…), got married, got pregnant, had first child… ALL when I was at the tail end of 29 and the very beginnings of 30.  Of course now, on the eve of 60, 30 seems like puberty to me.  Fortunately,  I’ve lost the notion that life will end as I know it as a new decade comes on, but I must say,  I’ve become a bit more thoughtful when it comes to the math of the decades.

Recently, while listening to the last free concert in the park in Frisco, CO, I was standing behind an older couple who I’m guessing were at least a decade or two older than me, but in this competitively athletic  town, it’s kind of hard to tell.  The man, armed with the latest iphone (good goin’ old man),  was trying to video the band, but was getting frustrated because he kept videoing himself, even though he was holding the phone out in front of him and pointed directly towards the band, who was not all that far away from him in the small park venue.  He was on selfie mode, but didn’t realize it.  He’d make what looked like adjustments to his phone then would hold his camera out in front once again for several seconds to video, then would look at the screen and shake his head in frustration.  I was close enough to see the videos and the mistake he continued to make, but far enough away that I couldn’t hear the comments he was making to his wife….that would be the wife who had her fingers in her ears.  I guess the music was too loud for her.  I doubt I would have given the whole scenario a second look a decade or two ago, but now, now on the heels of 60, I was having a hard time looking away.  There was so much age-related vulnerability coming into play that I felt compelled to settle into the scene long enough to decide on an appropriate emotion… sadness, frustration, or depression. Although I know how to reverse the camera on my iphone, I’ve certainly done or haven’t done all sorts of things that have had all of my kids rolling their eyes and asking me to hand the phone over so they can “sort me out.”  Technology is moving at a much faster pace than is our aging, which is pretty damn fast, and given that most of this is only a few decades old for so many of us, a little behind the technological eight ball is valid and something we hold in solidarity with those in our same age group. Thankfully, attitudes of caring what others think diminish a bit, but also thankfully, not entirely.   A little bit of vulnerability keeps us humble but we traverse a fine line between pride and embarrassment when we expose that side of ourselves.

While on one of my favorite hikes a few days ago,  a hike that is so beautiful that it’s difficult for me to contain my enthusiasm, I met a nice couple quite by accident. We had been doing the passing back and forth so many times since the beginning of the hike that at the 5th encounter, I felt compelled to say something,  so made a comment to them about the hike.  He had been on it before, she hadn’t.  Each time we had passed, my eyes were drawn to her beautiful, long, silver hair,  so along with my gushing about the views they would soon encounter, I felt compelled to give an appropriate shout out to her hair and with great enthusiasm and most likely a little bit of posture adjustment, I took off my ball cap to a sisterhood of silver hair gesture and proudly said,

“Your hair is so amazing….  I’m trying to do the same thing.”

I then turned around to give her a view of the back, my confirmation to her  that it is still a work in progress as a good 8 inches of length is still brown.  Again, syncing with the sisterhood of silver hair…

Her response to me had nothing to do with my hair and my subtle (ok, maybe not so subtle) nod to our connection on a “we’re almost soul sisters because of our hair” level.   Rather, she expressed her excitement at finally doing this hike that she had heard so much about.  Well that was not quite what I expected to hear from her, but whatever.  We met again  a few switchback later, and I’m not sure if it was the lighting, my exhaustion or the altitude (when in doubt, blame it on the altitude),  or what it was that skewed my color perceptions, but her hair was not silver.  She was blonde.  Nope, not even a strand of silver in that blonde hair of hers.  And to think that I had just taken off my cap enthusiastically as a connecting gesture, only to reveal sweaty,  two-toned, not at all attractive, hat hair.  I wanted to quietly back down the mountain, never to see them again, but instead began to talk incessantly to cover up my blunder, as my correction.  She was (I’m guessing), 10  years younger than me and at that very moment, I felt like I was old enough to be her mom.  OK, honestly, her grandma.  I was the man trying to video tape the band but videoed selfies instead.  Go figure.   They’re from New Jersey.  They drove.  It took them 2 very long days. They spent the first night in Junction City.  She is kind of afraid of heights.  He’s cool with that. They might be married.  They kind of want to move to Colorado.  She has blonde hair, not silver.  Lesson learned.   Hold your enthusiasm until you’re sure you know what you’re talking about and then wait a few more seconds,  just because.  And if you mess up, really badly and don’t want to come clean, then talk.  Talk a lot.   Five more minutes and we would have been Facebook friends,  another ten and we would have had dinner together.

I’ve come to believe with each advancing decade,  that when you reach a certain age,  numbers become far less relevant than how you feel, which has become so relevant in the very physically-active state of Colorado, where I live part time.   Last winter I rode the ski lift up with two elderly gentlemen who asked me if I was alone, and if so, did I want to do some runs with them?  Yes, I was alone, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend my afternoon doing runs with two 80 plus year old men  (they shared their ages with me with pride).  I guess in the back of my mind, I assumed they’d be too slow for me, although I’m hardly a fast skier.  When they told me the runs they were doing, all bets were off… black diamond, back bowls.

“Ahhh, thanks, but think I’ll just do some runs solo… you know… alone time and all….”

In actuality, I could not have kept up with them… the them who were in their 80’s, while me, the kid in her 50’s.   It gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t need to start eliminating things, but perhaps it was time to start adding to my list as I add another decade to my collection.  I’ve got to be able to ski black diamond, black bowl runs in my 60’s if I’m going to do it in my 80’s right?

I like to be able to attach an event to each decade, the one that had the biggest impact on the 10 years for me and have to admit that I’m just a little curious as to the event that will mark my 60’s.  My 20’s were my decade of exploring, making mistakes, being fearless, yet afraid of everything, while I began, unknowingly, to begin to forge my life path.

My 30’s,  in my young opinion, were my big step into adulthood, which at the time meant finishing college (finally), getting married and having my first child.  Bing, bang, done.  My decade of change… or so I thought…

My 40’s were my decade of letting go of the lead and by default, letting my children lead.  Their friend’s parents became my friends, their schedules became my schedules and long life friend bonds were forged.  Oh, and my hair started turning gray, and while I went in every 6 weeks to cover up that secret, I honestly thought no one had a clue.  Secret’s out now…

My 50’s were the decade that changed everything and my entry into it started with hurricane Katrina.  I had divorced just days before my 50th birthday and set out on an unknown and very scary path,  which had far more forging and exploring than I had anticipated and for that, I am now very thankful.  I made a lot of mistakes, worried far too much,  and seemed to learn every lesson the hard way, with the predictable pattern of reactionary hysteria, breathing, and eventually a slow recovery coupled with a lot of talking on the phone.  Case in point, the explosion of my water heater a mere two weeks after moving into my new house and my new life.  I’m still thanking my lucky stars that all of my photos that weren’t in albums were in plastic boxes.  Nothing was lost but a whole lot was learned.  That lesson started with me in a heap at the bottom of the basement steps, my head in my hands, my strength and my courage in another room.  When sump pumps, water heaters or garage door openers go on the blink, I remember that girl that sobbed in a panic on the bottom step, not knowing who to call or where to turn.  She grew a lot that night.  Life felt unexpectedly hard, but was softened with several of Emery’s friends, armed with dry vacs and encouragement, and in the end, I  became a whole lot stronger and added a good plummer to my phone book.

So… 60….a new decade and I can honestly say, a new women who is making the entrance.  I gave myself a very impromptu birthday present this year and returned from Colorado a few days early to hear a speaker who I discovered on Facebook a few months earlier and have been in admiration ever since. Her name is Tao Porchon-Lynch and she is 96 years young, still teaches yoga and has a light and an energy that completely filled the room and had most of its occupants as entranced as I was, I’m sure.  All bets are off on the thoughts of aging I had when I woke up to today – those pesky thoughts that being 60 is inching towards being old. Today, on the eve of my odometer clicking over one of the numbers that moves the slowest, I was flooded by the youthful messages from a 98 year-old yogi.  Seriously, after being in her presence for 2 hours, coupled with the intimacy of the venue that allowed me to introduce myself to her and give her a hug, it’s amazing that at almost 60 years to her 98 years, that I’m even old enough to drive a car let alone all the other things that come with true adulthood.  Next to her youthful spirit, I feel like I’m at the beginning, and right now, with so many wishes, hopes and dreams ahead of me, it feels like the perfect place to be.  For that, Tao Porchon-Lynch, I thank you, with deep sincerity for the birthday gift that you have no idea that you gave me.

With each decade comes gratitude;  the 6th bringing a bit more than the 5th and a whole lot more than the 4th or 3rd. I’m comfortably seated on my cushion of gratitude while I continue to adjust my sails to catch the best wind to carry me forward. It’s a good place to be and I can’t complain about the view.

Here’s to 60…to those who are there, those who have been there and those still to embark.  Salud.  Oh, and when you’re 60, you can do that, wishing yourself a happy birthday, that is.  It’s a rule I made up  just minutes into my new decade because adding another year to the toll is something we all should celebrate because we’re happy to be getting older, right?  I certainly am.

Relaxing on top… pre-fall, pre-scar

I don’t like this hike, but keep returning… my scar attaches me to it…

With all the moss and so many trails that I hike looking like this, it’s surprising that I don’t have a roadmap of white-line scars on my legs

While resting during a hike yesterday, with my dirty and freshly scratched up legs stretched out in front of me, my eyes were drawn to the 4-inch scar on my right calf that seems to be pointing down to my foot… that would be the foot that slipped on a mossy rock while hiking and came down on a piece of sharp granite many years ago.  Now had that thin white line ended up on my forehead or cheek, the memory of how it came to be might not conjure up the smile that it did yesterday.  It’s a gentle reminder of a fun day on Rooster Comb mountain, the same mountain by the way where  several years later, my daughter would be proposed to by my now son-in-law.  It’s a hike I do not like, but for some reason, whenever I’m in the Adirondack mountains with my sister, Susan, we do it.  We were close to the bottom and in a shaded area where slippery mossy rocks are common when I fell.  My leg was a bit of a bloody mess and once back at the lodge where we were staying, Susan suggested that maybe I should go to the hospital for stitches.  I had no idea if there even was a hospital nearby, but even if there had been, I opted out and patched myself up with a lot of bandaids and Neosporin.  Had I gotten the suggested stitches, I’m sure there would be far less of a scar, if any, but honestly, I don’t mind it a bit.  It feels like a badge of courage to me now and an ever present reminder of how much fun I have hiking with Susan.

Author Chris Cleave, in his book, “Little Bee”, says,

“A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

Once again, I survived Rooster Comb Mountain.

I love that spin on scars and have a whole lot of surviving going on on my body.  I’ve got an 8 inch “zipper” on my right side that shows that I survived the removal of my right kidney when I was 21.  I remember sitting in the doctor’s  office with my Mom by my side when he told me that my kidney needed to be removed.  My response was, “What will the scar look like and will I still be able to wear a bikini?”  Seriously?  Not even a hint of how will this affect my life, my health, my overall well-being?  At age 21, I couldn’t look beyond the scar and honestly, I was devastated.  Not with the loss of a key body part, but at the thought of a scar wrapping its way around my mid right torso.  The removal of the diseased kidney left me healthier than I was with it, by the way, and has not affected my lifestyle, health or general well-being whatsoever.  It did bring on a question or two back in my bikini  days, which like the scar on my leg, always brought on a smile – a smile because my 21-year old self has grown up and feels no shame in showing the necessary trail of the surgeon’s scalpel.

The small scar duet, one just below my left brow and the other on the upper left side of my lip are easily forgotten until at a stop light on a sunny day and I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror, and then it’s,   “Oh yea…. I remember you guys.”  They found their way to my face during a car wreck with my best friend, Susie, in high school.  A car ran a stop sign and hit us from the side.  He wasn’t going fast or it could have been a lot worse, but had I fastened my seat belt, it would have been a lot better as my face probably wouldn’t have smashed into the windshield.  Lesson learned.  The hard way.  My biggest fear that time was not the scarring (this was 4 years before the kidney came out and my attention was in the immediate, not the future) but rather, my date’s reaction when he picked me up for the Black Oak Arkansas concert later on that evening.  Looking back, I probably should have given him a head’s up as he was certainly surprised by the sorry sight that greeted him at the door. My eye was black and puffy and freshly stitched and was nearly swollen shut and my lip, also freshly stitched was so swollen that my mouth wouldn’t close all the way.  I’m surprised he still wanted to take me, let alone be seen with me and more surprised that my parents let me go!

On the same leg as the hiking incident scar is a much smaller scar that is positioned just below my knee and is a straight up and down, one inch long white line.  It is my knelt down on an exacto knife scar while wall papering my soon to be 2nd baby’s room.  I was 8 months pregnant and although I should have had stitches,  I didn’t feel I had time to go to the hospital to get them.  I was mid-way into the wallpapering project and it’s not wise to pull a nesting mother from her project. So no stitches.  I mostly blame this round of bad judgement on the hormones.  I’m not sure where all of the braincells go when you’re pregnant (the baby?), but there is definitely a period of misfiring and the closer to delivery time, at least in my case, the worse it seemed to get.  This scenario happened again when I was 8 months pregnant with my 3rd child and I sliced my palm open on a tin can lid, while trying to extract it out of the can.  That time I did get stitches… a lot of them… and without an ounce of fat on the palm of your hand, that’s a painful experience that I hope never to go through again.  Then there was the whole situation of showing up in the ER, very pregnant, and trying to explain to the rushing around staff who had me in a wheelchair headed straight up to delivery,  to NOT take me to delivery but rather to the stitching up room of the ER.  That’s my scar that I’ve been told by more than one person, messed up any future palm reading on that hand.  Well shoot.  I missed that opportunity as I’ve never had my palm read. The scar did add an extra branch to my life line, though, which could come in handy someday.

With every one of my children’s entry into the world, or pre-entry, I’ve earned a scar.  With my first born, it is a 6 inch scar in my lower abdomen where he made his entry into the world during an emergency C-section due to an rapidly lowering heartbeat.  Rather than being stitched up that time,  staples were used to close the incision.  I never thought twice about the scar and would have welcomed one on my face if that was what it took to bring him into the world safely.  I saved the staples in a box along with my hospital bracelet (and his) as it seemed important at the time. Now it seems kind of creepy to save the staples, but I still have them, which either says they still hold importance, or I need to do more cleaning and clearing out.   I remember having a friend who saved her tonsils in a glass jar filled with water after they were removed when she was 5 and I thought that was pretty cool as I only had a sore throat and some cards after my tonsils were removed for my take home gift.  I didn’t want my kidney after it was removed (and am pretty sure that is against hospital policy now), but when they told me they had to take out a rib to get to the kidney, thoughts of making art or jewelry out of that rib made me wish they had saved it for me.  Today, the scar seems to be more than enough reminder to me, without needing to hold onto the rib, which is far creepier than an envelope of staples, right?

I survived.  And the relics of those survivals are etched all over my body – my personal badges of strength, courage and maybe stupidity for not going to the hospital on some of them…

I’ve often wondered what it would be like if rather than tucked away in the depths of our heart, if we wore our emotional scars side by side to our physical scars.  Would it illicit kinder behavior to those who we don’t know but think we do when we see them yelling at their kid or throwing trash out of their car window or mistreating their animals?  If we saw the scars of all of their pain, would we act differently towards them?  Maybe it’s best they are tucked away and held where only we can feel them.  The emotional wounds do heal in time, but no doubt, they leave scars in the wake of their fading pain and every once in a while, I will get the gentle or maybe not so gentle reminder of their presence.

We’re all scarred, inside and out, but it’s in those telling marks that lies our history, our bumps in the road, our accidental lessons in life, but we survived, and no doubt, with a story to tell.

6 months work… to here…

Yep.  I have silver hair.  Gasp.

Not quite as dramatic from that back…but it’s in there!

Although I would hardly call myself brave, I do have a taste for adventure and seem to be able to find my way to it, whether looking or not, but what has many people making mention of my “bravery” has nothing to do with anything that would raise my pulse or the hair on the back of my neck. I have been called brave not for anything I’ve done, but rather for something I’ve neglected to do for the past 8 months.  I quit dying my hair and just as predicted, the tiny white line at my part has been growing into a large swath since last October.  Eight months in and I’m rocking a skunk do.  I’m flattered, surprised and somewhat amazed by people’s response to my “brave act.”  Is what I’m doing really all that brave?  I’m not sure, but I am surprised.  Who knew?  It wasn’t  a solo hike to the top of a 14,000 foot mountain or having to give a speech in class during my freshman year of college with hands shaking so much I had to set my notes down as they were becoming a distraction to myself and the class or anything to do with me and small airplanes and singing out loud to calm my nerves on my first few solo flights.  Nope.  None of that.  It was letting my hair go silver that has me earning my bravery badge.  (I do, by the way, call it silver as that sounds “younger” than gray… so maybe I’m not really all that brave after all…).

My monthly routine of sitting in a salon for a good hour and a half while my roots are painstakingly colored, followed by a wait time for the chemicals to do their work, is something I’ve been doing since I was 40 years old.  Every.  Single.  Month.  Which adds up to almost twenty years….twenty long years in the chair getting my roots painted to match the rest of my hair.  The only exceptions would be the times when I traveled for periods of time longer than a month, when creative cover ups and do it yourself kits would come into play, allowing me to buy a few weeks time before heading back into the salon for damage control.  Once, while on an extended stay in Lima, Perú, I closed myself in a tiny shared bathroom and sat on the toilet while impatiently waiting for the 20 minutes to pass, at which time I could stand under the tiny drizzle of cool water and rinse the dye out of my newly covered roots.  This was no easy feat, especially given that it was a bathroom shared by many.  I’m not sure why, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to fess up as to what was taking me so long in there and that it had nothing to do with traveler’s stomach.  I’m not sure which bothers me more today… the memory of my clandestine cover up in the small bathroom or the fact that I shrouded myself in such secrecy.  I went in with gray roots and came out with dark roots.  Seriously.  I wasn’t fooling anyone.

While at my 20 year high school reunion, 20 plus years ago,
OK, I’ve got to pause a minute here… it’s been over 20 years SINCE my 20 year high school reunion???  Holy cow.  Time flies, but hair grows slow.

Anyway, while at said reunion, one of my former male classmates made the comment to me that he was surprised that so many of the men were graying yet hardly any of the women were.  I looked at him in utter amazement and asked him if he really didn’t know that with the exception of  the few lucky ones whose hair just simply wasn’t going to go gray, most of the women in the room were dying their hair.  He looked confused and possibly disappointed and I realized then that I may have just let the proverbial dyed cat out of the bag.  It really is a secret that’s held within the sisterhood of women  who have passed their 40th birthday, otherwise, when going to the salon for my monthly procedure, I would have called it what it was, which was getting my roots dyed, rather than what I wanted people to think, which was getting my hair cut.  It’s like pulling up the dress to show everyone that your core strength has an assistant that’s helping with the flat stomach… an assistant called spanx. Coming clean, fessing up and going a la natural is a heck of a lot easier than having to fake your way through and like my hair stylist, Bill, says that when you go with your natural color, it ALWAYS will match your skin tone.  The gene pool color swatches were already in the works before you were even born and he’s right.  They do match because nature always gets it right, even if it wasn’t exactly what  you had planned on.

I’m finding myself stalking women at the grocery store who have the color of hair that I think I’m going to end up with,  simply for a visual aide for what my hair might end up like.  Sometimes I get too close and they’ll turn around and I swear they give me the tiniest nod of encouragement when they see what I’m growing on the top of my head.  OK, maybe I optimistically made that part up and they’re simply wondering who the creep is that has followed them from the produce aisle to the canned goods, but still, I’ve got to think there’s solidarity within the group for all of us who have let go of the covering up.

I’ve gotten mostly positive comments from friends and family, especially my sister, Robin, who went before me, but have had a handful of people commenting with the predictable,

“Aren’t you afraid it’s going to age you???”

I started getting gray hairs at age 35 and became a regular to the chair at age 40.  If this ages me back to 40, well, bring it on!  But seriously, put your glasses on.  The hair cannot take full responsibility for the aging component.  My face holds a road map of experiences in its lines and wrinkles, each and every one of them earned, although not all of them loved.

I’ve had dark hair for most of my almost 60 years (I went through a bald-headed Eisenhower look the first 6 months of my life),  so to begin to go light, is a pretty dang big deal – big enough that maybe it is an act of hair bravery.  This process still gives me a moment of having to catch my breath when I glance into the rear view mirror while driving and see nothing but silver and wonder who the hell is driving my car.  Exposed.  Vulnerable.  Real.  It’s the real part that’s giving me the nudge to stay with the game.  I wrote a blog post a while back about skiing naked, or at least feeling naked in a vulnerability sense.  This whole ordeal has me feeling slightly unclothed and a little bit stared at, but also kind of proud at the same time.  The slightly unclothed feeling has me texting my girl for confirmation that YES, it IS the right thing.  Thank you, Emery.

Besides the huge savings of time and money, the simple act of leaving the hair dye off the hair has become far more of a freeing gesture than I anticipated.  I’m claiming my age and the side effects that go along with the number, both good and according to some cultural norms, maybe not so good.  That being said,   I have of course reserved my right to a full reversal if the results aren’t what I anticipated, but am doubtful it will come to that, especially after the time I have invested. Unfortunately, for impatient me, this is not a TAH DUH I decided to go silver moment, but rather, is an arduously slow process and even though my hair does grow fast compared to the average, there are times I swear it is growing back into my scalp and will this project ever come to fruition?

So, slowly but surely, I’m transitioning into one more layer of authenticity at the rate of 3/4 of an inch per month.  This I know because I’ve stood at my bathroom mirror with a tape measure in one hand,  an outstretched lock in the other and a calculator doing its magic.  I’ve invested 8 months in this project and probably have another 8 months of two-toned hair before all is said and done and silver.  Call it what you want, but if calling it brave makes this whole process more exciting and please oh please a tad bit faster, than so be it….  I’m a two-toned brave girl.

A big ole thanks to Bill Harding, my supportive, encouraging, wise, and has done this before, stylist.  You got me over the transitional hump.

To be continued…

There was usually a cat tucked in there somewhere…

Although it’s been over 50 years since my grandma taught me how to knit, I can still feel her presence every time I pick up my needles.  I’m right back on her scratchy, bumpy couch, tucked in tightly under her arm while she’d guide me through the process of moving the yarn from one red plastic needle to the other.  It was magic to me; long pieces of yarn growing into something I could hold in my hands and maybe even wear on my head.  Grandma was left-handed and I was right-handed so the whole learning process was backwards and terribly confusing until I gave up on trying to learn right-handed from a left-handed teacher and simply learned the way my Grandma taught me.  Left-handed.

Last year I wrote a blog post about hands and how they are the keepers of so much of our history.   Knitting is the ultimate in hand thinking.  In their callouses, scars and imperfections lie the very rich history of creating,  which only becomes richer with experience.   Grandma’s arthritic fingers moved my young hands through a process that has become refined over many years with a lot of trial and error with things I’ve created and am very proud of and a host of projects that went the other direction and are still shoved into the back of the closet waiting for me to fix them.

It wasn’t always cool to be a knitter and the patterns available were proof as most of the end products were nothing you’d ever want to wear.  Thankfully, it has become hip and yarn stores and pattern choices are much more readily available.  Much to my surprise, there is a knit in public day in April, or KIP for those in the know, a knitting awareness week in October and a national knitting night in November as well as societies for right handed knitters, left handed knitters and a day set aside for those who love yarn.  Yea, I know… and no, I’m not a member, of any, but you’ve got to love a serious knitter.

My knitting skills started off with long strips that were made into headbands and graduated over the years to a constant stream of sweaters for my babies and toddlers.  After sitting out for several years, when I did pick up my needles again in my late twenties, I re-taught myself to knit right handed, which was much easier and far less complicated when trying to follow right handed instructions.

It has always been nurturing for me and maybe that’s because of who taught me more than what she taught me.  Seriously, I would have learned algebra at age 8 if it meant getting to be squished together on a scratchy couch with my grandma leading the lesson.  Although the hopeful outcome of a wearable woolen is what gets me to the yarn store in the first place, it truly is more of a process than product situation for me.  I’ve ended up with a lot of almost finished projects that were either way off on size or simply didn’t end up to be the project I had in my mind.  The only exception were the many baby and kid sweaters I knitted, which always ended up being the right size, at one point or another because my kids did grow and if it started out too small, there was a younger one waiting in the wings.  When my oldest was 4 or 5 he asked me when he could stop wearing the sweaters I knitted and start wearing sweatshirts like all the other kids.  And that was the end of that.  All energies then went to the daughter, who hung in there a long time with my hand knitted sweaters for her.

Everyone who knits has a story and usually those stories are about projects, both the success and the failures.  Sadly, my story is one about how my own knitting caused me tremendous public embarrassment and taught me the lesson on the importance of keeping your knitting supplies, ie yarn, a bit more organized. I know when you drag toilet paper on your shoe when you come out of a bathroom it’s called a tile comet, but what’s it called when you unknowingly drag yarn from a knitting project from your car, all the way down the sidewalk, about 3 feet high, unknowingly setting up a makeshift boundary line that’s not crossable?  And to add to the fun,  there was a sidewalk sale going on so cautious shoppers were mindful of the boundary that I unknowingly put into place while I went into a bakery to get a sandwich. Of course I, also, was being respectful of the “roped off area” as I returned to my car, until I realized it was coming from my car…and this was no short piece of yarn.  Unfortunately, the yarn boundary ran the better part of the south side of Corinth shopping center.  I’m a messy knitter who learned her lesson through embarrassment.

This meditative movement of slipping stitches made of yarn from one needle to another, hopefully yielding something wearable, is far more about the history that connected me to it in the first place than anything else and that was my Grandma, and the many hours spent next to her learning.  I didn’t care if what we were knitting was wearable or not as in my 8 year-old eyes, we were knitting love.  Plain and simple.