The Beauty of a Blanket

May 2020. A beautiful spring day at the start--or almost--of the first lockdown. Little over a year ago, and yet it feels like a lifetime. For many people it has been.

I was staring at a computer screen, trying to have a conversation with my mother. She would be eighty in July. I live in the UK; she lives in the US. I hadn't seen her since December, had no idea when--or, terrifyingly, if--I would see her again.

She struggled to speak. Oral cancer, now in remission, removal of half her jaw and, more worryingly, increasing lapses into dementia had robbed her of the ability of speech. I pitched my tone too jolly, like I was talking to a toddler. She tried to smile. The words came in fits and starts, not always making sense. What was left of my mother already felt as if it was ebbing away, and yet her gutsy spark was still there.

My sister, sitting next to her, made a comment about the average age of a Covid death being eighty-two, in other words, old. "Hey!" my mother said, looking smilingly affronted, and we all laughed.

I wanted to do something for her birthday. Books were out; she could no longer concentrate to read. Clothes were pointless; she had all she needed and she never left the house. A photograph album felt too poignant and painful; my father had died almost five years ago and memories made her cry. What, then?

My mother had always been a dedicated knitter. She knit no so much for pleasure, but for love--matinee jackets for grandchildren, beautiful and intricate christening blankets, sweaters with patterns of playful sheep or the alphabet as the grandchildren grew older. When I was twenty, she knit me a beautiful Aran sweater in the silkiest wool; it must have taken months. Looking back, I don't think I was nearly appreciative enough.

I am not a knitter, and neither is my husband or five children. I learned to knit and purl twenty years ago, and I made a couple of scarves. I enjoyed the experience well enough, but it fell by the wayside a long time ago. Now I wanted that to change.

I knew as a family we couldn't knit something complicated--even a mitten was beyond us. But we could--even my seven-year-old--knit squares. Lots and lots of squares the color of sunshine, of sunsets, of apples and oranges and the sea. A rainbow blanket. That, I thought, we could manage.

I bought the yarn off Amazon, in myriad colors. Then knitting needles--about a dozen. Then we started. My two older daughters, eighteen and twenty-one, had been chafing against this lockdown. One called home suddenly from university, the other having all the fun parts of her last year in high school cancelled. They knit together while sitting on their beds, listening to the audiobook of Harry Potter, with cups of tea. It felt like a gentler time.

I taught my seven-year-old to knit, and she taught my husband. My sixteen-year-old son, who had immersed himself in video games during the long, empty days, picked the color black. I taught him to knit one painstaking square--what an achievement! My eleven-year-old sat next to me as she knit an enormous blue square that kept getting bigger as she accidentally added on stitches and we chatted about her moving up to secondary school in September.

And I knit--I knit so many squares, probably around fifty or sixty by the end. I knit in every color, some I simply knit, others I knit and purled. And with every stitch, as my fingers cramped and the square seemed to barely grow, I loved--and I grieved, and I healed.

That blanket was love. Love bound every single stitch. And as I knit and I thought of my mother, I grieved the woman she no longer was, even as I thanked God for the woman she'd been. That blanket brought my family together. When life felt fraught and uncertain or just dull, we had our knitting. I listened to my older daughters laughed, I watched my son painstakingly manage a single stitch. I stacked the squares and felt my heart brim over.

After two months, we had enough to make a blanket. We realized we did not have the skills to stitch it together properly, and so I hired a seamstress who did an absolutely brilliant job. We made a photo collage of us all knitting--the pictures I'd taken throughout, of my daughters laughing, my husband learning, my son trying. We sent it to my mother, and we watched her open it on Zoom. Cried with her, openly, as she held the blanket to her face. And now every time I talk to her on FaceTime or Zoom, that blanket of love lies across her knees.

I am still knitting. I haven't progressed past those basic stitches, but I love the patchwork blankets, and so I have decided to knit one for each of my children. At the rate I'm going, I'll be busy for at least ten years! But I love the simplicity of it, the physicality. I love seeing the stitches slide along my needle, and I love the squares I make as a result. I love the fact that I am showing them love, and they know it. It fills me with both purpose and peace, a perfect melding of determination and comfort.

My mom was a dedicated knitter. She knitted for love, and now I do, too.