Play It Forward

That's Goldisox (my husband) and our beloved Perky. It's December 1971 and he is six months out of the Air Force and determined to let his hair grow for the rest of his life. Perk is two years old and determined to do the same. We lived in the white house behind him in the tiny (and very hot) second floor apartment - Floral Park, Long Island, New York. Perky is modeling one in a series of wonderful cherry red and white sweaters my mother kept her supplied with for her whole long and very happy almost-16 years of life.

It's been a tough week. There are a few places I'd rather not go again, memories I'd like to relegate to some other-worldly dustbin but life doesn't work that way. Sometimes it seems that you're meant to learn certain things just so you can pass them on.

There isn’t much about cancer that’s good but in a strange way I have the disease to thank for one of my best friends in the world. We had known each other casually for a couple of years before she was diagnosed at the same age (29) and with a similar type and, in an instant, we were forever bonded. Everything I had gone through eight years earlier suddenly acquired new value and importance. My experiences with hospitals and doctors and fear became a lifeline for somebody else which, if you think about it, is about as good as it can get.

Yesterday I found out that a dear friend has terminal colon cancer and once again experience is turning into a lifeline for someone else. I spent much of the day opening old wounds, reading old journal entries, resurrecting my father's almost 6 year battle with the disease and trying to figure out how that Pandora's Box of fact and emotion will be able to help our friend.

People didn’t talk about cancer when I was dealing with it and so I kept it a secret from all but a few of my closest friends. I didn’t look sick. I didn’t feel sick. I was absolutely going to recover. So why shoot my mouth off when it could only come back to bite me in the butt? Back then you were written off as dead and gone if there was even a whisper that you were dealing with the disease. Happy endings were the exception and not the rule. (Ever wonder why I gravitated toward romance's requisite happy ending? Now you know.) I was hungry for the names of people who had faced the same odds and come out a winner but they were hard to come by. I was hungry for their experiences, their knowledge, and there was none to be had.

Right now knitting is all that’s holding my friend together. A box of yarn on the front doorstep can soothe your body and your soul when you feel you're about to break apart. The feel of the yarn beneath your fingers, the weight of the needles, watching the spun fiber turn into something real and tangible. If you screw up, all you have to do is rip it out and start over. The yarn will be as good as new. You'd never know anything happened.

We talk knitting in our phonecalls and emails. Endless discussions of WEBS and Elann and the pleasure of filling out humongous fantasy orders then hitting the delete button before we can get ourselves into trouble. (Nobody needs 30 skeins of super bulky acrylic the color of monkey vomit. Nobody!) We talk about Log Cabin blankets and cabling without needles and why she loves knitting lace while I’d rather put my head in the microwave.

Yesterday I needed a good dose of knitting therapy so I sent a question out to the Socknitters list about the provisional crochet cast on. I’d been playing with it for weeks now, trying every variation I could Google. Examining the stitches, knitting, unraveling, knitting again, muttering, cursing, scratching my head. I must be making some terrible mistake, I told Socknitters, because every time I unzip the waste yarn I end up with big loops and not "live" stitches at all. ("Live" stitches meaning, to me, easy-to-unravel stitches.) I can't tell you the hours I've spent trying and re-trying the provisional crochet cast on, trying to make it turn out the way I thought it should be.

Well, guess what? It was supposed to be exactly what I was getting. A large and lovely series of loops that are easily knit into. Simple as that. The wonderful members of Socknitters showered me with explanations and encouragement and for a little while there in the middle of a truly awful day, there was absolutely nothing on my mind but sticks and string.

I'm not saying knitting has magical properties. Knitting can’t make the bad stuff disappear. But sometimes it can soothe the soul on days when nothing else can.

You learn something and then you pass it on. Sometimes it's almost enough.

Barbara