Argyle Socks and Family Secrets

You've seen that argyle sock before. My mother knitted it some fifty years ago but she never knit the mate. Maybe the argyle fad had finally faded away (I don't know why; I love them) and she decided it wasn't worth the dpn time. Or maybe my father hadn't expressed the proper appreciation for the pairs that came before this one and she decided to turn her needle love toward her only child. Who knows? Whatever the reason, that sock is the last of its breed.

A friend of mine got blindsided this weekend by Family Secrets. I don't know what they were but I do know she's hurting. I also know exactly how she's feeling. My parents died in 2001. In the five months between my mother's death and my father's, I learned things I hadn't even suspected about my family. (How would you like to find out that your grandmother [and everyone else] had hidden a husband from you and that hidden husband was your biological grandfather? And that's just for starters.)

The thing is, do we really know the people we love? Can we ever know them? Another friend said to me once, "I know everything there is to know about my mother. No surprises there." And yes, ultimately the surprise was on her when the secrets came rushing out.

The mother-daughter dynamic is a complicated one. We are assigned roles within the family at birth and fifty years later there we are, still playing by the rules. Not asking the tough questions. Accepting the easy answers. Wondering how all these dramas manage to play out in plain sight without us even noticing.

I mean, why didn't I ever ask my mother how to knit in the round? It's okay if you laugh. I know that sounds crazy and maybe it is.
But the fact remains that for fifty years my mother was the one who did circular knitting and I was the one who wondered how she did it.

I never asked. She never volunteered. Within our family dynamic, she was The Knitter and I was The Crocheter and never that particular twain shall meet. Why didn't I ask? Would the earth have stopped spinning on its axis if I had? Would she have disowned me? Of course not. She would have sat me down and taught me the basics and I would have either picked up on it right away or pushed it aside and said it wasn't for me. Either way we would have been fine.

Or would we? There's the question. With mothers and daughters you never quite know how it will play out. When our pooches needed new sweaters, it was my mother who whipped out the double points then whipped up the garments while I watched in awe. I was happy with the status quo. We both probably were but, since I never asked, I'll never really know.

So many questions I wish I'd asked. The huge box of haute couture Barbie Doll clothes she hand-sewed for me one magical Christmas. The afghans scattered around my house. The hooked rugs. The oils and watercolors. The secrets she held closer than close.

I was thinking about my friend last night and her own family secrets as I rummaged through my mother's tiny knitting box in search of the fifth double point so I could scan the images. Bobbins wound with colorful yarn. Half-skeins of pale yellow and mint green. And one tapestry needle threaded with wool the color of a rainy day.

Sometime in the early 1950s in the Borough of Queens in NYC my mother threaded that needle then tucked it away in her knitting box. Fifty years later in central NJ I found that threaded needle and wished with all my heart I could have five more minutes with the woman who held the secret to the argyle socks.

Barbara