Passing Down the Years

When my Mom visited us back in June, she brought with her a very special bag. It was a knitting bag, my Great-Grandmother's knitting bag containing the projects she was working on before she passed away just over six years ago. The bag itself is very nice ... purchased on a trip to Hawaii, it is a padded quilted bag with a traditional mirrored image motif.

I would treasure the bag on its own merits, but to go through the contents and explore the knitting of someone I was related to, someone born and raised in a very different time, someone I knew my entire life but did not know well, it was very special. It felt right to sit on the couch and share the experience with my Mother, a fellow knitter, as we touched the handiwork last worked on by someone in our direct female line. There were all the regular accouterments found in the typical knitting bag: a spare pattern (2 copies, in fact); crochet hooks in two sizes; a tapestry needle; small, sharp scissors. Her last project was a baby blanket for charity, left unfinished.

She was in her nineties when she passed away, and had lived a long, full and mostly healthy life. Her children survived. She was involved in her community, and took great pride in local institutions. She had a comfortable retirement. There was very little melancholy for me as I looked through her belongings and thought of her, although I did have the vague sensation of missing her presence in the world, and the accumulated experiences and observations of her life. She died about a week before my first child, Miles, was born. She knew he was expected and I've been told the thought of a new little boy in the family gave her pleasure, but she was ready to go. I don't begrudge her a good and timely death. I would, however, liked to have talked knitting with her; shared something that passed the gulf of our different generations and expectations.

However, that opportunity has passed, and I am left with another chance to know her. I will finish her last baby blanket, and pass it on to an anonymous baby, to honor his (or her) entrance into this world with something handmade.


I think she would approve.