About a month ago, I started knitting – a handmade colorful baby blanket for my first biological grandchild, who’s on the way. A year ago I would have told you “Hey, I don’t have time to knit! I’m a busy woman, working on building a new career!”
Now here I am, knitting like any crazy-in-love grandma-to-be.[custom_frame_left] 
[/custom_frame_left]
But that’s just the beginning. You know how sometimes circumstances converge, the planets align, and the bells and whistles all ring? That’s what happened to me today. And knitting played a key role.
Overnight we kept my “bonus” grandson, Alejandro, who’s 15 months old. He arrived without a jacket, so I had my husband bring upstairs two treasured boxes of old and mostly handmade baby blankets and clothing to see if I had kept a jacket that Ale could wear. As I slowly unpacked each cherished item – I had only saved the best, the handmade, the not-worn-out – I found myself reeling as I lifted out one handmade sweater after another, in sizes from Infant to 4-5. Knitted by my mother. For my children, including Adam, the one with the girlfriend who is mother to Ale.
Here’s a tiny size 2, denim-looking jacket, complete with embossed snaps and jean-style seams… made by me, for my son Adam 30-some years ago. A lacy yellow knitted blanket made for my daughter, by her grandma (my mom).
When my pregnant daughter-in-law protests that the knitting projects are “too much work,” I tell her adamantly, “With every stitch, I’m thinking about you both, and about the baby girl growing inside. I’m knitting love.” Knitting serves as a meditation as well. A portable art that suits my life at this time. Creating a treasure, while I move from room to room, visit, travel. I am loving it! And she accepts this.
Still, I get it that knitting is a lot of work, and I’m only choosing the simplest of patterns. When I hold the tiny white sweater my mother made for my first-born Jessica, lacy and intricate, with a matching hat… I am in awe. How could I not deeply appreciate that back then? (Sure, I said thank you, and I did like it… but …. now, I get it.) What was I thinking?
Somehow, this awareness triggers a gusher of emotion… sadness that my son Adam and his girlfriend are moving across the country with Ale in just 3 weeks and I will so miss them; joy that my first grandbaby is on the way for my other son; fear that I could lose one of these many people I love so dearly at any moment…and awe at the passage of time. How could all these tiny garments belong to my children who are now moving across the country with a new family, or starting a family of their own? How could this happen? Was I not paying attention?
The magnitude of love and life and loss fills me. There is no way to stop Alejandro from growing… growing from this buddha-like smiling baby, into a mischievous fast-moving toddler… into a small boy with dreams of his own. There’s no way to stop growth. And change. And life. And loss. Even death.
We are so fragile. Those we love are so fragile. And no matter what we think or try to do, there’s no real way to protect ourselves and those we love. Anyone could be taken away at any moment.
The sense of time pierces me…. I didn’t appreciate my mother’s love and fine work, her gifts to me and my children. I was so lost in my own affairs, my own life. I took for granted the love, the hours, the intent that went into her little sweaters – a deep blue one for my son, with a Fair Isle design in red and yellow and white.[custom_frame_left]
[/custom_frame_left]
Unbelievable. I wasn’t paying attention.
I couldn’t stop crying this morning. Life is so fragile. Each moment changes so quickly. If we are not paying attention, it’s gone forever. And with it, all the details of its beauty.
Is this perhaps what other grandmothers experience, when they first enter the realm of GrandMothering? Is this why my mother-in-law used to say to me, “Enjoy them while they’re young! Time goes too fast!” And I would think, “Well sure, that’s easy for you to say! Me, I’m just trying to get the laundry and meals taken care of while I deal with two toddlers!”
My experience today feels mystical and deep. I love so. And I so get it that all that I am loving is vulnerable. It hurts to pull that all into one moment of awareness.
I don’t believe I could bear it if I didn’t have a deep conviction, even an experience, that despite the fragility of all forms of Life (including me), Something – Something Real – underlies all of this beauty and fragility.
As if God is wearing 10 billion different costumes and masks, playing here on this beautiful planet.. playing a Young Woman.. oh WOW! How fun is this! Playing an Octopus… gal-up, gal-up… playing a Redwood Tree… stillness, with a whispering of the branches.
The costumes, the masks come off and vanish – but the underlying Force that comes into Form is always there, forever. Filled with Love. Being Love. It IS Love.
Yes, there is loss. I will someday lose all those I love, at least in physical form, or they will lose me. But the love remains. Beyond the physical world, love remains. And love is the force from which all this is built, this planet as a playground for the soul to practice. “Can I love in this challenging situation? Can I love even though… ?”
How can I bear it? Whatever I might know or believe, still I’m only human. I don’t want my heart broken any more than the next person. I don’t want to lose anyone.
The tiny sweaters, miniature gifts with love in each stitch, now the castoffs of my adult children… remind me. The children may have grown, as each now-adorable baby will also. But today, as I looked at the sweaters, the blankets, the tiny bathrobe I sewed.. what I saw, what I felt, was love. Not loss. Only love.
My gift to my children, to my grandchildren, to my friends, my husband, my clients… must be that Love. Loving bigger, loving deeper. Even when I know there will be seeming loss.
And my second gift? To be present. To pull my mind from this Great Understanding back into the present moment, to just be. Take care of Ale while he’s here. Run with him… play sticks with him…. follow the rooster with him. To pay attention. To knit love into every stitch, and to savor the feel of the yarn on my fingers, the growing weight of the blanket.
I bet I’m not the first grandma to figure this out.
