To Knit or Knot

I started knitting about 2002 or 2003. I bought a beautiful knitted scarf at a craft fair, spending far more than I would like to and as a result spent little other money that day. I was so taken with it's beauty, texture, color and style. I decided immediately afterward that I would enroll in a knitting class at a local yard parlor in town. My first class scarf was ripped out no less than 6 times before it was completed. I would start talking and visiting with the other people in the class (several women of varying ages, a young boy and an older man) and before I knew it I would be knitting in the wrong direction and the long rectangular scarf would take on more of the look of a sleeve for a sweater than a scarf! Yikes!

October ~ a month to forget

With the passing of my dear dog the end of September my heart was already heavy with grief when my mother, who was hospitalized for several weeks, passed away on October 21, 2010. I did all I could for her in her last year on earth; emotionally, spiritually and financially. I gave her my time, my love, my support and when she was in need of something to make her life a little easier I sent it to her. Her death pulled apart the already unraveled rope of what was left of my relationship with my older sisters, who would not let go of the grudges they held against her for what she did, or didn't do, over half a century ago.

Seeing mother dying in her hospital bed was a very sad sight I will never forget. It made it so easy for me to drop whatever remnants I had of my own past grievances with her. Her last words to me about my other sisters were, "where are they" and "are they coming?" It broke my heart to see the look on her face when I said they wouldn't be coming to see her. I think that is when she stopped trying to live. She had told me over a year ago that the one thing she constantly prayed for was that all four of her daughters would be talking to her, having a relationship with her. It was one wish, one desire of her heart, one prayer that never happened for her.

I am reminded of a quote that was written on a picture I had on my living room wall back around 1975. It read:

One ship sails east and another west with the self-same winds that blow,
'Tis the set of the sail and not the gale which determines the way they go.
The winds of the sea are the ways of fate as we voyage along through life,
'Tis the act of the soul that determines the goal, and not the calm or the strife.

-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox