We will never forget
Thursday September 11th 2008, 11:59 am
Filed under: Family,Knit

The doorbell rang the day after. It was our longtime UPS guy, holding the box in his hands, standing still on my doorstep, actually waiting for me to open the door so he could hand it to me in person.

It took a second for the concept to echo around my brain.  Doorbell.  The UPS guy? A box? Normal life?  Somehow, that all seemed so very far away, but there he was, needing the human contact of seeing me receiving it from him.  Making it personal.  He knew I’d be home; my car was in the driveway.  We both stood there in suspended animation for maybe two seconds, broken finally by my saying “Thank you,” as I received the box from him.

We’d both needed that moment.

There had been an online vendor selling merino lambswool/angora blended into an ultrathin yarn on a cone, very soft; as is, I’d probably never use it, but what I did was to wind half of it off, then two-ply it on my spinning wheel.  Two-ply the two-plies.  Wash the resulting four-ply yarn roughly in hot then cold water to felt the strands together, and knit it up into an afghan for a Christmas present.

For my brother and his wife, who taught high school in New Jersey.  Where a terrible number of the children had lost a parent in the Towers the day before John the UPS guy handed me that box, some of them both parents.  My brother himself had been on the subway: he’d called home to say, “Mom. Dad.  My subway was late.  I’m okay.”

The enormity of it all was not something to dissipate anytime soon, and I knew, as I picked up my needles once my yarn was spun, dried, and ready to go, that I needed to keep it very simple.  I needed comfort knitting. I needed it to be something I could knit without its requiring much attention out of me.

It wasn’t till I was very nearly done that I spread it out, with its 7×1 ribbing, and then it massively hit me: I’d been knitting a representation in yarn of one of the Towers, with not a clue I’d been doing so.  To wrap them and comfort them in softness and love from me.


4 Comments so far
Leave a comment

The day will be forever etched in my mind, standing in the post office watching the second plane tear into that building, watching the towers fall as my journalist son was on his way to cover the event. The totally sleepless night that followed as we waited news of his girlfriends dad, who thankfully survived. The very first thing we did in the aftermath that followed, we got cell phones, so we would never be as out of touch again as we felt that day. Wishing you peace, grace

Comment by grace 09.11.08 @ 1:32 pm

I lived 1 mile DUE south of the Pentagon. I was the first car to be searched at the base my husband was at. I couldn’t go home for a long time because the roads were closed. A friend of mine walked home from DC to Arlington. I watched the towers fall on TV; but I smelled burned building (and people) on my way to work for weeks. I will never forget that smell.

I remember that shortly after this, my husband carried a gun and wore body armor (for work) for the first time ever. I remember not sleeping and watching the damage analyst for the Pentagon.

Oh, yes, I remember.

Comment by Patricia 09.11.08 @ 2:02 pm

None of us will ever forget where we were that day (and the few days after). There were many, many acts of heroism that day and let us never forget to honor those people

Comment by Joan 09.12.08 @ 4:41 am

Amen.

Comment by AlisonH 09.12.08 @ 10:46 am



Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)