When my oldest was in high school, a dozen years or so ago, there was a young band and orchestra teacher, Theron Pritchett
Then he found out he had cancer. When he said they’d taken a 15-lb tumor out of his stomach, everybody went, Where? I mean, the guy was tall and thin to begin with, but afterward it was like his shirt could blow right through him in the wind. Fifteen pounds!
But it was apparently self-contained, they were very sure they’d gotten it all, and he was relieved to be back at work with his kids. Mine absolutely adored him. He was a good one.
I was sitting in my daughter’s next concert at school when an unexpected mental image came to me. I’d been spinning some 90’s (Bradford count) merino. Now, I didn’t know at the time how rare it was to even find a wool that fine to spin. Where I got it no longer has it. It was seriously soft stuff–the micron count was finer than cashmere. I had a baby blanket in mind to make with it, but as I sat watching Theron conduct and the kids play up on that stage, I pictured a different project entirely and I absolutely knew that what that wool was for was for making him an afghan to wish him well with. To try to convey how important he was to all the parents in the high school music community as well as the kids.
I did a fair bit more spinning, two-ply skein after two-ply skein. I wished fiercely that I knew how to knit lace. Had it been a few years in the future… I could picture exactly how I could have used lace leaf patterns and a faggoting stitch for a trunk to knit the idea of a Tree of Life, but at the time, it was simply beyond me. That fervent wish later helped propel me to sit down, books and needles in hand, and start to make myself finally work through and learn what I’d needed to know then. My first attempt at one repeat of Dutch Elm Leaves, in Theron’s memory, took me over an hour to do across 15 stitches with two mistakes I couldn’t figure out how to fix.
And look at me now. But this story isn’t about me.
So, instead, for his afghan, I sketched out what I had in mind and knit up that tree in a combination of knit and purl stitches gansey style. When I got done, you could see it if you saw it in light that let the purl stitches shadow across just a bit; otherwise, it was just a white blanket, but very nice.
I don’t have a picture of it. What I really wish is that I had a picture of Theron with it. He loved it and was fairly blown away; and then the thoroughly delightful exclamation of disbelief I knew was coming: “You SPUN the YARN?!!”
Memory says that band enrollment tripled and that that was when the school hired a second teacher to help handle the load. Who was Sue. Whom I got to see last night at the concert.
Shortly after she arrived at the school, I spun and knitted her a scarf–triangle and in angora, if I remember correctly.
Theron was there when I gave it to her. She was totally thrilled and stunned. I got to watch the grin on his face as she exclaimed the exact same words he had, “You SPUN the YARN?!!” He told her about his afghan in great delight.
Then the day word came he’d relapsed; it was hard. And yet I want to say: my daughter marveled to me at the time at how the kids across the high school came together, how they stopped judging each other the way teenagers do but simply saw each other as fellow travelers. Life is short; treat each other well. Theron had a positive influence far beyond what he knew as the kids reached out to each other in their grief.
Sue was one of the small group of friends who played a deeply moving rendition of “Amazing Grace” at his funeral.
Where I met Theron’s partner and introduced myself as the one who’d knit his afghan. He told me Theron had asked for it and had kept it on the bed with him his last week. I loved that. I loved thinking that the love I had tried to knit into it had comforted him. That comforted me.
I am so glad I got to see Sue last night. I am so glad we went!