I’ve been hesitating for the last several hours to write this because it’s not about me and I don’t want to make it sound like it is.
This morning as I was deciding what to wear to church today, the thought came, wear a scarf. Not a shawl today.
And a few minutes later I found myself thinking, I need to knit me a pink scarf, while envisioning some baby alpaca in my stash I might use for it. It would go with so many things.
Wait–say what? But I *have* a pink scarf. In that shade. I kind of shook my head at the silliness of the thought. I had knit it, not only out of baby alpaca, but out of a splurge of royal baby alpaca, Blue Sky Alpacas’ brand, the finest micron-count grade one can buy as far as I know and that my hands have ever felt. I’d knitted it up for my next book project and it was safely tucked away in wait.
But on impulse I pulled it out anyway. Wait–I never ran the second end in? (I always do the first going all the way across as I purl the first row; then it is not only done, there is matching spare yarn in the thing itself should the project ever need mending later.)
Well then. And I ran that remaining end through the cast-off row and put the scarf on. The shade of pink didn’t actually quite match what I had on but I persuaded myself that it was okay and wondered…? as we headed out the door to church. Curious. I promised myself to stay open to whatever might arise.
It was Fast Sunday (details here.)
And one of the people who got up was a man we’d never seen before. He said he and his wife were there on their way to LA. He talked about finding out he was quite possibly going blind, and as a graphic artist, this was a really really hard place to find himself in. (I thought, and for your wife. Very much so.) But after much prayer and working through all the emotions that come with such a situation, he had come to a place (and I imagine from my own experiences he was probably constantly having to work to stay in that place) where he could say, Thy will be done.
He knew God loved him and that was all that mattered. Between them all, the details would work out somehow some way.
And as he spoke, I remembered a story from a book I had read long ago, written by a woman who raised angora rabbits for the handspinning and knitting communities, the title long forgotten to memory. (ed. to add: I *think* it was “Angora” by Erica Lynne.) She told of a young man who had come to her, hoping that she would make him a soft angora scarf for his grandmother: she was mostly deaf now and mostly blind and very old, but, he told her, and I will never forget the words, “She can still feel.”
Moved, the woman spun and knitted and made him that scarf, taking his love, adding her own, and making it tangible for a lovely old lady she had never met.
I sought out the man after the meeting was over. I told him about my grandmother being a concert pianist and having taught music at the University of Utah 90 years ago, and how she’d picked out my piano teacher–but that I had started going noticeably deaf by my teens.
“Aspirin,” I added. “I was allergic to aspirin. It took them 17 years to figure it out.” (Actually, thinking later, more than that, I was 31 when a very astute ENT put all the clues together.)
“Aspirin!” he exclaimed.
I told him how much I appreciated his willingness to learn to trust that God knew what He was doing.
And then (trying not to blather) I tried to describe, in as few words as possible, what royal baby alpaca was. The softest of the softest of my favorite fiber to knit.
And then I got to see the love and warmth for her that came across his face as I told him it was for his wife.
That said it all. The impulse was true.
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p.s. A note to that couple: if the color’s not quite what you want, let me know and I will gladly overdye it for you.