Part two.

We got to see Janna and her husband. We walked into the presence of such an immense sense of love.

She was joyful, she was exhausted, and I hope at just under an hour we didn’t stay too long. I have more experience than most at how wonderful and tiring it is to see people even when you love them so much when you’re so ill and we were all trying to be mindful of that, though I’m not quite sure we were mindful enough. But man, it was good to see her and to meet her prince of a husband. (Her first one died years ago.) He is so good to her.

I had four more hats ready (Richard says five), including one begun in the airport, and two balls of yarn to ask if she’d like those colors next. She said sure. She had one on that I’d mailed earlier.

But she gently let me know that all of these were really more than she could wear.

Not knowing that I had thought of her beloved as I packed this thick warm greens-etc Mecha one and that earlier one and was thinking of her granddaughter and her two older sons and the son I’d knit the Christmas stocking for years ago: her mom had knit one with the name knitted in for each of her grandchildren–but he hadn’t been born yet when she died.

When Janna told me that of course I made him one.

I had never knitted such a thing before and I couldn’t find a pattern for one with the kind of cabling I wanted, so I just winged it. I can do socks, right?

Um. Sometimes letting the object be its own size swatch has its idiosyncrasies, not to mention Malabrigo Rios is not sock yarn.

So I asked her if he wishes he had one that weren’t so big and she exclaimed, He LOVES his big stocking! You can fit anything in it!

We all laughed.

He’s in his mid-20s now. We sat there a moment with the unspoken thought between us that his future children likely won’t know their grandmother, either.

An experimental med in ’03 snatched me back at the edge of life. If only. You never know.

I will have my work cut out for me. I’ll let him and his future love decide what size to aim for.

But meantime, any of her family who want to wear a Malabrigo hat in solidarity with her in this beautiful month of June, maybe when the hot sun dips below the mountains? I think with these last two coming along, if she wants, we’ve pretty much got them covered.

And I can always knit more.