Knitting and Motherhood
By BILL DUNCAN
The View from Here
This Sunday is Mother’s Day, a time set aside to honor all mothers, but in particular our own mothers. In my growing up years there was a tradition of wearing a flower on your lapel – a red flower if your mother is alive or a white flower, indicating your mother was dead. I have been wearing the white flower for years, but that does not mean I do not have fond memories of my mother.
The one memory that is in the forefront is that she never had idle hands. Her hands were always busy making something creative. I recently read Max Lucado’s “The Applause of Heaven,” which is actually a book about the Beatitudes, that my mother once told me were her favorite biblical passages.
This column is not about the Beatitudes, nor do I intend to preach to you. It is about mothers, those unique people that teach us the meaning of love, sacrifice and all the virtues in the Beatitudes. In the pages of Lucado’s book, I found this passage:
“In my closet hangs a sweater that I seldom wear. It is too small. I should throw that sweater away. But love won’t let me. It’s the creation of a devoted mother expressing her love. Each strand was chosen with care. Each thread was selected with affection. It is valuable not because of its function, but because of its maker. That must have been what the Psalmist had in mind when he wrote, ‘you knit me together in my mother’s womb.’”
Lucado then challenges the reader to think on those words.
Just this week, I got a note from Debbie Macomber, the best selling author from Port Orchard, Wash., announcing her first children’s book scheduled just in time for Grandparents Day in September. Oddly, it too is about knitting, a favorite subject in Debbie’s 150 published novels and is even the title of her recent memoir, “Knit Together.” So all that handiwork my mother did must be a mother thing because the children’s hardcover book Debbie has written is entitled “The Truly Terrible Horrible Sweater that Grandma Knit.”
Debbie is the co-author of the book with Mary Lou Carney, a writer friend who met Debbie six years ago at the writer’s conference in Albuquerque, N.M. Mary Lou and Debbie are both grandmothers who write inspirational articles for Guideposts magazine.
“The story of the book was inspired by my own grandson, Cameron,” Debbie said, explaining that one day, “Cameron said, ‘Grandma, I really don’t like sweaters.’ So I wrote a book about a very special sweater Grandma knit just for Cameron.”
From an advance peek into the book, Cameron can’t figure out why his Grandmother would send him another sweater for his birthday – a truly terrible horrible sweater. Cameron pours mustard on his sweater. He puts ii on his dog who wears it out in the rain. He even tries to give it to a thrift shop, but nothing works and grandma is coming for a visit so he has to wear it. What will he say when she ask him about the sweater?
Every mother reading this story to a child will delight in the twist the authors have in the ending.
I don’t really have a sweater my mother knit me, but she was into ceramics and made
a birthday plate for each of my children. Those plates hang prominently in a row above the fireplace in my home as a reminder of a mother’s love – and a grandmother’s love too.
My wife made sweaters for me and my sons over the years, I have no idea if any of those sweaters are hanging in their closets now that they are adults living elsewhere, but I can tell you the one she made for me still hangs in my closet. She once put it in a Goodwill bag to give away, but I saw it and slipped it back into the closet.
I think I will wear it on Mother’s Day.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)