Angie Chatman - A Knitted Peace

 

My mother was skilled at all the needle arts. She can sew, embroider, knit and crochet. Her grandmother, Dearie, taught her. According to family lore, Dearie was such an accomplice seamstress that she sewed for all the wealthy families in Chicago, Armor, McCormick, Wrigley. She was so good she could go in the front door of Marshall Field’s when all the other colored folk had to go in the back door, if they could go at all. 

 

On one of my visits to Chicago to see my mother, I found her floral covered pouch which held her knitting needles. It was underneath a stack of old magazines and around those overdue bills and final notices. I took them home with me to Connecticut. And then, I went downstairs and I took out the blanket she had knitted for me when I went off to college, and I wrapped it around my shoulders and I cried. 

 

As the Alzheimer's continued its unrelenting and cruel mission to turn my mother, my smart and beautiful mother, into this stranger. I knit, transferring the stitches from needle to needle, row after row, was like a rosary or mala beads. It helped calm my spirit and assuage my grief just a little bit. When my mother forgot my birthday, by that time, I had knit six hats for babies in the NICU. When she forgot my name, I had knit 12 scarves for the homeless. And when she couldn't remember anything, I had, by that time, knit a blanket for each one of my three children, just like she had done for me and my siblings. 

 

So, I'd gotten pretty good at knitting, and I wanted to try some harder patterns, like cables and lace squares and diamonds. And so, I went on the internet and I found a site where you could knit. And then, this woman in California would collect all the blankets she asked for everyone around the country to knit and send these lap blankets or prayer shawls and then she would take them to nursing homes in the area and pass them out to Alzheimer's patients. 

 

So, I picked the faith pattern. I went into that project with a fervor, because it was like I was knitting a shield against my sorrow. I wrapped it up and mailed it to Diane. And about a week after, I got this email from her. Now, I had never met Diane, but I pictured her as a gracious and charming lady who was so polished that she would wear pearls in the shower. [audience laughter] 

 

This is not a quote of the email. This is how I interpreted it. “Dear Angie, what the hell happened? [audience laughter] This blanket is a quarter size of what it should be. You might as well not even call it a blanket. It's more like a placemat. [audience laughter] Please send us another blanket.” So, I wrote her back and I explained that my mother had passed a couple months ago, and so I didn't pay attention to this thing that knitters have to do called gauge. 

 

Now, gauge is how tight a knitter holds the string. It's individualized and personal, unique to the knitter as your fingerprint. And so, when it comes to a pattern, you're supposed to check your gauge or against the pattern's gauge. And if it doesn't match, then you're supposed to adjust your gauge by changing the needle size or the kind of yarn or some combination of both. In my grief, I skipped that step. 

 

And so, Diane forgave me. And she said, “You know, get to it when you can.” And another week passed, and she sent me another email. It turns out that the blanket that I had knit, the placemat, had gotten caught up in her delivery bag anyway, and this Alzheimer's patient, Marta, picked it. She needed it for Tonino, her dog. [audience laughter] 

 

Now, nursing homes don't allow dogs. This was a stuffed animal. [audience laughter] But it was very real to Marta and to me. Faith is a very powerful thing, and anything done with love is never wasted. Thank you.