Knitting Guru
(36 of 50)
You know, even if we didn’t make it to all the “perfect” places in Austin, we made it TWICE to see my Knitting Guru, and that was solid gold.
She is a woman I met when I started attending the UU church and discovered that I was indeed a lifelong Unitarian but just didn’t know what to call it all those years. In 1995, I was pregnant and wanting connection, so I volunteered to teach Sunday School, after Guru J chatted me up and I discovered that we shared similar teaching philosophies.
I began to live for the days when she was able to stay after church talking and gabbling with me until we were embarrassingly the last folks to leave the parking lot, stomachs grumbling for lunch.
Eventually, I found my way to her house, which was filled with books and yarn and music and love. I soaked up the time with her, and mentioned that when I was 40 (which I regarded at the Age At Which Everything Would Be Over), I would take up knitting again. She looked at me a little askew and said, “why wait? I’ve been knitting forever since I was about 8 or 9.” Oh.
So I took up needles and tried again… and fast forward two years, and I have a baby in tow on the way to Australia on a lark, and my Make-Mistake-Snake on the needles on the plane. I completed this lovely snake toy for my child, having learned much about tension, switching from purl to knit and back again, dropping stitches, joining seams, slipping the first stitch on the row and counting each row each time to see that I did not drop a stitch.
Many thousands of conversations, games, visits, food, stories, books, yards of yarn and years later, and we were sitting around her table again tonight, talking a blue streak right up until I had to run out to dinner in order to get to sleep by 11 or so. And still we have conversations, knitting work and stories to finish and show/tell each other another time.
Tonight, I showed her my very favorite birthday present, a compilation art technique book that someone gave me thinking it wasn’t much of a gift, but it was better to pass it along than to toss it. OMG, both of us raved and drooled over it for an hour. She said, “Oh my, I LOVE THIS. It gives me SO many ideas!” EXACTLY! That’s the magic of it!
Such a treasured friendship. I am truly blessed, and to that she would say, “oh well, you know, it’s just what we do, isn’t it? No big deal. Glad to see you anytime!”
And later, my darling child said, “J is so sweet.” Why? I prompted. “Well, she just UNDERSTANDS what I’m into. She listens.”
Wow. Yes. That from a 12 year old who is priming himself for a typical but very non-conformist teenage (just like all teenagers). For both of us, we have a role model for very different (but really just the same) reasons. And that is just awesome.
Now all I can think of is what should I make her! I have a very good idea. Heh heh…
You make me cry, for a number of reasons.
And I think that “old age wisdom” must be when you realize that it doesn’t take THAT much to be an Aunt J for someone… just time and caring, and realizing that it’s really, truly what matters most in our lives – connecting with people and sharing Life. I think those of us who can begin to tap into that without waiting to be 65 or 70, or even older… well, we’ve found a treasure.
The thing is, she and I have never been concerned of mindful about age. She is indeed in her 70s and I’m…. 50! But we have dealt with each other as contemporaries.
So my conclusion (I don’t want to overanalyze) is that you never know at what stage of life you will find friends. More on that later!