We have a young designer here at the agency who has only knit scarves. She came to me because she wanted to knit her husband a hat for Christmas (in 9 days), and she was struggling with the yarn she had. I asked her what sort of yarn it was.
“Alpaca.”
“Ok, but is it thick? Thin?”
“I don’t know. I got it from my grandma, and it’s really tangled. I’ve spent four hours trying to untangle it.”
“Oh, dear. What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”
So yesterday, I took her up to the Studio (just a few blocks from work) and encouraged her to look at some bulky-weight yarns, since this was her first time knitting something other than a scarf, she’d be working in the round, and, well, Christmas is next week. Always aim for success when you’re beginning, I say. Before we left, I asked her if she had a budget. “Five dollars?” She said, hopefully. I looked at her and I said, “Well, that’s gonna be tough.” She moved it up to ten. They’d agreed not to buy each other anything for Christmas. I said we’d do our best to get her something she’d like but wouldn’t break the bank.
Now, you don’t know her, but imagine a wee wisp of a thing, with black wavy hair, wide eyes, and pale perfect skin. She dressed up in a toga for our Halloween party, and she looked like some sort of mythical wood nymph, straight out of a Homer classic. A veritable doll, quiet and keeps to herself. I feel quite lumbering, loud and mule-like around her delicateness. At one point, while she was looking at some Manos, I felt like I’d thrown her into a frat party of yarn. She responded that she’d just never seen so much yarn before in her life. Wow. It took me back to when I first went to Depth of Field in Minneapolis, uh, 20 years ago, and I couldn’t believe how much it all cost. In the end, we set her up with a $13 skein of a mellow rusty orange Manos, and I volunteered to loan her the needles.
Before we headed back to work, I zipped over to Wendy’s for a little potato-and-chili to go, and as we were driving there, we talked. It started out with geography of Kansas City – they live far to the North, and she would like to live closer in, and I was telling her how the river and bridges definitely separate worlds, and how a situation of mine had unfolded when a friend had moved. That veered into post-dead-dad stuff, and the angry email I’d gotten, about having changed (“and not for the better!”), and I was talking about grief, and I realized I was talking like a forty-year-old woman. Which, of course, I am. But I turned to her as I said, “I realize I’m talking to you as though you’ve never lost someone close to you, and that’s a misguided assumption on my part, I don’t mean to speak that way.” With the tiniest glitter in her eyes, she solemnly looked back at me, and said, “I lost my mom when I was 16. Right after Christmas.”
And our words spilled back and forth – she also graduated at 16, has a strained and difficult relationship with her father, and the similarities and differences sorted themselves into tidy little piles. I hate that it’s a “club”. I hate that no matter how vividly I articulate the pain I’ve felt, and will feel for the rest of my life, still can not fully bring comprehension to those who have not gone through it. So inevitable, so dreadful, so so hard. The holidays are bittersweet, because they bring memories, and even the good ones have the rind of melancholy. You just get through, you fake it a little bit, withdraw a little bit, and try to be aware if the sand is sinking under your feet. But in odd ways, the Dead Loved One club does prove to be a strange forger of friendships and understanding. Like those shops at an outlet mall, they stand lined up yet alone, facing outward – but they are all interconnected by a passageway a few steps beyond the stockroom.
Last weekend, I found myself crying a little bit, just sad, just missing my father, and one of my inner voices railed at the sky, crying out “WHY”, why do I have to feel this pain for the rest of my life? And for the first time I heard a response. “Because the pain you feel is in direct proportion to the love you had for him.” I would never give up that love, and I know that love will stay with me until I die, which is a comfort. So I have to accept this piece that wails and cries and sometimes feels as raw as June 10th, 2006. Balance. The depths parallel the heights. Despite my tears, I know I’m not going to be as depressed this year as I was last year, and cognitively, I can see that the next year will most likely be better.
Ah. Death. What strange and twisted growth you encourage when you prune from our hearts.