Welcome! I’m writing about my creative growth in hopes of making this blog an inspirational magnet. I believe this: Everything I need, I already have. And maybe, so do you.
It’s Friday, date night. And I’m sitting here with Johnny Walker -- the Scottish whiskey -- in his good black label, poured over ice and splashed with Diet Coke. The boyfriend, a divorced dad, has his kid this weekend. So he’s not around. As for my daughter, she’s off to a sleepover with friends. I’m here alone. Well, not totally. The cats are here too, all three of them.
To be accurate: I’m actually here with my meow pals. And my booze. And, my blog.
Okay, go ahead. Throw it in my face. Yes, I’ve bragged that I know how to be alone. But that doesn’t mean I like it. Especially now. Because it’s not just the man and child that I’m missing. My 91-year-old mommy is the person I want tonight. I want her because she’s dying of old age. Of course, she would go and do that -- just when I have truly grown to love her.
What surprises me tonight is that in missing my mother, I have reached for my father, who died of a heart attack when I was only 19. As we enter the Year of the Ox, I am nostalgic for my daddy who would drag my mom, sister and me around Chinatown. Since he was a local businessman, we were constantly attending banquets that celebrated everything from weddings to the one-month-old birthday parties of newborn babies, to business events and 10-course Lunar New Year dinners.
Johnny Walker was always on the banquet table, along with liters of Coca Cola and our complaints about not being home to watch our favorite TV shows. I remember how much Dad enjoyed toasting the host with a Johnny-and-Coke. Those memories mark the last time I had the security of being in a nuclear family.
I haven’t touched Johnny Walker in decades. But tonight, Scottish boy keeps me warm in a hug from my father.
And these woolen arm things have become a warm reminder of my mom.
Last week when I visited her at the nursing home, she noticed them. In an earlier post about using these things to ward off the chill, I referred to them as fingerless gloves.
“You’re wearing Chinese gloves!” my mother noted between the bites of pureed chicken casserole that I was feeding her.
“Chinese? Why are they Chinese, Ma?”
“Oh, we always wore these in China,” she said matter-of-factly.
My mom is from the cold north, notorious for its icy winters. Her mom was an elegant lady with bound feet. Her dad was a three-star general who ran a military school that was the West Point of Beijing -- called Peiping back then.
“Chinese gloves? Really. What colors did people wear?” This was interesting, new information.
My mom thought a second. “Dark colors,” she said. “Brown, black, navy blue.” Amazing, the odd details that she can suddenly recall in her dementia.
And in that moment with my mom, I seized on the idea of “Chinese gloves.” I refuse to call this current holiday season “Chinese New Year” because it’s wrong -- other Asian nationalities like the Koreans and Vietnamese -- celebrate it too. But “Chinese gloves” might work.
Hmmm. This thing has no fingers at all. It’s just a knitted tube, with a stitch to create a thumb-holder.
They’re actually more like open-ended mittens. Because when it gets cold, I do a turtle and retract my fingers...
...like this. So why
not call them Chinese gloves.
I like it. The name reminds me of Mom. In a good way.
A dear friend once told me that parents never die because their qualities, habits and values live on in their children. If that’s true, then I am struggling to keep my parents close. I don’t want to feel like an orphan when Mom leaves this earth. I don’t plan on making a habit out of hanging with Johnny Walker. But tonight, I’m toasting Mom and Dad, in my wooly wrist warmers, during the Lunar New Year, with a couple of sad, sentimental, very solitary drinks.
Supplies:
No. 4 circular knitting needles
1 1/2 skeins of 1.75-ounce Mission Falls merino wool
Cast on 48 stitches.
K2, P2 for an inch of ribbing at the hand end of the glove.
Then K8, P8 for 2-1/2 inches.
Knit only, for 5 inches.
Then K2, P2 for the last 1-1/2 inches, which will form the ribbing along the forearm end of the glove.
Bind off.
Take this rectangle and hand-stitch a seam along the length of it. Now you’ll have a tube.
To create a thumb holder, take your tube and fold it flat. Let the seamed edge sit at one end of your flattened tube.
On the opposite tube edge, where there’s no seam, go to the hand ribbing and mark off 1-1/4 inches.
Tack a few stitches along the length of the ribbing to form a thumb holder.
That’s it. Make two of these tubes and you’re done!
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