Our new grandson will be the ninth child baptized in the ensemble
my mother prepared for her children more than sixty years ago.
My sister and I were baptized in it, as
well as our six combined children.
Yesterday, I took it out to freshen up before taking it to our daughter
for the first wearing of the third generation.
With reverence, I open the box and separate the tissue
paper. The knitted bonnet rests on
top. The ribbons, yellowed with
age and crinkled from years of compression, need a wash and a warm iron. I make a mental note. The gown itself, with its fine
lace and delicate bows, is a marvel of craftsmanship. Each time I finger one of my mother’s creations, I marvel at
her expertise. Truly, her skill
with a needle and thread is matched only by the magic she created with knitting
needles. The shawl, its fine wool
and intricate patterns soft under my fingers, does need a wash in readiness for the celebration. As I caress the robe that my
mother added to the ensemble in her seventies for our son, her first
grandchild, I remember the baptisms of our own children, and my mother’s
delight that her creations continued to play a central role in the milestones
of the next generation.
Suddenly, I am immersed in the past.
As I swish the water slowly through the shawl, I think of my mother, alone in the old house nestled in the coulee
below the hills, two miles from the nearest neighbour. I picture her, belly teeming with new
life, filled with dreams for this new person as the needles click and the lines
of wool snake from her bag through her fingers. I see her updating my father on her progress, and I
visualize his admiration, his pride, and his excitement. This project would consume her days.
Still a spirit sitting next to my mother on the gray sofa of the old living room, I roll the wet shawl in the towel to squeeze out the excess
water. I realize I have stopped, mid-roll. The fog of several decades lifts, and I
see the events of a lifetime ago in spectacular light. My mother used this ensemble for the
first time for me. But she knitted
it for her first child, a son, my brother, who died at birth the year before I
was born. Why had I never
considered that before? In the
abject grief of losing a child she carried for nine months, a grief I have
never known, how much would packing away the baptismal ensemble into which she
had invested so much love have added to her devastation? Already thirty-five years old, she might have asked herself if she would ever have another child. I wonder, too, if, at each of the eight
baptisms for which that ensemble was used, she would have thought of her lost
son. What images filled her mind
when she looked at her work?
She never said a word.
She never shared any details about her experience in creating that
masterpiece.
For us, anyway, she
focused on the living.
Imagine the
strength that must have taken.
Yesterday’s experience haunts me still. How could I not have connected the dots
before? What a comfort,
at least, that, in my sixties, I continue to awaken to
perspectives I had never considered and directions I had never thought
necessary or possible.
Memories take on new meaning, new challenges loom, and life can still
glow with the kaleidoscope of dawn.
All through the last year, during the election campaign in the USA, and especially after November 8, I have struggled, as readers will know, to understand how anyone could support a misanthropic, narcissistic candidate so obviously unqualified to lead a country. How could people be duped into thinking Trump would have the back of working class America, even of working class white America? How could people have so little astuteness or humanity?
