The lost needles

She owned three sets of thin metal knitting needles: one for socks and gloves, one for baby clothes, the third for sweaters. She despised lazy thick yarns, wouldn't have dreamed of wooden needles or fancy wools.

She bought her yarn on sale at a stall in the open market, picked colors that would outlast stains and wear. She stuck to a sturdy stockinet stitch with an occasional cable, and for girly outfits, a row of lace. She knit socks, mittens, hats, underwear, bathing suits, dresses, sweaters, cardigans, scarves and booties. She knit cotton socks for the Dominican sisters' mission in Africa. She knit my brother's school sweaters with reinforced elbow pads. And when she knit me a white poncho with a blue trim and a double pom-pom closure, she also made a small replica of the poncho for my doll Henriette.

She knit in the afternoons during the time alloted for such work but didn't want anyone to think she was having any fun at it. She has clad three generations of children in navy raglan sweaters that could be partially unravelled and lenghtened to accomodate growth spurts. She had saved my grandfather's fingers from frostbite with the mittens she'd mailed to the POW camps in Germany. She had prevented colds and pneumonia with yard-long scarves that wrapped around the head and chest.

Without her steady knitting, we would have been sure to perish to the dampness of the Dunkirk winters. Her needles, bent from years of being tucked under her arms, were her swords of woolly love.

Shortly after she died, I searched through the house in hope of finding the needles but she had already disposed of them. She would have been loathed to throw them away - such fine needles, hardly bent by sixty-years of steady work. I imagined she must have shipped them to the Dominican mission in Africa . Somehwere in the world a woman is using those needles to knit a cotton poncho for a young girl.