Tag: children

Knitworthy

On By aftheadIn Knitting3 Comments

A friend of mine coined a phrase that has stuck with me.  She said that in order to hand-knit something for a friend or acquaintance they had to be knitworthy. Knitworthy is not an overall measure of the quality of a person, but a judgement on their ability to appreciate handmade gifts.  Gifts that usually cost more to make, in materials alone, than it would cost to buy similar objects.  Gifts that take your time and effort to produce.  Gifts, to be fair, that are sometimes lopsided and funny looking but come with all kinds of personality built in.

Lots of wonderful people are not knitworthy.  Let me provide a parallel example.  I am not foodworthy.  Inviting me over for a fancy four-course meal is an utter waste of your effort.  I am a simple eater and cannot tell the difference between a meal that takes 4 hours of sauteing, braising, and chopping and a crock pot meal.  Do not waste your culinary wizardry on me.  Invite over another friend.  Oh, and if you are serving fancy wine, just pour me some water and enjoy it yourself.  $15 and $50 bottles of wine are the same to me.  I am a nice, good, lovely person who does not have the palette to appreciate fancy food.

Knitworthy means that the person you are giving your knitted item to will gush over it.  They will treasure it.  They will pay attention when you give them washing instructions.  They will take pictures of themselves, their children, or their spouses wearing your knit item and send those pictures to you.  They will brag to their friends that “Someone made this for me.”  They will treasure baby hats and pass them on to other babies that they love.  They will tell you that the blankie you knit is their child’s absolute favorite and they hope you have more yarn like that in case it ever gets a hole.  When they accidentally miss the washing instructions and their beloved hat shrinks into a fuzzy ball and they will beg you to make another, “just like it, but maybe in green this time.”

Today, I presented one of my dearest knitworthy friends with three hats for her kiddos.  When baby number one was born she got a teeny sweater.  When baby number two was born the new baby and her sister got coordinating hats.  Now that baby three is here, the only option was to make all three girls hats.

They were so fun to make and give.  I loved thinking about each girl and customizing the colors and the topper for her individual hat.  I loved giving them to my friend the day after the first big snowfall of the year and knowing her girls heads will be warm all winter.  I love that she slipped the teeny one on her baby’s head before they went outside, so she wore it home.  She is totally knitworthy.  Spending my time and energy making her kiddos stuff makes me so happy, makes her happy and makes her kids happy.  I can’t wait until they are teenagers and she and I can torture them with “another batch of hats from auntie Johanna”.  I think then I’ll make sure they are really itchy too.  She and I will then appreciate how my knitting skills can be used for good and evil.  Hmmm, I should start learning about GPS trackers too.  I could embed them into the hat so we can see what trouble her girls are getting into.

You play the hand you are dealt

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized20 Comments

My dad is a poker player.  He has been a poker player for as long as I can remember.  When I was a child he played in various neighborhood games.  Then gambling was legalized west of Denver and he added Texas Hold’em to his repertoire.  While I am not a poker player, lacking the poker-face and calculating-odds-on-the-fly genes, I have always enjoyed watching my dad play the game.  When I was in my teens I would go up to the mountains with him and watch him play against the other players at the table.  I’d watch reckless players flamboyantly going against the odds, and methodical players never deviating from what math would tell them to do.  The good players, like my dad, would know the odds, but play the game to maximize the hand they had and the players at the table.

One thing you learn from poker, especially Hold’Em, is that you have to play the cards in your hands.  In draw poker you can trade in the cards you have for other cards that might make your hand better, but once you get those cards, you don’t get other ones.  In the end, you always have to make the best hand you can out of the cards you have.

I think life is like Texas Hold’Em.  You and your family sit around a table and each are dealt cards and you have to play those cards.   Maybe the rules are different because you get more opportunities to trade in your cards, and the stakes are higher, but one thing is the same: once you are dealt a card you have to play it.   You can’t untake a card.

Let’s look at my life.  When I was 23 I traded in my “single gal card” for a “live with a guy card”.  I still had my “loves bad boys who ride motorcycles” card, just in case living together didn’t work out.  Seven years later, the bad boys got traded in for a marriage card and my mate hand was set.

What I didn’t know, and my husband didn’t even know, was that he had a depression card in his hand.  His first episode hit right after we were married.  It took months to diagnose what was going on.  His symptoms manifest themselves physically and he went through a barrage of medical test to determine what was wrong.  In the end there was only one possibility left: that his sickness was in his mind. Therapy, time and medication eased his symptoms and eventually cured him a year later.  We were told that there was a good chance this would be a one time episode, but if he had another it was probably going to plague him throughout his life.

So he had the depression card.  He couldn’t trade it in.  Maybe he was lucky and just had the “one episode” kind, but maybe not.  I had joined my life to a guy who may or may not have another breakdown.  Sure, it wasn’t my card, so I could have left him.  I could have decided that staying with someone who had a chance of another breakdown wasn’t worth it, but I didn’t, because I loved him and I wanted a life with him.

We had a baby together, and when she was four, it happened again.  Now I had a new card, a mom card.  That’s one powerful card, and I spent almost a year keeping her alive as my first priority, and keeping my husband alive as my second.  Again, he has the depression card, not me, but with us drawing the parent card together I was permanently tied to him.  I could help him get well again, or abandon him and risk being alone, divorced from my husband, fighting some future custody battle.  I wouldn’t be married to him, but I would know that he could get sick again and if we weren’t together I couldn’t help him or my daughter.  Worst case I’d have a child whose father killed himself.  I loved our family too much to not try, so I spent another year fighting and we all came through together, but this time I know that it will happen again.

I was frank with my colleagues, family, and friends with the second episode because I needed all the help I could get.  Some asked “How do you do it?” “Why do you do it?”  The reality of the situation was that I didn’t want to do it.  I didn’t want to be married to a man with depression.  I didn’t want to worry day and night about my daughter and him.  But I had to play the hand I was dealt.  The words that meant the most to me while I was struggling was, “This just sucks.”  It didn’t do any good to think about “What ifs”  “What if he hadn’t gotten depressed?”  “What if we hadn’t had a kid?”  He was and we did and we had to do the best we could.  The words that meant the second most were, “How can I help?”  “Can we have you over for dinner?”  “Can I take him out to give you a break?”  What didn’t help were suggestions from people unwilling to jump in and get dirty with us. “You should” and “Why don’t you” drove me crazy.  Those are words of judgement made from the outside and weren’t worth my notice.  No one who didn’t have my hand could really understand what our family was going through, and if you don’t understand you have no right to shout advice from the sidelines.  Trust me, in the World Series of Poker the audience doesn’t get to shout “You should fold” to the players.  The players make the most they can out of the cards they have and the people at the table.

I hate that our family has these cards.  I hate that the cards we have make us fearful of other cards: my daughter becoming depressed; me dying and my husband falling apart; another episode of depression.  We do what we can to arm ourselves against those possibilities.  My husband visits a psychiatrist every 6 months so he has an active relationship with her in case he gets depressed again.  We’ve learned to teach our daughter to stay away from hard drugs as she gets older, because that’s a huge risk to damaging her brain chemistry and causing her problems in the future.  We have a will set up to protect her in case something happens to me and my husband can’t make decisions anymore.  All of that sucks, but it’s part of making the most of the hand we’ve been dealt.

The one thing that makes me grateful for what we’ve been through is the empathy I have for others.  Friends of ours just had their child diagnosed with a terminal illness.  She probably won’t see her third birthday.  I could hide from their sadness.  I could ignore their plight, or I could tell them what they should do.  I don’t do any of that.  I do whatever I can do let them know that this just sucks.  Sucks in a way I can’t imagine, because I don’t have that card, and I can’t imagine having that card.  I can’t understand a situation I’m not living, but I can interpret from the pain of my past the pain of others.  I can acknowledge their anguish, and do what I can to help.  I can’t make it better.  I can’t take their card away.  I can’t make the card never happen.  But I can use what I have in my hand to make their hand the best it can be.  You live the live you are dealt, and sometimes that sucks so bad it’s unfathomable.  You sit at the table with all your friends and family and you do what you can to give everyone the best hand they can get, because unlike poker, there isn’t one winner and everyone else loses.  The players make the most they can out of the cards they have and the people at the table, but in life the winner doesn’t take all.  We are all in this game together.

I Really Want Kittens

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I have always wanted kittens.  A litter of tiny kittens I could watch grow from birth through kitten-hood.  I want to see the tiny babies born, licked clean by their momma, and then nursed.  I want to see their ears open, their eyes open, and watch them take wobbly first steps.  I want to have kittens chewing on my fingers, crawling up my leg and sitting on my shoulder.

I am a responsible pet owner.  I spay and neuter my cats just like I’m supposed to.  I think letting your cats have kittens is irresponsible, but I really want kittens.

My daughter wants kittens.  We sit together and watch the Animal Planet show Too Cute, and we marvel over the tiny furry babies.  We coo as they take first steps.  We laugh when the fluffy ones get their first bath and become wet and sad looking.  She asks me, “Mom, why can’t our cats have kittens?”  I tell her that our cats had surgery and they can’t have kittens, but I want kittens too.

Our last cat we adopted from the shelter was a foster cat.  A seed was planted.  A lovely woman I met at the shelter had my kitten at her house, and had cared for the tiny kitten until she’d grown “big enough.”

I found the program.  I signed up.  I went to training.  I was interviewed.  I went to more training.  My house was inspected.  Finally I got the e-mail that I was an approved foster parent.  If I could get to the shelter within the hour I could bring home kittens.

My daughter and I had discussed the perfect number of kittens.  Three: one for each human in our house.  We wanted them to be fluffy.  We wanted a momma and her kittens.  No, we just wanted kittens.  We wanted them to like our other cat.  We wanted them to love us.  We discussed how we’d have to give them back when they were 8 weeks old and 2 pounds.  That would be hard, but we could do it.  We dreamed about our kittens together.

We did not discuss the other side of fostering, but I learned.  Kittens die.  Kittens get horrible diseases.  During my interview I heard about an entire dead litter.  Kitten after kitten inexplicably dying.  It had only happened once, my interviewee assured me.  Pan Luke she said, but I didn’t know what that meant.  I heard about ringworm that infected your entire house and sounded like lice on steroids.  That had only happened once my interviewee assured me.  There were terrible things that could happen, but I really wanted kittens.

We came home with three tiny fluffs.  They were four weeks old and black head to toe.  They were exactly what we dreamed.  Two tiny boys and one big girl.  We laughed at the mistake we made at the beginning assuming that the aggressive big one was male and the small one we named Tiny was a girl.

Tiny had a purr inversely proportional to his size.  Holding him would start a motor in his chest that could be heard across the room.  His sister Adventure would purr, but not as big.  His brother Blackie had a quiet rumble that you could feel but not hear.  They all had personalities and we fell hard and fast.

Something wasn’t right with Tiny.  He ate less each day while his brother and sister got bigger.  He’d climb onto you and sit and purr but wouldn’t drink and wouldn’t play.  Five days after we got him I took him in.  I knew something was wrong.  They tested him and said the horrible words: panleuk, not Pan Luke.  He was going to die.

He sat on my shoulder while they filled out paperwork.  Someone mentioned the other cats in the litter.  Tiny just sat while I said I’d take any litter mates that weren’t sick.  The kittens had to be quarantined for two weeks.  They might as well all be together at my house.  They brought the two litter mates in.  One more time I heard panleuk.  There were five kittens in the litter and two died.  I brought three home, but not the same three I brought from home.

I watched my daughter when I told her, “Tiny died.”  She crumpled in a way I’ve never seen before.  This grief was bigger than any she’d ever felt.  I watched her and for the first time saw her feel sadness the way I feel sadness.  She tried to stand tall, but all she wanted to do was curl up and sob.  We are too proud to show that grief, but we feel it, and you can see it as our head drops and shoulders slump.

It took us four days to name the new cat.  Finally he became Sneaker because of his ability to escape.  As if the name had attracted the attention of unknown spirits the next morning he was lethargic and had lost weight.  I took my daughter to school and we both worried silently.

At home alone I went to the kittens.  I held all three and sobbed.  Alone the tears fell and the cries become audible.  How could I have done this to my family?  How could I have done this to myself?  I wanted kittens.  I didn’t want dead kittens.  What kind of person does this to herself and her family?  All three kittens purred in my arms as I wiped my tears and snot from their soft fur.  Then I e-mailed the shelter and made an appointment.

“It’s negative.” she said looking at the test.  He was sick, but he wasn’t dying.  Or if he is dying it’s of something else.  I’m instructed to give him a huge shot of fluid under his skin twice a day.  Gleefully I box up the same three kittens and take home the needles and fluid.

He spent the day next to my heart in my jacket.  It wasn’t fair for me to keep my distance because I was hurt by his brother.  I wanted kittens.  His warmth and motor kept me company through spreadsheets and graphs and conference calls.

“You are such a good person.”

“I am moved by your dedication.”

“You are an amazing person and foster parent!”

“Thank you.” I reply, but inside I know I just really want kittens.

Sob!  My kid doesn’t need crayons? 

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized17 Comments

Okay, a slightly misleading title there, but I was looking at the third grade school supply list (my daughter is headed for second grade) and I scrolled to the end.  No crayons.  There I was being a good working mom friend to a coworker whose child is starting kindergarten at our neighborhood school.  She doesn’t have the supply list yet, so I sent it to her.  Yay me.  I got curious about what other grades need, was scanning along, and sob!  I’m crying.  Literally crying at work because next year my daughter won’t need crayons. How is that possible?  Where did the crayon years go?  How can they almost be over?
I love crayons.  Here’s a picture of the shelf above my desk:


See crayons!  I’m the age equivalent of 36th grade and I still use crayons at work.

Children’s lives go by so fast.  Everyone tells you to enjoy the moment or it will slip away.  Well let me tell you, I’m going to enjoy the heck out of the crayon moments from now on!  Off to get some new paper and coloring books.  We’ve got just over a year.
<sniff>