Make yourself useful, Nana used to tell us all the time, There's a lot to be accomplished in this life.
She set store by usefulness and industry and couldn't abide idleness until all the day's work was done. Even then, she was never without her knitting or crocheting to occupy her hands. She loved lacework - tablecloths, doilies, handkerchiefs with lace fringe. She tried to teach me this delicate art through the years but I hadn't the patience or the appreciation to focus on the work. Her fingers would fly and her copper knitting needles made an endless clatter as she stitched. She was able to talk or scold or praise all the while and never miss a beat. Her hands ached with arthitis and were often so swollen that she had to pause every few minutes to massage them but she never gave up and some project was always in progress in her various baskets. She kept everything carefully organized and neat and could always find exactly what she wanted at the proper time, another art I mostly failed to learn. There were scarves and mittens, lap robes, colorful vests with bright, oversized buttons, and afghans by the dozens. She chose her colors to fit each person - pastel blues and soft vanilla shades for one, bright yellows and chocolate browns for another, greens and ecrus and cranberries for yet another. Colors need to blend, she told me, They need to get along and not try to outshout each other else all you have is a riot.
During the school bussing riots, she expressed much the same opinion - that if people would learn their place and keep to it, the world would run far more smoothly. She was adamantly against anyone getting beyond the raising, especially if they happened to be black, Catholic, Italian, Jewish or Irish. It was a free country, my grandmother believed, but only for certain citizens. It never occurred to her that this was racist or discriminatory or if it did she dismissed it as frivolous - the world was what it was and she held fast to her roots, skewed as they might have been. She taught this to my mother who in turn taught it to us, a legacy I'm less than proud of and have worked hard to overcome. The 60's were hard on my family - change and revolution were beating at the door and they carried drugs, incomprehensible music, free love and terror. My grandmother's small, isolated world was under seige and she fought back as best she knew how.
I wonder what colors she'd be knitting with now.
She set store by usefulness and industry and couldn't abide idleness until all the day's work was done. Even then, she was never without her knitting or crocheting to occupy her hands. She loved lacework - tablecloths, doilies, handkerchiefs with lace fringe. She tried to teach me this delicate art through the years but I hadn't the patience or the appreciation to focus on the work. Her fingers would fly and her copper knitting needles made an endless clatter as she stitched. She was able to talk or scold or praise all the while and never miss a beat. Her hands ached with arthitis and were often so swollen that she had to pause every few minutes to massage them but she never gave up and some project was always in progress in her various baskets. She kept everything carefully organized and neat and could always find exactly what she wanted at the proper time, another art I mostly failed to learn. There were scarves and mittens, lap robes, colorful vests with bright, oversized buttons, and afghans by the dozens. She chose her colors to fit each person - pastel blues and soft vanilla shades for one, bright yellows and chocolate browns for another, greens and ecrus and cranberries for yet another. Colors need to blend, she told me, They need to get along and not try to outshout each other else all you have is a riot.
During the school bussing riots, she expressed much the same opinion - that if people would learn their place and keep to it, the world would run far more smoothly. She was adamantly against anyone getting beyond the raising, especially if they happened to be black, Catholic, Italian, Jewish or Irish. It was a free country, my grandmother believed, but only for certain citizens. It never occurred to her that this was racist or discriminatory or if it did she dismissed it as frivolous - the world was what it was and she held fast to her roots, skewed as they might have been. She taught this to my mother who in turn taught it to us, a legacy I'm less than proud of and have worked hard to overcome. The 60's were hard on my family - change and revolution were beating at the door and they carried drugs, incomprehensible music, free love and terror. My grandmother's small, isolated world was under seige and she fought back as best she knew how.
I wonder what colors she'd be knitting with now.
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