Stitched Together

I heard our front door open, then voices and laughter.

My new stepfather’s sisters had come down from Chicago to visit us in Alabama for the week. I wanted no part of it. I threw myself on my bed.

“They can’t wait to get to know you,” Mom had said. But I didn’t want to get to know them. It had been hard enough accepting a stepfather. Now I’d have to accept this other family too?

I was a ball of anxiety, so I decided to pray. Lord, make these people go away!

Mom was calling, “Kathy, come down, please!”

I put on a fake smile and dragged myself into the living room. I stopped, surprised.

My stepfather’s sisters weren’t just talking, they were knitting.

“Sit next to your aunt Kay and your aunt Mary Lou,” Mom said. I did as she asked, still staring at the aunts’ knitting.

They asked me questions in their funny northern accent, about school, about what I was interested in. I answered reluctantly. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from what they were doing. They dodged the needles in and out, creating a colorful pattern almost without looking. It was so cool!

They must have noticed me staring. “Wanna try?” asked Aunt Kay. “Here,” said Aunt Mary Lou.

“How about this color?” She handed me some light blue yarn and a pair of knitting needles.

“I…I don’t know how,” I stammered.

“We’ll show you,” Aunt Kay said. “First you have to cast on…”

I watched as she guided the needles in and out. Might as well give it a try. “That’s it,” the aunts encouraged.

I started to get the hang of it. After an hour I had…something. A square. Aunt Mary Lou generously christened it a pot holder. The stitches were loose and I had lost a few. But my new aunts just beamed. “Keep trying,” Aunt Kay said.

All week they worked with me. And I opened up.

“What did you do today?” my stepfather asked Wednesday evening. Instead of ignoring him, I said, “Check this out,” and showed him a scarf I’d made. He looked surprised…and proud.

By the end of the week I didn’t want my aunts to leave. They gave me patterns for hats and scarves, and even let me keep a pair of needles and my choice of yarn.

Maybe my stepfather and his family weren’t so terrible after all.

On another visit I learned how my aunts got started. “Our family came from Yugoslavia to Wisconsin, and we were very poor,” Aunt Kay said.

Her mom knit “sockies” to keep their feet warm, an art she’d learned from her mother in the old country.