围巾、女儿和岁月 (w English)

Last night’s phone conversation with my daughter lasted an hour, in which she told me that the weather was cold, cloudy and windy there. Right off the phone, I started searching in the wardrobe for the scarves I knitted for her a few years ago. She took one or two with her, leaving at home the rest.

 

My knitting skill was picked up at the college, when one experienced girl started, and soon almost everyone in the dorm bought yarns, sticks and knitting books.  We were like tireless machines knitting day and night, and if the try-on turned out unsatisfactorily, long curly yarns would be pulled out of the finished product to be redone from the scratch.  Barely anyone complained about sitting there for hours having back pains or neck pains, as the output of a finished sweater was so encouraging and rewarding. For a time, we were in relentless quests for more fashionable patterns or seasonal styles. 

 

I was a good student then, but also could not resist the temptation of owning one, a sweater out of my own hand and to my liking.  Inevitably I was among them, squeezing time out of sleeping, eating, reading, studying or other activities.  It was just such a fad.

 

The skill was never perfected after I came here in the U.S. Living in Southern CA, you really don’t need a scarf. Plus, in a commercial world like this, who would still need knitting when buying one costs only a few bucks?

 

Not until the year when my daughter was at her sixth grade,  the school organized a one-week outdoor education in an area high up in the mountain. A teacher's notice came to the parents, reminding us that the temperature could be low there, and we were asked to equip our kids with sufficient outfits.  That moment, the idea of knitting her a scarf surfaced. I rushed to the stores for yarns and knitting sticks, and within a day and a night, a not-very-long and narrow scarf was tucked into her packed luggage.

 

She wore it, and in the pictures sent back to us from the chaperon mom, the familiar blue-white colored scarf around her neck with a little tail in front of her chest stood out from the crowd. For the whole week, the weather was actually not as cold as it was warned, but wearing it must have reminded her of sweet home and the Mom, as the love knitted into each stitch being transmitted in the isolated place.

 

A co-worker at my current company, an immigrant from Argentina, loves knitting.  It triggered me to pick up knitting again when my daughter was accepted into a college at the Northern California. On my trip back to China in 2014, I spent more than $60 to buy the cashmere yarns.  The envisioning of its end products excited me.

 

In the ensuing months, I found myself sitting in the couch or in front of the TV, knitting with the aging eyesight.  My husband was very disapproved of my wasting time over it.  True, it is time-consuming, especially with thin thread and small size needles.  I remember I got agitated towards the end pushing myself to finish. 

 

I probably won’t knit again.  But I never regret doing that, as the scarves sitting in the wardrobe, or tying around my daughter’s neck to ward off the cold, will always be a testimony of my passion and my love, an imprint I left for myself and for my daughter.