Gifts Crafted with Love Do Last
/The Boston Herald
She made three scarves, one for each of us. Lauren's is white with silver and blue sparkles, Julie's is light purple and mine is dark purple and green. They're not the long, thick variety you can wrap around your neck two or three times and still have enough left over for a flowing tail. They're not fancy scarves, either - no cable stitches or popcorn knots or intricate sewn embroidery on any of them. They are just rectangles of soft yarn knitted, then fringed, by a 9-year-old.
Mine is around my neck even as I write. I wear it all the time. It warms me both inside and out.
I think about Xena, knit-one, pearl-twoing for days, for weeks, working on this scarf. I think about this little girl, just a few years ago, sitting at her kitchen table creating a small square, a furrow on her brow. She struggled because the yarn was too tight on the needles. She pushed, then pulled, making a new stitch, dropping an old one, abandoning the project for just a minute to run and find a finished square that she'd made at school so we could see she really could knit. That square was a work of art.
"It's beautiful, Xena. You're such a good knitter. Can you make me one?" we begged, declaring she was best knitter and hers the best square, ever.
And so she made us all scarves because scarves are more useful than squares, she told us. "Squares are pretty. But Mom and I thought scarves would be more practical.”
She made them and folded them and wrapped them, then passed them out on Christmas Day, lining us up on the couch like checkers on a gameboard.
"You can open them at the same time," she told us, in her sweet Xena voice. If snowflakes could talk, the ones that swirl in the light would sound like Xena.
"Mine is the most beautiful scarf in the whole world," Lauren declared.
"Only princesses have scarves with pieces of the moon and the stars woven in. I am never going to take it off. I am going to wear it forever."
Xena, of course, smiled.
Then Julie declared that no, no, no, hers was the most beautiful scarf in the whole world because it exactly matched her purple coat, which she raced to the front hall to get. Then she swirled around in her new scarf.
"No. No. No." I exclaimed. "Mine is the most beautiful scarf in the whole world because it is purple and green and you know what green means? Green, green means I'm a queen.” The older girls groaned but the little girl grinned. The scarves were a hit. We each agreed they were all the most beautiful scarves in the world.
We've been wearing them for nearly a month now. I sit at my computer, Xena's scarf hugging me and I feel closer to her. She lives 148 miles away, not a great distance, but great enough. Months go by between visits.
At Christmas I was stunned by how much she'd grown. A dress I'd sent her a few months before was already too small. I didn't understand how this was possible. And then she walked through the door and I saw.
A child is child for such a short time. Next year or the year after she'll look at these scarves and notice the dropped stitch here and the extra stitch there. She'll focus on the flaws, apologize for her work, criticize her choice of colors, shake her head and say she's sorry she forced us to wear these things.
But she didn't force us.
I used to have another scarf. Janet Butler gave it to me for my 14th birthday. I wore it in high school, in college, on my honeymoon, sledding with my kids. I wore it for 30 years.
Then it disappeared. I wear Xena's scarf now and I can see Xena working diligently, learning to knit. I used to wear my Janet Butler scarf and see Janet 15, even when she was 40.
"Thank you for the most beautiful scarf in the world," I wrote to Xena. One day she may look at the scarf and see only its flaws, but I never will. Always, I will see Xena, a little girl smiling with pride.
