Teaching Our Son to Knit and Learning About Motherhood

In this fuzzy cell phone photo you can see piles of unfolded clean laundry in the background. In the foreground, you can see our 12 year old. Knitting. Yes, our soccer goalkeeper/first baseman/basketball guard boy asked me yesterday if I could teach him how to knit.  Yesterday, I started knitting after a break of several years. Today I taught him how. Today I learned once again that my child doesn't need a perfect mom. He needs me.


The thing is, I barely know how to knit. I can cast on, in my own way. I can knit. I can purl. I often lose count, rip everything out and start all over. I have only knit scarves. Nothing more. The rest is way beyond me.


I have never tried to teach someone else to knit. I started by casting on enough for his scarf. But he made a lot of mistakes and me being a non-knitting knitter, I couldn't diagnose what was going wrong. So then I figured he could do a practice bit, just five stitches across. I would check on his progress. As he knit, we both realized this was a scarf - just a scarf for a Lego man  or hey - someone with a doll.

So then my son came up with the idea of turning his little bit of knitting into a scarf for a very small girl from our parish who had moved far away with her parents last year. She has dolls. And now he is going to mail the scarf to her.

I am not the mom many of my friends are. I have friends who knit baby sweaters with complicated cables. I have friends who grow their own food, can vegetables, make jelly, weave cloth and make their own soap. I can't even keep up with the laundry of our small family.

But today, as my son and I sat side by side, knitting our scarves, me guiding his fingers, checking his work, and he watching "Hole in the Wall," one of his favorite ridiculous TV shows, as it blared from our widescreen TV, I realized once again that God gave him me and God gave me him. And we are perfect for one another, just as we are. The Psalmist tells God:

 You formed my inmost being;

you knit me in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, because I am wonderfully made;

wonderful are your works!

My very self you know.