Monday, January 16, 2012

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.




Simple BPM

7 comments:

  1. Ha ha, I asked my mother to teach me knitting when I was about your son's age. Never finished anything but the itch is still there! Maybe he can give me lessons at next year's Encounter?

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  2. So sweet. "I'm not perfect, but I'm perfect for you." God is so smart.

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  3. "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. "

    Indeed. I feel the very same way about my kids. My oldest (6) wants to learn how to crochet. This convinced me to give him a chance to learn. Thank you!

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  4. You may not be the kind of mom you mentioned your friends are, but you are the kind of mom who raised a son who would think to knit a scarf for a young girl's dolls. That's the best kind of creation I could ever think of.

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  5. I love this -- that He created us purposefully and the children we have are not ours by coincidence but by purposeful planning of a skilled Creator.

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