These Hands

Five years ago today, a writer friend of my daughter posted this photo and the accompanying paragraphs on her FB page. It made me think so much of my Grandma Delphia that I saved it. Those hands doing the crocheting could have been her hands. She rarely sat idly, always had a crochet hook or tatting shuttle working the threads.

Protection

I passed a woman crocheting by the side of the road in Calliope; the sign at her feet said, “Free Protection for Road Family”. I pulled the Biscuit Tin over very gently (it can throw rocks like a baseball hall-o’-famer) and walked back.

“Well, bless you,” the lady said (her eyes huge behind thick frames, like a wise old owl). “And bless you back!” I responded (never knowing the right thing to say when someone throws light on your day just like that). “What are you making?” “Wraps and shawls,” she explained, pointing. “This here’s a box of orphan yarn - abandoned skeins left out of however many that were needed to finish a making. And this box holds the thing they become together (something welcome and warm).” I’d never seen anything like it before; random bits of color woven into patterns that lay piled in large triangles like rainbows you could touch.

“I love this one,” I said, and touched the shawl when she nodded that I could. It was a dove gray with sparkle thread throughout - some darker gray and some rose with a bit of white here and there. It was thick but impossibly soft and I caught myself just shy of rubbing my face all over it. “It loves you, too,” the lady said. “The shawls tend to pick their people. That one’s the Old Souls Shawl and the protection looped into that is all about remembering the love that has been while not letting it trap you. It’s about taking the best of Before and being at peace with After.”

She wouldn’t let me give her anything for the shawl, so I got Nickel out of the camper and, together, we sat with her a while and shared cheese sandwiches and a couple of juice boxes. I wore the shawl proudly at the campfire that night and the goofy guy who was working the entrance gate left me alone.

(Written by Tansy Undercrypt - Part of her Lost Moon Road series.)