Warm Blanket

​My dear friend recently received a cancer diagnosis. Not yet 40, her full chest, always a source of pride, was now a source of sickness multiplying inside of her.
 
The most stoic, most capable of us all, we nicknamed her Mother Goose. Young and in our twenties when we met, it was she that kept us out of the shady bars while traveling in foreign countries. It was she who made sure the lights were turned out, the alarms were set, the curling irons were turned off, the reservations had been made, our temperatures had come down. 

​But one Monday my capable friend called me and collapsed into my side of the line after a painful surgery that she thought would be a cinch. Somehow that surgery spilled the beans that she wasn’t in charge of this cancer thing. It was quite in charge of her. I was driving when her call came through. She couldn’t even breathe, and I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. I pulled over and parked in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut and tried to do CPR over the phone. I talked to her the same way I would talk to my hurting child. We lowered our voices and tried to catch our breath together. We took long deep breaths and let them go in unison-- the ins and the outs, the filling up and the letting go, slow and controlled, we eventually found a rhythm together that day. The sight of that red roof off of 105 still reminds me of mothering my Mother Goose.
 
And since then, it’s been appointments and surgeries and boatloads of lasagna and baked ziti.
 
I’ve had to watch her heal from afar because unfortunately we are not neighbors. I think eight states is the only thing that could keep me off of her porch with boatloads of more lasagna and baked ziti. Instead I’ve only been able to visit twice and pour as much of myself into those physical moments as possible. Both times I’ve left stirred by her dedication to her whole body, whole mind, and whole spirit healing. She  asks the doctors the hard questions, and fears the worst, and hopes for the best, and then does what she does best which is love her people because when they smile, she does, and when they feel better, she does, and she could really use a pick me up right about now. Ultimately her life is about giving. It is simply how she heals. And I don’t think I have fumbled with a more complicated emotion than I did sitting there watching my bald, sick friend attached like an octopus to machines tell me about the power of my gifts. My sick friend. The blanket around her shoulders. The words I don’t have. The selfless ones she does. My anxiety. Her calm. To think that I left her feeling healthier myself. It felt shameful. Like a breach.
 
I sit in awe watching my sister do impossible things with unfathomable grace.
 
After the Pizza Hut phone call, she sent me an email about the metaphor of a warm blanket and how they make us feel—comforted, sheltered, protected, nurtured. She thanked me for being her warm blanket while she carries this cross.
 
Involuntary tears sprung because what I had to offer felt like scrap, as useful as spitting at a fire. But if a warm blanket was all of the things that I longed to be, then it was obvious what I needed to do.
 
I needed to knit a warm blanket.
 
It was a lot easier in theory than it was in practice because I completely forgot how to knit.
 
I had long abandoned knitting. I used to make little things for the kids when they were born because it made me feel like Super Mom. Now making dinner makes me feel like Super Mom. I don’t have much time for knitting anymore. Regardless, I thought picking up my needles would bring it all back to me like muscle memory. But it didn’t.
 
I couldn’t remember the most basic of things. Simply getting thread onto the needle-- I had to start over four times. I youtubed as I went, and yelled at the kids, and counted my steps, and tried desperately to remember how to knit. If the kids talked to me while I was knitting, I would only answer by counting louder. One two THREE FOUR.
 
I finished the blanket, but there are mistakes to be sure.
 
There are definitely mistakes. There are many imperfections. There are oversights and omissions and missteps and inaccuracies. But as I knit this blanket, and screwed it up, and fell short, it increased my love for my friend. And I didn’t even know there was room for that. 
 
I spent so much time worrying about the mistakes as I made them. Even though I knew mistakes were inevitable, that didn’t keep me from freaking out when I dropped a stitch or added a stitch or twisted a stitch. I labored over it at the time. I grieved. I whined and cussed and held my place and kept my eye on that spot for the next couple of rows, obsessing, distressing.
 
But then, like my friend, this blanket taught me something weighty.
 
It is not the perfection of this blanket that endears me to it. It is certainly no masterpiece. It is not my wise words that make my friend cherish my place in her life. I am certainly no Saint.
 
I love this blanket because it challenged me and because the colors are brilliant. I may have messed up along the way, but I kept on going and those holes, those gaps, they just endear me to it. I feel like I really know it now. I can look at each one and remember how it taught me to pay attention. I love this blanket. And I love my friend. And I love those holes. And I love these colors.
 
The places that made me panic and cuss. What my friend and I have been through together. How well known she is to me. How well known I am to her.
 
When I hold up our blanket, when I look at the whole thing, I can’t even see the faults. It’s nothing but purples and pinks and the prettiest blues woven together with prayers and petitions and so much love for all the things that comprise something beautiful. Certainly not perfect. But absolutely beautiful.
 
Now that the blanket is complete, it’s funny to think about how I felt when I started it. Strange motions with ridiculously sized sticks, carefully, so carefully, going through my motions. I was so cordial and polite and courteous. By the end of it though, I was whipping through rows and tossing it around. It was a stranger before, unfamiliar and uncomfortable. But now I look at it and I love it with the ease and relaxation of an old friend.
 
This season of cancer sucks. It is a gaping hole in an otherwise gorgeous pattern, but I don’t have any doubt that it’s going to make our lives sweeter.
 
This is a story still being told. Treatments are behind her, yes. But for nine months she has been scrambling to get kids to practice on time while keeping her own appointments. She has been pressed to let the THOUSANDS of people know how grateful she is for the love they’ve extended. She’s been anxious to keep peace in a home that is missing its CEO. She’s been longing to connect with her husband about the ways their world has shifted. She’s been desperate to feel good enough to get through her days without scaring her kids. So now comes the heart part. Because this has all just been survival.
 
The first step of knitting a blanket was choosing colors that reminded me of my friend. The yarn reminded me of her pedicures. Or, maybe it reminded me of the lavender fields she fell in love with one winter in New Zealand. Whatever the case, the colors were so perfectly her to me. There’s a song I love by a band called The Be Good Tanyas and one line in the song, Broken Telephone, is
 
“I’ll be the wind in your leaves,
The warmth of the sun,
I’m always drawing your colors,
I’m always tracing your footsteps…”
 
And I just find it very beautiful, that we have colors. I’m always drawing her colors. And of course, I’ll always try to be the wind in her leaves, the warmth of the sun, or the warmth of some ratty, loopy, holey blanket that while imperfect is knit together with so much love.