Paula Beardell Krieg
I hadn’t crocheted a stitch in years when I enviously watched my friend Susan demonstrate how to create a closure for a folder, using yarn and hook to make something like a scarf that wrapped, like a warm hug, around the folder, keeping it safe and secure.
Did I even have crochet hooks anymore? No. Found a set on-line for six dollars. Carefully punched holes in the edge of a cover that I could now attach yarn to. Picked up my tools, looked at what I had in my hands, willing them to know what to do. My fingers remained still.
How could they have forgotten?
I think about when I was young teenager, flush with cash from my 50 cents an hour babysitting job, walking from my parents’ home, downtown to the Five and Dime store. There I bought a book for thirty-five cents, called the Learn How Book. My grandmother, who came to this country when she was five, was educated through the sixth grade, was married and pregnant with her first born at age 15, always said that if you can read English, you can learn anything.
With my Learn How Book I made things. Crochet was my favorite thing that the book taught. Over the years I made dresses, blankets, scarves, sweaters. My hands were happy with the yarn dancing around the hook in my hand. I could read so I could do everything.
When did I stop? I am no longer young. My own babies are well past their young teenage years. My parent’s house was sold, and then sold two times more. I’ve lived in North Carolina and three different places in New York City. I traveled, too, then settled in rural New York, in a big burnt out shell of an old farmhouse. After thirty years living here, with every square inch of our home lovingly tended to, now full of comfy furniture and bookcases I look at my hands, wondering How To.
My husband sits in his lazy boy, enjoying his morning coffee, our dog napping nearby. I tell my husband about the book I had bought at the 5 and 10 cent store so very long ago. Then I walk into the room that I am sitting in now, pluck that worn and well-loved book off the shelf. Minutes later, my fingers and I are once again dancing with hook and fiber.