When I was a senior in high school, and preparing to spend my last Summer at home before entering the United States Navy on active duty, my grandmother asked me what I wanted for graduation. I asked her to crochet me an afghan/blanket that I would take with me when I went away..

She asked what colors I wanted and I said "pink and green". The photo above is a close-up of that rectangular granny afghan that I received from her that year.
This crocheted blanket/afghan traveled with me to duty stations and came into my home as I married and had 2 children. It was stored away in California, Ohio and Pennsylvania and settled in among the linens that many of us keep in trunks and storage and bring out in cooler weather.
My kids are grown with their own children now, and my grandmother's afghan is still with me, and in use regularly! Often it is just a part of the covers I hastily pull up in the morning before heading out to work, and other times it is a real and tangible reminder of my grandmother's love for me and our entire family.
Early in May this year, we had a bit of a heat spike, and I stripped the cooler weather blankets and sheets and replaced with my Summer-weight linens. I folded grandma's afghan into a neat rectangle and placed in the pile to go into the trunk later, but that night, I didn't sleep well. It was actually chillier than expected and I shivered all night. The next morning I re-made my bed, and replaced grandma's afghan between the Summer-weight sheet and comforter. That night I slept like a baby.
The next morning I thought about that experience from a number of perspectives. First of all, as a mother and grandmother myself, I long ago stopped having people tuck me in at night, or pull the covers up if I kicked them off as we do with our children when they are young. The stark difference in my sleeping comfort when I returned grandma's afghan to my covers was, in a way, like she had reached down and pulled up that blanket over me as I slept. The difference between the chilly and sleepless night and the night of comfortable rest was the addition of her hand-stitched blanket.
As an avid knitter and crocheter, I know how much time and effort went into making a blanket that is big enough to serve as a blanket on a double bed! I often look at it, and see each, individual double-crochet stitch, and remember seeing my grandmother sitting in her living room chair and crocheting. Captured in this blanket are hours and hours of her hand-made work, still with me all these years later and decades after she passed on.
I have been pondering legacies the past couple months, and I realized that my grandmother's blanket was a seemingly simple, and yet quite powerful, legacy of hers. Her basic rural life, quiet demeanor and from the perspective of a kid, fairly uneventful life trajectory DID have meaning and impact that extended long after she left the earth. Too often, in today's world, we look at social media and compare ourselves to "influencers" or famous people, or even the girl/guy at work who posts prolifically about their "OMG-it-was-fabulous!" life, and then judge our own lives as less-than.
While posts of "fabulous!" dinner photos taken in exotic places will fade from the memory of all except those that were there, the quiet love and care of family lives on. It's not perfect in any family, and in some, even fraught with years of dysfunction and misunderstanding. Still, in quiet moments we can look back to those times when someone made an effort to let us know that we were loved. In many ways, this is more powerful than an inheritance of money or land or jewelry or gold. We are, after all, the masters of our own individual destinies. There's no better foundation for navigating these destinies than a knowing that we were, and I believe still are, loved by someone special.
I will continue to make silly hats, small toys, shawls/wraps, scarves, sweaters and blankets for those whom I love. I know that at some point in their lives, maybe long after I have moved on from this plane, they will find it in a box, or closet and pick it up, hold it close, and remember - in the midst of what may be a very difficult and confusing time in their lives - that I loved them just as they are; fully, wholly and completely.
I believe that the healing and love represented in a memory like this have the power to change the world, one stitch at a time.
(C) 2023 Stitch 'n Dish
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