The skirt

Making things with one's hands is a millenia old tradition, it connects me to the past, it fills my life with a tangible kind of substance, it leaves a mark, a memory and a thing for the future. Crafting connects me to my great grandmother who embroidered a teapot cozy simply and beautifully, it connects me to my peers who make things in wonderfully talented ways, it connects me to an old Sumerian man who made clay pots in his mud brick house, it connects me to my nanny t.Ira whose smile and voice I miss so vividly so daily. She died in July of 2006, my daughter was born in September. In the hospital with this tiny little girl, there was a phone call I could not make. Her manhattan phone number was still programed into my phone. I talked to my baby as if she were a concerned 81 year old, realizing how heart-breaking and comforting the idea of re-incarnation is. Her death was like an atomic attack, unexpected, inexorable, far-reaching. It was hot, calm, sleepy quiet around the 4th of July. I've had a phone call from Moscow that something happened in the depths of upsate New York, but the prospect was so outlandish - I simply could not believe it. I left messages as if she were going to come home and call me and explain everything, laugh about it and all would be well. But the cloud started coming down and settling in a systematically devastating way for everyone who knew her.

Her life was excavated, her things went to some of us who craved little bits and pieces to soften the loss - I got hundreds of little balls of rolled up yarn that could never have been used up by her in a lifetime. Everything has a use, it's just a matter of finding a perfect match for the article. I have all of her unfinished knitting - a mix of seeds, big and small ... there is no way to know what they would grow into in her tender hands. Yet I need them to be something in our daily lives so we can all see it, use it, talk about it, remember her. I know
this was not meant to be a skirt, but it came out fine. It is warm and Irisha loves it, as part of her name brings back t. Ira to us... and when she smiles or does something silly, and gives a hug with her entire little body.