"Why are you wearing two sweaters when it's a hundred degrees outside?" The girl fidgeting in front of the chalkboard burst into tears and Mrs. Reese shot me a look of pure evil. I wasn't trying to be a smart aleck. I truly wanted to know. Besides, my fellow third graders had already peppered the new kid with questions about her hometown and whether or not she had any pets. Who cared that she was from Utah and was only allowed to keep goldfish? That she had on a fringed kilt with a giant safety pin and a powder blue twin set ---- now those were things worth talking about.
Up until then, the only twin sets I'd seen were the ones June Cleaver wore when she peeled potatoes. But here one stood in living color right within stroking distance. I not-so-accidentally bumped into it's softness at recess and managed to get a close-up of the pearl buttons. They were so tiny --- no bigger than the tip of my pinky nail. I decided that MY cardigan wouldn't have so many buttons (who wants to take forever getting dressed in the morning?) and instead of blue, MY sweater would be a dusty shade of rose.
Asking my parents for such decadence was out of the question. We were migrant farm laborers living in a tent camp near the vineyards. Food, food, and food were our top three priorities --- not fuzzy child size sweaters. Also, this was the Central Valley where summer temperatures sometimes soared to a savage 110 degrees. When would I ever wear it? Still I had to have one. We were paid a dollar on weekends to help our parents fill crates with Concord , Tokay, and Catawba grapes. I had enough saved up to buy two skeins of acrylic yarn and a Coats & Clark "Learn to Knit" leaflet. The needles would have to come later. In the meantime a pair of smooth fat pencils with the lead sandpapered off would have to do.
As the instructions were written in hieroglyphics, I took to deciphering the ink drawn pictures. To "cast on" you had to form a loop with the yarn and pull it tight against the needle/pencil. To "bind off" you had to pull yarn through stitches already on the needle. Sounds simple enough, but what the pictures showed and what my fingers did were two entirely different things. After the simple "cast on" came the knit stitch, then backwards for the purl. Weeks of labor yielded a tangled sweaty swatch of fabric that in no way resembled the sleeve of a sweater. Disappointed I ripped it up and tried again. And again. And again. By this time, I was able to afford more yarn and the needles --- a pair of pink metallic size eights (which sits resplendent in my knitting basket to this day.)
I wondered out loud how wouldn't it be nice if Ma knew how to knit. "You could teach me better than this dumb old book" I told her. In sing-song Spanglish, she reminded me that as a child in Puerto Rico , she never owned a sweater, let alone had to knit one. She shook her head and I plodded on alone, sometimes following instructions, sometimes not. I learned how to increase and decrease, how to pick up stitches around the neckline, even how to wet block and assemble. It got so that I could knit and do other things at the same time. I knit while reading the Little House books to my younger siblings, in the car, and on the playground. I knit while waiting my turn at bat, at the Salvation Army, in our tent while the grown folks sat around the campfire talking about the day's crops.
Grape season extended into pear season, and by the time we set up camp in the cool of the orchards, a masterpiece was born. My nine year old eyes saw only the beauty in the fruits of my labor. Instead of a misshapen garment fashioned from cheap, scratchy yarn, I saw an elegance surpassing the store-bought one that inspired its creation. The sleeves were fluid and symmetrical, not stretched out with one noticeably longer than the other. The holes formed from dropped stitches were practically microscopic, and the row of purl that should have been knit? Well that was part of the design. Most of the buttonholes were too small to let the khaki buttons from a discarded work shirt slide comfortably through. But not to fret. The better to see the shell underneath, I rationalized. Blemishes aside, the magic began just as soon as I slipped it on . I understood immediately why a little girl from Provo would wear two sweaters on her first day in a steamy California school.
what a wonderful glimpse into cultural dissonance and a determined insightful peek into a womanchild's wondrous eyes and mind all brought alive here;you write with the aplomb of an accomplished and gifted writer(I always had a secret crush on June Cleaver and now,on you!)You made my day with this polished jewel of an anecdote;Thank you! Paul Schroeder
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