Before I walked I had the title - just the title - of a new poem in this series; it’s about the swastika and the rock. I took a few notes and then went out with the dogs. Cold, but melting, and I have to wade through the overflow onto the trail of the icy brook. I knew it couldn’t be a writing day. It needed to be a cleaning closets and organizing day. Getting rid of the old to make room for the new as we pack to leave for an extended stay in Longboat Key. Bedrooms emptying and filling again. My parents kept a house like this: we came and went in different stages, those post high school and college and pre-marriage years, one or many of us was always coming and going in the spare bedrooms. I’m not a knitter. My mother was, and she was good at it, and one of my daughters loves to knit, so she got all my mother’s yarn and sweater pattern books. In a closet I’m cleaning I find enough yarn and half-started projects to fill three four big plastic bins for my daughter. Four! Tangled skeins of yarn on needles and not, in so many colors and textures and stages of completion. My mother’s knitting stand, I find this too. It’s broken, and will no longer stand up. She kept it at the foot of her chair in front of the tv. Before Christmas, if she were knitting something special - just for you - she would quickly hide her needles in the bag if you walked into the room. Then, under the tree, you would find your gift of mittens, scarf, hat, sweater. . . I said goodbye to the broken bag and put everything left in her bag in my daughter’s bin. Some day my daughters will do this. Keep the things I do and make for as long as they can, and then, reluctantly, and with appreciation, pass them on.
