One of the most important duties of grandmahood is to teach your granddaughters how to knit, or in my case, how to crochet. Whoever wrote this grandma rule was someone who understood the ways of the Lord.
Teaching my granddaughters the way I crochet insures that some part of who I am and how I do things will be passed on to succeeding generations. The companionship fostered as we learn how to hold a hook and weave the yarn through a post stitch binds our hearts together tighter than a phone conversation.
Teaching involves more than communicating instructions—doing the directions together is part of the mentoring. I wonder if I am as teachable as my granddaughters. “Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; knit my heart to you that I may fear your Name” (Psalm 86:11 NIV).
What has God been teaching you lately? How has that experience knit your heart to his?
In Him together, Susan Gaddis
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My grandma crocheted. She never taught her daughters or granddaughters how to crochet, but I’m guessing she might not have seen the worth, either. As a kid, I remember asking her to teach me once or twice. But since it didn’t come quickly enough to me, I didn’t bother.
Grandma’s doilies were mostly huge and intricate, with deep, undulating ruffles. Most of them were in red and white. (Hmm, come to think of it, my kitchen has those colors in linens and retro canisters.) The fact that she crocheted at all is interesting to consider, because she wasn’t otherwise artsy at all. Grandma was a reader and investigator of words, teller of facts, memorizer of trivia, and not much of a hugger. Yet she devoted innumerable hours to crocheting these beautiful things. Having been orphaned by her mom at birth and raised by stoic Italian/Spanish grandparents and a working father, I still have no idea where she learned how to do this.
Years later, those doilies, most of which were stored in the closet, suddenly disappeared. When I asked Grandma where they went, she replied simply, “Wanda.”
I was panic-stricken. “Wanda?! What’d you do that for!”
“She said she liked them, so I gave them to her,” Grandma shrugged, trying to minimize my offense.
I was heartbroken. But something in me must have understood her logic in that. No one had ever really doted over Grandma much, much less noticed the talent she had. In a way, it seemed perfectly logical that those treasures of time go to the one lady who noticed.
Nothing against Wanda, but she was our neighbor. A nice acquaintance and all, but Grandma thought to leave nothing for the immediate family. I recall that Wanda hailed from somewhere in Michigan, which she often mentioned and always pronounced “Mitch’-uh-gin.” (Every time I hear that word, I think of that.) Wanda liked to talk of going back, and soon did before I had the nerve to ask her for at least one of the doilies. Come to think of it, I’ll bet Grandma knew she wasn’t ever going to see her again. And having no friends to speak of, she probably gave them to her without a second thought.
So I imagine the doilies are somewhere in “Mitchagin” and so is Wanda, enjoying them all…or mavbe most of them are in her closet now, too, I don’t know. Ah, well. Lord bless her.
And my girls love you for it, Mom. Thanks :-).