An excerpt: “How to knit my care into textiles, sew it up in the stuffing? Here, for my family to hold: tangible proof of connections. And yet, I know now, mothers worry when their children play with proof. Gifts rendered too precious for use instead sit on nursery shelves, distant and out of touch. I remember an afghan my grandmother made me, in childish pastels, satiny ribbons woven into slips and gaps. All those hours spent crocheting and thinking of me, for the blanket to end up folded and boxed.”
Read or listen to “A Pattern” online in Issue 8.2 of Sweet: A Literary Confection.
“A Pattern” is from a sequence of textile-inspired collaborative lyric essays I’m co-writing with Megan Spiegel.