I've joined a group of knitters, crocheters, needle pointers and quilters at my local library and it's been an amazing experience which goes for beyond the baby blanket I've been working on for three months.
Only a handful of women today – none of whom I’ve met, but all of whom look somehow familiar – as if this type of woman – women who want to use their hands to make object for themselves and others, all have something familiar in common. Do I have those qualities? I probably haven’t been at it long enough yet. Or perhaps I resist - not wanting to be that retired woman with loads of time on their hands – on their hands. That’s an interesting turn of phrase. These are women with time on their hands but they use hands to turn time into these solid objects. Once again I can’t remember their names, and I bet they don’t remember mine, although one woman - I do remember her come to think of it, with an amazing wrinkled face as if she spent her entire life outside, she said she liked my article the other day. I’m amazed that all these women are so welcoming to me and so generous with their time and advice. I’m a stranger. I’m much younger – even at 53 – and I’m a reporter. That must be freaky to them. Maybe that’s why I go, because this is one of the few places I go, that I’m the youngest person in the room. A lot of these women have children my age and grandchildren my son’s age. They are so past the puberty issues and running kids to activities which I’m dealing. It’s refreshing. We had a great chat about marriage the other day, all starting with this one woman who was making floppy crocheted hats. She gave me the pattern, and let me use one of her hooks. Anyway we started talking about the hats. And this other woman who is absolutely gorgeous despite of or because of her age, said, “Remember when we went on our honeymoons and we had had to have the right hat? I jumped in with “remember when everyone wore picture hats at their weddings?” And I met with a few confused stares.
“I had a pill box hat,” said the gorgeous woman. Of course I jumped to Jackie Kennedy and realized this woman married when Jackie set the fashion – it had to be the early 60s. The picture hats would have been worn at her daughters’ weddings. I was off a generation.

I asked the woman who made the floppy hats how long she’d been married. “Forty-four years.” “You mean you’ve only had sex with one man your whole life?” I asked realizing I had probably breached knitting decorum. “Yes,” she said, looking as if she just had a great tumble in the hay. The pretty woman said “that’s the way we did it. We were virgins when we married and we stayed with the same person.” She told me her husband had died after 37 years of marriage. I don’t know how long ago that was but her heart was still broken –it was obvious.

I felt ashamed that I had brought it all up, all glib and reportery, but these women wouldn’t let me feel badly. Instead they went with it – talking about their marriages and their children’s marriages. The woman next to me who had barely said anything was working on a hand-stitched quilt. She wore little jack-o-lantern earrings. She showed me her purse – one of those black canvas bags with a plastic window in front which contained a photograph of a sprite – with red hair and big brown eyes. “This is my great-granddaughter.” That’s all she said. I told her the girl was adorable and I wasn’t lying.
I fished in my purse to find a photo of my son, but as usual I didn’t have one. What’s with me with that? It’s like a superstition or something or maybe the idea that he is so beautiful and precious to me a photo would be woefully inadequate. I’ll try to remember to put a photo of him in my purse the next time.
The women again were talking about the way things used to be – not with nostalgia or that air that their way was the right way, just that things were different.
“We tried to set such good examples, said Irene – the only woman whose name I knew. Irene was the experienced one in the crowd. Divorced once, married twice. “We didn’t want our kids to think it was ok to live with someone. Now all of our kids have lived with someone before they got married. “My granddaughter was the bridesmaid at her mother’s wedding,” said the 44-year marriage veteran.
“What were we worried about? It all turned out ok. It was just different. That’s all. Just different.”