I love to crochet, but I essentially know only basic stitches. I have friends who can crochet amazing things, but not me :)
I have been thinking a lot about this 30th high school reunion, and why I feel so obsessed by it. I wouldn't have been caught dead at the 10th reunion, thought I had resolved all of my "high school issues" by the 20th, but was then slammed with unexpected emotional intensity once I arrived that left me speechless and processing internally all night. . . .lol. So I find myself quite unexpedtedly surprised by this excitement and reunion fever that seems to have overtaken me with the 30th.
When I sit with myself long enough to understand why, what bubbles up is this sense of shared history. There are people from high school that I have known (and they have known me) since we were all in the 6th grade! These people may not have all been my friends per se, or I theirs, but together we have a shared history that is as irreplaceable as it is inescapable. Yet I am still surprised to find this history having such a grip on me now, when it seemed all too easy to disregard as it was unfolding in my life.
Many people hold on to their history by crocheting their life afghan as a constant flow of yarn. The skeins may run out, the dye lots may not match, and the colors may change from one life transition to another, but the afghan is created as a relatively continuous process. These are the people who remain very connected and in close contact with people from their lives across time and space. I know a lot of wonderful spirits who have created their life afghan this way, and I admire that kind of connectedness, even though I do not understand it myself.
Then there are others who have created their life afghan as a collection of tiny little granny squares, each made individually and distinctly from one another. This is how I am creating my own life afghan. I have the high school piece, the cancer piece (actually, I have three of these), the college piece, the grad school piece, the marriage piece, the divorce piece, the army piece, the Chernoby piece, the boat piece, the private practice piece, the social work piece, the McDonald's piece, the Rockland piece, the Palmdale piece, the Napa piece, the Forest Falls piece, the Lunsford piece, the Bevis piece, the Rugg piece, as well as many, many more pieces (some I love. . . .others? not so much. . . .lol). And I have toted these pieces of life experience from place to place, creating new ones as I journey along in life, but they've pretty much remained not more more than a collection of disjointed life experiences. . . .until now.
I am finally at a place in my life journey where I have enough pieces to create an afghan.
Now begins the long slow process of placing these pieces side by side, balancing out the conflicting colors, finding harmony in patterns that were otherwise unseen, and then weaving them together in a cohesive whole with a yarn that binds and connects the tiny pieces into something warm and functional for the very first time.
Reconnecting up with these pieces of my history feels like a precious gift, one that I can never again take for granted. We have already started losing some of our fellow Tigers, which leaves me feeling sad in a way that I would have never expected. I feel like just as I am beginning to understand the importance of connection between these disjointed pieces of a shared history they are already starting to fray and unravel leaving little holes and gaps that can never again be filled in or replaced. So I don't care what it costs, or what it takes, I'm not going to miss out on this amazing opportunity unfolding through the ethers of Facebook.
I may have only known the most basic of stitches as I made my way through life creating one disjointed piece at a time, but I am falling in love with this life afghan that my journey is still in the process of creating and weaving through my history. So it just goes to show how even knowing only the most basic of crochet stitches can still create a most glorious work of art. . . .even when it takes a life time to collect enough pieces to finally create an afghan worthy of remembrance :)