SOMETHING to do.....

I stopped by a knitting group today--not a knitting group I'm in, because I don't have one; but a group that meets at my younger daughter's school. We went by to see someone, really, a teacher that we knew would be therethat has been out with a broken ankle and that we were missing-- a lot. And my daughter, who is just 6, got to see her, and her knitting,and that I think made them both happy. I talked with the others there about knitting--they see me as more of an expert than I am, no doubt. But in talking with them and hearing about their projects--a prayer quilt they and their friends had knitted squares for to give to another mom with cancer, I was struck by the idea that I love knitting so much not just because it is creative, though it is, or because it makes people feel good when you give them something you make yourself, though I believe it does, or because it is a conversation starter, or even for the amazing community it creates around you even when you are basically a solitary knitter like me.
No, it is because it is SOMETHING to do when there is nothing you can do-- a tangible, touchabale, real thing that you can do for someone who is sick and that you can't help in any other way, a way to focus thoughts and prayers as you knit for them, a way to say, "My gosh,. life is so blinking out of control and I have no way to reassure you that there is hope when there seems to be none, but I can do this and show you that something can come from almost nothing, that amazing things can happen when you just keep on keepin' on, that busy hands can not JUST hold fear at bay but can knit a shawl, or a scarf or a hat or soft comfy socks, and give a person you hardly even know, or give yourself, proof that creation is new every morning, no matter how dark it seems, that you have the power to respond.
It is something I can do when I don't know what else to do in the face of difficulty and difference, when I don't have any words that I know how to speak. I think that is what knitting can do, a something we all want to be able to do. That small group of women were doing that. My six year old and my 16 year old do it with their faltering knits. Lots of us do seemingly alone in the night. It is something to do, and it is powerful, and wondrous.