Today I finished the granny square afghan I started
crocheting for Wil back when he was 7.
He’s 17. It could have been
finished a lot sooner, no doubt. I think
there were even a few years in there where I didn’t touch it at all.
This spring, I moved this work-in-long-progress from the master
bedroom closet to the spot next to my seat in the family room, and seeing the
squares reminded me that I had a project pending. My strategy was to keep my hands and mind
busy so I wouldn’t fret over work or play video games while the rest of the family
was watching TV (I’m not very good at just sitting and watching TV, I tend to
read or play simple games on my iPhone and just listen to the TV—so comedies
are usually on at night so I don’t keep asking, “What did I miss?” “What did
she do?” for the visual inputs.) And now
that I think about it, Wil doesn’t really “watch” TV either. We sit in the same room doing projects,
reading, sharing, on our computers or phones while the TV creates a background
connection for us, voyagers in our own virtual worlds. The TV is the life line that still connects
us.
Today was really interesting on several fronts. First, that I finally finished the
afghan. I have been picturing Wil taking
it to college with him since he was 7. Then
I started to panic that he’s going off to college in a year and the afghan
wasn’t done. There’s a lot of love built
into that thing. He said he can picture
it being in his family for generations.
Truthfully, it’s hideous looking.
Okay so for the 3rd time, I started it 10 years ago. So right away you know there are dye lot
issues. But what issues! I must have thought I knew what color the
squares were at some point when I went to Michael’s to buy more yarn, but
apparently my “eye was off.” Then there
was never a plan for the size of it, so what would have fit him nicely as a
twin blanket when I started out would never cover him at 5’7” and growing. Plus, of course, I’m thinking now that it
will cover at least a queen size bed and 2 people….
So besides the variations of colors where the color should
be consistent, there are other consistency issues—tightly crocheted in some
places, loose in others. Overall I think
I did a good job functionally, but, well, here it is on his bed, and there are
lots of squares doubled over in the back—it’s 8x7, and each square is 10 rows
with a row of trim. It’s very
heavy. That’s another thing. So many shades of “white.’ His significant other, wife, whatever , will
want to hide it but hey, it will keep them warm.
But before I finished crocheting this afternoon, this
morning I heard from Wil’s ex-girlfriend.
Sadly, they broke up about 2-3 weeks ago. She was his first love, they were together
for almost 2 years, but then her family moved away and the strain was, I think,
too much for the relationship. Great
kids, tough relationship. I miss her but
support my son’s decision. So anyway,
she had texted when they broke up that it would be too painful to stay
connected with Rachel and me, so I respected her wishes and didn’t reach out,
though I’ve checked in on her Facebook page to see how she’s doing. Then Friday she texted with Rachel, and I
told Rach to let her know I would love to hear from her and was just keeping my
distance to respect her wishes. Today we
texted back and forth and it was genuinely nice to hear from her. She’s a great person. Very talented musically, funny, sweet. I never heard her sing before, but she shared
an audio file of her singing a song she’d written for Wil and her voice was perfection. She literally sounds like an angel, assuming
that my idea of an angel’s voice is accurate.
I won’t be surprised if she does something professionally with those
amazing musical talents—she just needs to realize that she has a gift. So often people who are artistically gifted
are also their own worse critics…I hope she discovers herself soon so others
can too.
And while she and I were texting, I had another pleasant
surprise of the reconnection kind. One
of my very favorite friends from my college days resurfaced on Facebook and
connected with me. His name is Rob and
we were very close during my junior and senior years at Rider. He was smart and funny, charming, a genuine
pleasure to be around. We lost touch
with each other over the years, and strangely, I was looking for him and other
people I knew in my early-mid twenties, found a few of them but not him. Then, today, presto, there he is. I hope we can reconnect in person—he lives in
California and I’m going to be speaking at a conference there in a few
weeks. Would be great to see him again
and to catch up on the 20 years that have flown by…
And on reflecting about the past, present and future: I got a new computer at work on Thursday and
a good part of Friday was spent getting it configured. Today when it was slow getting going, I got
impatient, though part of me thought it just might be “learning” some things in
order to move quicker as it gets up to speed.
But I realized something about myself today. While I was the kid that was always nice to
the new kids at school, and while I have infinite patience young children and
mentally challenged people, I have no patience whatsoever with my new
technology devices.
I always expect technology to be perfect right out of the
box. Is that because I’m a notoriously
impatient person (it’s actually documented on my kindergarten report card), or
is it because technology pretends to be perfect and then I’m disappointed that
it’s not? When we get to the point where
we have robots doing our chores for us, will they be perfect or have
imperfections, and how much imperfection will we allow? Maybe you will be nicer to them…I will no
doubt be rolling my eyes when they wash the reds with the towels and everything
turns pink.
Well, it was a very nice day. The sunset was even pretty too. It was a very nice day by any comparison.
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