Stitched with Love

     My mother, brother Austin, great-grandmother, and grandmother with me in her arms (Beverly, Massachusetts 1949)

      This is my mother's birthday and were she still alive, it would be her 90th.  After 17 years without her, she is still in my heart and mind every day.  My brothers and I were blessed to have been raised by such a fine woman and the wonderful man she married, our father.
      At about ten years old, my best friend's mother taught us to knit and then I taught my mother.  She quickly out-distanced me in skill and talent.  When I was a freshman in high school, Mom knitted me a sweater with three white snowflakes on a heather blue background.  It was her first attempt at something like this, and not until she began the second snowflake did she realize that a row of knitting in the first flake was off by one stitch.  I remember sitting with her and discussing whether or not she should unravel it back to the mistake.  We decided against it with the rationalization that there probably would be a natural fold there anyway when I wore it.  I've often thought that had Mom unravelled the knitting, that conversation would be long forgotten.  But, I have the sweater and the precious memory and they will both keep me warm today.