For Linda and Louise

This is what I know about Linda.

 

She was tone deaf.  Her father in law would give her a dollar just to hear her sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."  When her son was born, at a whopping 9 pounds, 11 ounces, she turned to her husband and said, firmly, "Only one."  Her pantry was never without a can of Crisco.  Once she spent all day making authentic Italian meatballs, and when her husband pronounced them just "fine," she burst into tears.  She called everyone "honey chile" and couldn't pronounce the word dollar.  Later, her son couldn't pronounce the word poem, and so they'd crack each other up by saying to each other, "Come let me read you a poiym about a boy who lost a dollah."  At the neighborhood Halloween party, she dressed up like a nurse and played pass the orange from chin to chin with the mummies and zombies, smoking and laughing.  She lost a baby.  She didn't lose her hair during chemo.  She died when Mr. Frick was nine.

This is what I wish Linda could know about me: I'm taking good care of her son, and he of me.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I don't know about you, but I'm feeling very overwhelmed by the amount of "awareness" we're supposed to have these days.  Get your yellow ribbon for the troops, your pink ribbon for your breasts, purple ribbon for your man parts, and puzzle-stamped ribbon for autism.  Awareness is being marketed as one of the hottest new brands.  (Oh, and don't forget to check here daily for important information regarding awareness,  especially around election season.)

While knitting this hat for Louise, I practiced a different kind of awareness.  I thought, with each stitch, about Linda, and about Louise.  About mothers, and sons.  I carried this hat all through the woods during our three-night field trip in the wildnerness, watching my students free fall through the air, through the last year of their childhood.  I brushed daddy longlegs and mulch off of it after having to leave it aside to coach a frightened child through a challenge.  I thought about Linda and Louise, and how one's son still cries for the loss of her 22 years later, and the other's helps her negotiate her holistic regimen and tells her she looks cool, enlightened, with her newly shaved head.  I decided that the awareness I will practice in my life will be about individual people, not abstractions.  I decided that this, I can handle. 

Comments

[megan]

Thanks for checking my blog out! Your shedir is beautiful... seeing yours has reminded me that I've been wanting to make one of these for a long while, and how lovely it is in that espresso color... maybe I'll copycat you, too! (I love a good ball of Rowan yarn.) Also, your words on *awareness* are just as inspiring as your knitting.

[LaDonna]

My mom is a double breast cancer survivor. She had two radical mastectomies 20 years apart — and now has a terrific rack but is also racked with pain as a result of the surgeries — and thankfully never had to undergo chemo or radiation.

There are times I feel guilty for not "doing something" — Avon walks, knit hats, wear a pin — especially in light of my intimate relationship with, and extreme vulnerability to, the big C. Deep down I think if I ignore it, I won't get it. Hope that tack works.

Louise's hat is beautiful and, not to sound too corny, obviously full of love.

[Cara]

Beautiful post. Beautiful hat. Thank you for sharing both.

I loved knitting Shedir. I knit it for a woman I had never met, have never met, who had been just diagnosed with cancer. A friend of a friend. I have no idea if she still has cancer. The hat remains one of my favorite knits.

[kris]

oh julie, what a beautiful post. shedir is equally so. i tried to knit it once while on holiday but apparently cocktails, calmer, and cables don't match. and anyway, my mother's hair had just grown back after her chemo.

[nikki the blogless]

Thank you for sharing. This subject is close to my heart. The majority of the women on both sides of my family have fought (or are fighting) the disease. My mom has been gone for seven years now. I'm planning on genetic testing and elective mastectomies sometime within the next five years.

[Rachel]

Thank you for this post!

[Kirsten]

What a beautiful post. You are so right. It is about individual lives. Your Shedir is wonderful.

[Liz K.]

Julie, thanks for the post. It is a tribute to your husband's mom the care you put into knitting Shedir for Louise. I just made a Shedir for someone in my life. I learned that it is about acknowledging someone's challenge that is most important, and your Shedir is a tangible way to be kind to her. Good going.

[Lisa]

I lost my Mom to bladder cancer six years ago. There are no ribbons, walks, or celebrity spokespeople for that. CANCER is awful. All kinds of cancer. You are so right, awareness doesn't have to come with a ribbon. Thank you for saying what I've been afraid to say, but thinking for a long time. And your hat is lovely.

[Dorothy B]

Some friends and I were just talking about how overused the Awareness ribbons are now. Most especially the Pink ribbon. Now people are demanding we wear red on Fridays to support the troops in Afganistan, they just lauched a new campain for people to buy (((RED))) to help people in Africa gain access to HIV and AIDS drugs and stores are coming out with all kinds of pink products and promises to donate miniscule amounts to cancer research if you buy their stuff. They are all very good causes and I hope the people who need it get a lot of money and cancer research progresses by leaps and bounds. I'm inclined to think that the companies who are jumping on the bandwagon are making a pretty penny off of all of it though. Just a thought though, what happened to the government funding for research that helps keep the people they are supposed to be caring for alive and healthy? How come the government can throw all kinds of money at crazy stuff and give huge tax breaks to large corporations but they have to cut funding to the health sciences?

Anyway... Love your Shedir. It's beautiful and so it your tribute to Mr. Frick's Mom. She sounds like she was a great person to be around. Your kind of awareness is the best kind of awareness.

[diana]

Julie, I can only copy others in saying what a beautiful post.

I'm right with you in focusing awareness on the individual you know rather than the face corporations put on a disease to increase their bottom line. I have no desire to support their magnetic ribbon industry.

[Aija]

Thank you for sharing your post and your stories.

[Heather]

Very well said. Thank you.

[brenda in toronto]

beautiful post, julie

[Amanda]

I don't quite know what to say, but I want to tell you that I found your post very touching. I wrote a couple different comments, but then deleted them because the thoughts in my mind are too poignant, my memories are too precious, and I don't know how to share them fully, so I'd rather not share them at all. Thank you for your thoughts. They blew a wind through me.

Oh, and that really is a lovely hat--full of love.

[maryse]

i made shedir for a coworker who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. she says that the hat brings her a lot of comfort and that she wears it all of the time.

love your tribute to linda. i'm sorry you never got to meet her.

[Passions & Distractions]

Very well-said and very well-knitted.

[Karen]

Beautiful hat and post. I just made my Mom a chemo cap too. Cancer is an awful disease.

[margaux]

touching post, julie... i come from a family plagued with breast cancer, my grandmother, her two sisters (one has passed) and my own mother have been diagnosed at some point. i have that pattern and yarn but have not knit it yet perhaps with what ladonna had in mind - by not bring the reality too close. beautiful, beautiful hat. thank you!

[NORA]

As a medical student, the horror of cancer is something I see almost daily. Admittedly, each patient is an individual but, together they form a union and share a common link - probable death.

The sale of these ribbons ploughs money into research, which, in turn, will save the individual lives you all refer to.

Awareness is vital as early detection is the key. Put simply, it determines if you live or die.

To the commenter, Diana: please reconsider your non-desire to support the ribbon industry. This goes beyond helping the "individual we all know" - it's universal.

We ought to salute the participating companies/businesses that are making it possible to view the big picture. Does it really matter if someone benefits or wins an election along the way?
I'm sure the patients in the chemotherapy ward I worked in yesterday don't think so.

PS: The hat is gorgeous.

[victoria]

lovely hat! lovely sentiment...thank you for sharing.

[reluctantmango]

*sniffle* What a touching tribute... Just today I listened to a five-minute list of awareness days just this month! I think you have it absolutely right - in a global society like ours, I feel like we've become accustomed to distance. Reaching out to people and making direct contact with those close to us is so very gratifying and makes a huge impact. Thanks for the thought provoking post!

[JessaLu]

Beautiful hat and beautiful post :o)

[Kelly]

Thanks, Julie, for writing that: you got right to the heart of it all, and beautifully: paying attention, and taking care. What matters is doing that, in whatever way (and for whatever person, or persons, or cause) feels right in your soul.

[kelli ann]

i guess i won't be asking you to join my new campaign, then; which is 'raising awareness about awareness.' getting down to basics. we need to band together for more choices in toddler breakfast cereal! down with fruit drinks! and where the hell did i put my keys, anyway?!?! (oy. need to lie down.) xoxo K