Of Women And Wool

Powerful things happen in the company of women

I think it was about 8 years ago that I wandered into a yarn store, my grandmother's knitting needles in hand, and told the ladies in the shop that I wanted to learn to knit They directed me to a good beginning project, told me about Ravelry, and encouraged me to come back if I had questions.

I did come back, and come back, and come back, to the point where one of the women who owned the shop said that she thought I might be “a little obsessed.” They helped me. Rescued me when I got lost. Wound my yarn on their fancy electric winding machine.

I found a refuge there. The company of fellow knitters, a quiet accepting companionship that required little of me and warmly encouraged progress. It made me brave, and I quickly took on project after project with heady abandon. After knitting one hat and one scarf, I announced that I wanted to knit socks. Ok, fine. Here's the teeny tiny needles and the skinny super fine yarn. Come back when you get to the heel, they said. No one should knit their first heel without support.

I did come back, my first sock in need of a heel. I thought I would pop in for 20 minutes or so, and they would have me on my way. I was there for three hours. But I had mastered the art of turning a heel, something I have done countless times since.

I loved that place. It was refreshing, kind, healing. Once I wandered in on a Sunday afternoon to find the owner playing her guitar while a dozen women sat, visiting over coffee and cookies with various projects in their laps.

I remember a few of the women in particular. There was Inge, who seemed to spend every day at the shop, knitting and visiting. She taught me to bind off, to knit two together, and the opposite, to slip-slip-knit. I have more than one sweater that I made, using a pattern that I admired while she was making it. One day she discovered a mistake she had made several rows back. I was thinking that I would have just gone on and pretended not to notice (after all probably no one would ever know). But Inge began tediously tinking back to the error. She said quietly, “I used to not fix things. But then I asked myself, why am I in such a hurry?” Inge was a prolific and beautiful knitter, but for some reason she was unable to graft the toes of her socks together. Meg would do it for her. I wondered to myself how it could be, that Inge could not do a task that I was able to do. That did not seem possible to me.

There was Sarah, a young woman who worked part time in the shop while finishing school. She had a little girl who would sometimes hang out at the store with her mom, working on her knitting of course. Sarah crafted some of the most beautiful sweaters I had ever seen. She also frequently fixed my messes, when I would get in over my head. Because I knew that I had such experts available to get me out of trouble and explain the intricacies of patterns that resembled ancient mosaics, I often chose projects that, truthfully, were far beyond my skill level. I was grateful for Sarah's kind help. Once she loaned me her cable needle for a month, until I got my twisty complicated socks done.

I remember the rainy afternoon when I finished my asymmetric sweater in its shades of orange, gold, and russet. I just needed buttons. No worries! Meg had a button box, which as a regular I was invited to help myself to. It was an enormous box, full of all shapes, sizes, and colors of buttons. Before long the contents of the box had been emptied on the floor, and four of us sat around, picking out the matching buttons which complemented my project perfectly. There was no charge for these buttons. They were friendship buttons.

A few years later the shop closed. It was an ugly end, with relationships and the air of friendly welcome torn. I experienced this as a sort of personal death. This place had meant so much to me. It was way more traumatizing than it should have been. But I gained something, within that space where the colorful balls of wool sat piled high, where the old wooden floor creaked under my footsteps and every comfortable chair had a lamp. Not only did I learn to knit, but I came away with a stronger appreciation than ever for the company of women, women of every age and style and persuasion of thought. I purchased a small plant and a card, writing carefully within the card a message of gratitude for the women who had opened a yarn store, and opened their hearts to me. When I arrived to deliver it, the doors were already shut, the lights out. I left my sad lonely plant on the porch, hoping it would be found by the women who I doubted were aware of the impact they had made on my life. I never heard from them again, but like all relationships that begin and end, my yarn store days left an impact on my heart.

Five years later, I was standing in the chilly January cold of a DC winter, along with a ragtag group of women, none of whom I had met before that day. Nearly undone by paralyzing grief after receiving a letter from my daughter notifying me that she no longer wished to have a relationship with me while pursuing her new male identity, I had flown across the country, wondering to myself why I was traveling so far, uninvited, to attend meetings with people I didn't know. In the few short months since discovering my daughter's new name and gender identity, I had found little to no comfort. Friends cared, but had no understanding of the issue. I felt alone and hopeless.

And then, out on that sidewalk in front of Facebook headquarters, as a few women gave speeches and we held up banners, I caught the eye of a woman standing with a fistful of wool and a drop spindle. She was spinning yarn, out there on the sidewalk as we chanted. I asked her, what are you making? She looked up at me coolly and said “Rage.” I instantly adored her. This was a woman who understood my wound. And she also understood yarn.

I told the women standing there about how I had lost not one, but two of my children to the trans cult. They embraced me warmly, and I felt in their embrace the power of women who understand the struggle. They knew nothing about me, in fact we actually had almost nothing in common, and yet there it was. Just like those quiet afternoons spent with yarn and needles, these women brought something my soul needed. It was actually my birthday, and as my new sisters sang Happy Birthday to me I thought about how this was the very gift that I needed on that day.

I got to know as many of them as possible that day, and over the next several days relationships were forged. There was the Uber ride shared with my new friend, the rage Spinner. After I shared my story with her, the Rage Spinner gave me a jar of home made marmalade, explaining that she makes sweet out of bitter. Miraculously, that jar made it past TSA security and home in my bag, There was the event at the library, where I first met Lierre Keith, heard Meghan Murphy and Brie Jontry speak, and listened in tears as a young woman stood up in the audience, her chest flat from her double mastectomy and spoke about how much she regretted her transition and how difficult it was to find support. I watched as the women of WoLF spoke at the Heritage Foundation, telling the stories of grieving mothers just like myself. I met Kellie-Jay, Venice, and Julia, who had flown from the UK to organize an event to help the American women. Five months later I flew to London to attend events there and met more of these amazing British women. Through all of these events, I was privileged to witness brave women who care enough to publicly speak out against the harms being done to children just like mine, and I knew for the first time what it was like to know the companionship of women against the tide of insanity that had claimed my children, and indeed my life. That connection fit perfectly into the indentation that was left in my soul, the day the yarn store closed.

I had no idea, back then, of the crazy turns my life would take. I didn't know I would be carrying burdens that shouldn't be carried, hearing the hushed and broken voices of women in the process of losing everything that would ever matter, or linking arms with women, and a few brave men, who dare to speak truths that will get you fired and canceled and worse these days. I didn't know I would sit silently with mothers and fathers and grandparents, listening to their stories of lost children, children seduced away from their own bodies, their true identities, and the circle of their own families a woman is. An adult human female. I sit in solidarity with you all. Quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, we knit something together that's stronger than any of us could create alone. . I didn't know the true meaning of the word “powerless”, but neither did I know the power of shared purpose and pain. I think of all of them, allies in this battle. It brings me strangely back to those days, days of quiet, sure companionship, and the mentoring of older and wise mothers who had put in their time and honed their craft.

Here's to us...the bold, crazy people who are willing to say that we know what a woman is. An Adult Human Female. Quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, we are knitting together something that is stronger than any of us could create alone.