A MILLION SHADES OF GREEN

DAY I: March 09, 2008

I’ve joined a knitalong/knitting contest for the first time in my life.

I had decided not to, but the idea of knitting a place kept niggling at the back of my mind, and grew into plan for a wrap to be called ”A Million Shades of Green”, after a short story by J. O. Jeppson (link to book) which starts with a patient in a mental hospital who paints the walls with faeces … an evocative reminder of our need to express ourselves, and of the endless ways people find to do so.

I’m not quite up to a million shades yet, but when last I counted, I had 273 different yarns, but not only in green. To be decorated with brass rings, brass bells and tassels, and, (if I can find them), frogs, spiders and a lizard. If anyone has a giant millipede, it would fit right in!

I want to … not re-create … I want to travel back to a magic bit of my childhood, a place called Fern Hill.

It’s a boys’ dorm of Mount Hermon school in Darjeeling, and I lived there for a year 51 years ago, when I was 7 … I grew up as Third Culture Kid (3CK), moving all the time, and this is one of the places I miss the most.

And for me, looking at this picture does not bring to mind the Kanchenjanga range or the wide blue sky, but a steep and deeply wooded hillside behind the house.

Like this one:

It was always dark and damp and secretive, with a very special smell, the sun never came to the forest floor, there were enormous black millipedes that curled up when you touched them, which you could carry around in your pocket as a shiny round ball, and once I saw a huge moon moth on a tree trunk.

And the shape of the wrap reminds me of moon moths.

I’m doing double-ended Tunisian instead of knitting, because that goes best with my yarns – I had lots of wool stashed away in perfect colours, but mostly thinner stuff. With a 12mm Tunisian hook I can get a fabric that is soft and lacy, yet firm at the same time. And I find that Tunisian crochet blends colours better than knitting.

That might only be a minor deviation from the pattern, and ”Minor deviations from the pattern are acceptable..."

"...but it must definitely be recognizable as the Culture Fusion pattern” ... and as I am working from the neck outwards, I guess I’ve disqualified myself already …

No matter. This is my wrap and my journey, and I definitely did not want to follow the pattern and start from the bottom of the wrap and work my way up – the short, ”chopped up” rows made me feel intensely uncomfortable.

I * DID * NOT * WANT * CHOPPED * UP, I wanted looooooong liiiiiiiines, long flowing lines of continuity.

WARNING - Now it’s going to get personal:

Continuity … a beautiful but strange concept for one who, before starting fifth grade, had gone to 7 schools in 2 continents and 3 countries and 3 languages and 3 religions. Culture shock and confusion are not the issue here, nor things like being rapped over the knuckles with a ruler for not knowing long division, when you had barely gotten past 2+2 in your previous school. The issue right now is


SPACE

AND

TIME

TO

GRIEVE


I came to Norway from India for the first time at 6, and people I hadn't seen since I was 2 were saying ”Isn't it nice to be home?”

Home? What home? I honestly think it did not occur to anyone, not even our parents, that my sister and I had been ripped away from our home. And, regrettably, blindness like this in adults seems to have  been perfectly normal for the time.

I spent that summer making what I called ”secrets” in secluded places: I would dig a hole, inter a flower or a dead insect or something, build up a mound of earth and decorate it with stones and flowers. Like the patient in ”A Million Shades of Green” I had found a means of expressing myself, without ever consciously knowing that I was burying the past, without ever telling anyone, without ever feeling the grief of having lost so many people and places that I loved.

But the price for this kind of unfeeling is high – when grief gets frozen, memory and emotions also freeze, and the past becomes a two-dimensional permafrost. But it came back in dreams – dreams of Darjeeling, where we used to stay during the rainy season, and never of Cooch Bihar, where my first love had been invested.

And my dreams came true, we actually moved back to Darjeeling, where the woods were a part of my life for less than a year – it was such a short interlude, and so many other parts of the permafrost of grief have had to be thawed, and re–experienced and remembered and cherished, that it took me more than 50 years to find my way back to Darjeeling woods.

And I am weeping as I work on the wrap, hooking in the rich shades of green, enjoying all the different textures of the yarn, allowing myself the luxury of time and space to grieve, allowing myself the anguish of melting grief, knowing that this anguish is the only path that leads back to what was lost.

Day X, April 26, 2008 

STILL PERSONAL, but more upbeat this time.

When I started working on my wrap, a tiny inner voice emerged, I’ll call her Littlest, and as she gained confidence, she kept looking on as I hooked, enjoying the process, leaning heavily into me and purring contentedly: ”This one is for meee” …

The contentment lasted until I started planning how to convert the square shape (see day II) into a long and narrow CF shape. When Littlest realized what I was doing, she began asking if this wouldn’t make a nice jacket … quietly and hesitantly, but repeatedly, with the unignorable persistence of a 3-year-old. So I finally replied firmly that no, this had to be a wrap, as there saw no time to start over again and finish by the deadline.

”OK”, she said, ”it doesn’t matter”. And went back towards the permafrost. (See day I)

That hurt … that heartbreaking acceptance that her feelings, needs, wishes did not matter; that whatever was important to her … DID. NOT. MATTER.

So I asked her what she wanted. It took time and patience to get answers from her, as she had no concept of compromise – in her world, ”want” was a war that she never even tried to join; survival was giving way to the needs and wishes of others, always; and even thinking about what she wanted was overwhelmingly, paralyzingly scary. But I did get a clear answer after a while: Littlest wanted a jacket, not a wrap, because ”a jacket is more huggy”. And a bit later: ”It would be nice with some pink in it”. And later still: ”lots of bells and whistles?”

I had some wants too: I wanted to start another wrap first, in case I managed to finish by the deadline. I still wanted to keep to the ”long lines”, but construction would be so much easier if I had a core triangle of short, chopped up rows to shape around. ”And we’ll have some bells and frogs on the wrap, but we’ll leave the pink for the jacket, with more bells, OK?”

Littlest had no problem with that, and has stayed with me, out of the freezer, ever since, giving me the continuity I was longing for on day I.

E.E. Cummings has said it better than I ever could:

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds


Bits of permafrost are still left; I’ve been dealing with that all my adult life, and I expect to have to deal with things as they arise as long as I live, but it has been getting easier for a long time, and I know it will keep getting easier - even more so now that Littlest is lying skilfully curled around my heart. I hope I can take care of her so that she stays there.