A MILLION SHADES OF GREEN, day I

I’ve joined a knitalong/knitting contest for the first time in my life, details here:

Jane Thornley's site

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 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 (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 CF 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:

"If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear out and condemn ..."

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 didn’t occur to anyone, not even our parents, that my sister and I had been ripped away from our home. And, regrettably, I think that kind of blindness in adults was 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 feelings 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 pain of melting grief, knowing that this pain is the only path that leads back to what was lost.

Comments

[cindyl]

I've often thought that only when logic moves out of the way, can the heart best tell you what should be done. Logic says burying a flower, an insect, is silly. The heart says it's exactly what a child needs to do. Like an adult needs to create a wrap, in countless shades of green. My thoughts are with you, friend. You rock!

[Susie]

What a wonderful writer you are. I went on that journey of grief with you! And I love how you just do your knitting the way you want to.........not necessarily the way of the pattern. LOL!

[Gelsomina]

I have tears in my eyes, this is so lovely, Ivaa

[LynnH]

What a story. I honor your process, your space. I'm happy you have this green piece to weep with, as you progress.

I have a different story but I, too, have wept when others did not understand. And fiber has given me a solace that other things could not provide.

Someone told me while I was in a very hard part of the "road," that the only way through, is through. Not around, over or under. And I am glad I put on the high boots and waded, through.

The life I have now is better than I ever imagined I could have. I wish the same for you.

[Swapna]

I can understand your feelings,don't feel bad.
When you left India,you were too small.
Our family moved to India to leave here when I was 5yrs old.
They had to left their mother land only for religious matter....
You can realize!!!
My parents did many struggle because they had to left properties
bank balance...every things they have.They never forget their own land.
Do you want to visit India,come,to search your old day!!
Your Indian friend Swapna