Entre Nubes

8 Nov 2009

Trim detail; I used a V-Stitch

Teddy bear detail

A Blanket for Marcel

A year and a half ago, I was sitting in a hospital waiting lobby. It was 5 a.m., and my mother was in surgery—a total hysterectomy. She had uterine cancer, and we hoped that this procedure would mean that the growth was contained, and that a few rounds of chemotherapy or radiation would kill any remaining microscopic cancer. I wanted to sleep, but the lobby couches were uncomfortable. I tried to read, but I couldn’t focus. I tried to listen to music, but it made me more anxious. My aunt, Adriana, was the only person not pacing or fidgeting in her seat. She was crocheting a blanket for a raffle. Adriana learned to crochet twenty years ago when she joined a mom’s beginner crochet group. The women brought their children, sat in a circle around them, and learned to crochet while the kids played.

As a teenager, I begged her to teach me to crochet, but I was too impatient and too clumsy-fingered. I gave up crocheting the same day I tried to learn. That morning, nearly ten years later, again I asked Adriana to teach me to crochet. Over the next two hours, she guided me through a simple chain, and after achieving mediocrity, she taught me the double crochet stitch. I made a 200+ stitch chain that was as long as it was awful. But, I had my own practice yarn, and my first crochet needle.

My mother was in the hospital for five days post-surgery. The cancer spread to her pelvis, and it was in her lymphatic system. We were facing all-out war. My sister, dad, and I took turns staying in mom’s hospital room overnight. During my shifts, I crocheted. I sat next to my mom’s bed and crocheted row upon row of double crochet stitches.

The day my mother was discharged from the hospital, my aunt brought me a beginner’s pattern—a baby blanket with a 3x3 teddy bear pattern. Of course, at the time, it never crossed my mind that I might crochet a blanket for my own child. I bought 4 spools of yarn in a beautiful shade of jade and the required needle for the yarn gauge. Since my family is so large, somebody was bound to get pregnant soon.

I crocheted every day. My mother regained her strength. Soon, she was walking again, and not long after that, I was accompanying her to chemotherapy appointments. I sat outside the chemotherapy room and crocheted. At her second appointment, I realized that I miscalculated the pattern scale, and I was forced to start over. By her sixth and final appointment, I managed to complete only one quarter of the blanket. My mother was in great spirits—we all were. She looked healthy and vibrant. She had color in her cheeks. The side effects were so minor, even her oncologist was impressed. I saw an incredible will to live in my mother’s eyes, and I was comforted.

My mother did not respond to the chemotherapy. She appeared healthy because the chemotherapy was slowing the spread, but she could not survive on this treatment for much longer. We sought second and third and fourth opinions. She underwent two rounds of radiation. The cancer continued to grow. She grew weak. I stopped crocheting.

In the months that followed, I moved to New York City. I started a new job. I settled into the chaos of the city. I survived a harsh winter. I found out I was pregnant in June of 2009. I entertained the idea of asking my sister to send me my crochet tools and yarn. She searched for my crochet tote to no avail. I was so excited to be pregnant, that I decided to buy new yarn and seek out a new pattern (beginner, of course). But, instead, I preoccupied my time with obstetric appointments and pregnancy literature.

Adriana called me one afternoon in August: mom was in the ICU with severe rectal hemorrhaging. My father, via my aunt, urged me to fly home. Two days later, I was in San Antonio, Texas and laying eyes on my mother for the first time in nine months. A shell of the woman my mother was laid in bed in that dark hospital room. She smiled and extended her arms to me. I hugged her frail body, afraid that I might break her. She touched my tiny baby bump and swore she felt the baby kick.

“I’m a grandma’,” she said over and over.

I found my crochet tools in a corner of my former closet, and I crocheted every day I was there that week. Once more, I sat next to my mother’s hospital bed and crocheted. I told her all about my pregnancy. She told me she wanted a granddaughter, so I should begin a new blanket with pink yarn. No, I predicted; it’s going to be a boy. Three days later, mom was discharged to at-home hospice care. Inevitability was scratching at our heels. A hospital bed was installed in my former room, next to my former bed. I lied in my former bed while she laid in her final bed, and I crocheted. We talked during her brief moments of coherence. I held her hand as often as I could. I tacked ultrasound photos of her grandchild on the wall next to her. On my last day in San Antonio, I packed my crocheting, and I said goodbye to my mother.

She passed away in her sleep three weeks later, on September 7th.

I spent another week in San Antonio. I crocheted through tears and memories and laughs and more tears. Upon my return to New York, I felt determined to finish the baby blanket for Marcel. The weeks that followed were difficult, but crocheting relaxed me.

The blanket finally started to resemble the pattern. I sat with my unfinished blanket every night and crocheted for several hours. My technique remained clumsy and unrefined, but the yarn somehow adjusted to my ineptitude. Yet, every day I was surprised and satisfied with my progress. My belly grew, and Marcel’s blanket grew. I thought of my mother, and the final moments I spent with her. I thought about the genesis of this blanket and knew that little else I might ever give Marcel would be as valuable as this blanket that appeared little by little in my hands.

My mother will never hold Marcel, but her spirit is in these threads of jade and gold, and she will keep his heart warm as he sleeps.