Crocheting and Patience

My grandmother crocheted. It was one of her talents that didn't involve cooking or the garden. She made all kinds of things: mittens, slippers, scarfs and blankets. Whenever I saw her sitting on the couch or in one of the recliners I was put in a trace. I watched her every move. The bundle of yard tucked neatly under her arm with the slack pulled out ready to be taken in and made part of the blanket, her fingers maneuvering the crocheting needle, twisting and tying together the colored string. The way she'd look up from her soap opera only every ten seconds to check herself.

"Is that hard?" I said to her one day.

"Not if you get used to it."

I kept staring at her flowing fingers, working and looping the yard back and forth above the blanket forming below.

"Can you teach me?" I asked, thinking it would be easy. After all, I was good at everything. In t-ball I hit the ball hard and ran the fastest, most of my friends gave up looking for me when we played hide and seek, I could ride my bike in the woods and catch a kickball with ease. I could do just about anything if I tried.

"Okay," she said. "But it takes patience."

I reassured her I could do it and made my way up to her bedroom. I sorted through her needles to find the right size tip. Some were big and others were really small, used for making all kinds of things she told me, with different styles and ways of using the yarn. I choose an average-sized tip like the one she was using. I went to her closet and picked out a jungle-green ball of yarn. I was ready.

"No, like this," she explained as I attempted to mimic her motions. "Here, let me start it for you."

Easy enough, a little help at first can be expected. She handed back to me a one inch square piece of blanket--a start to what was going to be my afghan.

"Send your tip through and pull the loop back in," she said as I watched her experienced fingers perform the motion. "Move up just a bit and do it again."

It wasn't working for me. I thought it was the needle but when I changed it out for another one-- and then another, it still didn't help. After thirty minutes of careful looping and pulling, my green 'blanket' began to look more like a forest lichen than anything symmetrical. I looked over at my grandmother's progress and, as expected, she had already crocheted an area three times as big as my contorted lily pad looking 'square.'

Okay, maybe I wasn't good at everything. Patience was too high a cost to sit down for hours on end and learn how to crochet. I didn't have that kind of time, I had baseballs to hit and hide-and-seek to play.