DON’T TALK TO ME! I’M KNITTING! October 24, 2022

I am sorry for being a bitch right now, but I’m knitting. I can’t be bothered. As in, whatever you do right now, DON”T BOTHER ME…please. Don’t tell me where you are going, I don’t care. Don’t ask me a question, even if it’s simple. Do I want to walk with you to CVS? No! Do I want to go buy some food for the empty refrigerator? NO! I don’t want to go out- ever-- I just want to stay home and knit.

Please, don’t sit down next to me on the couch. Don’t even sit on the far end of the couch. And certainly do NOT put on the TV. Actually, can you simply stay far away any room I currently occupy as I sit and knit? Don’t you have somewhere to be? I love you, but you are very distracting, and even though I know you have the right to be in the house with me, I am not sure I accept that right now.

Oh, why did I listen to them, these Women Who Knit? They said I could do it. They said I would learn new techniques. They said it would be hard, but not too hard. And I believed them.

I joined in on the fun of the autumn Westknits (https://www.westknits.com/) Mystery Shawl knit-a-thon on the day it started three weeks ago. Basically, I have done nothing else since I cast on those first i-cord stitches. We are knitting a shawl, in parts. Participants have picked their three colors, but don’t know what the entire shawl will look like. A new section of the pattern is revealed every week for a month. Three sections have been revealed so far. I am halfway through the first. They say it’s not a race. Good thing.

Admittedly I have gone off the deep end, and I might be there for say, oh, maybe 6 months or so (if I able to continue with my current frenzied rate of progress, which is doubtful). I want to quit, to go back to the relaxed knitter I once was, making baby sweaters and blankets. I could knit and talk, listen to a podcast, or watch TV, and I would happily rise off the couch, as long as I was allowed to “just finish this row.” But now that I have started this project, I can’t quit. I am on a mission to completion.

I am counting the stitches until the next slip slip knit, pass one over. I am concentrating on the slip, slip knit. I am trying to remember what row I just finished, what pattern repeat I am on. I might lose a stitch. I might split a stitch. I might skip a make one left. I live in fear of messing up and having to stop everything and spend an afternoon at the knitting store, losing precious hours while waiting impatiently for the owner to fix what I have messed up. And as all knitters know, knitting stores do not hold emergency hours.

I don’t want to exercise, I don’t want to clean up my breakfast dishes, I don’t want to answer emails, I don’t want to visit your mother. Do I even want to babysit my grandson? I take the fifth. And the worst of this is that I idiotically convinced my best friend to do the knit a thon with me. Now she hates me. I sure miss her as my best friend. But I have no time for friends anymore, so maybe it’s for the best.

I might lose everything I love, but in the end, I will prevail. I will have a new shawl, replete with mistakes, in colors that I am not sure I really like. When I finish this shawl, it will be the only thing I ever wear, even if it is hideous.

Enough with this writing! I want to be knitting! I want to finish pattern repeat four thousand and seven. I am sure I could have done another row or two instead of dithering on about my misery. The typos and mistakes in grammar be damned! I may make one right, but it won’t be in this essay.

Christmas Flowers Curbed My Holiday Enthusiasm

Every so often, I have an encounter that can only be described as a “Curb Your Enthusiasm Moment.” The situation might occur in line at the post office, at the bank, at a grocery store, or as I sit in traffic. I tend to rehash these moments in the shower. As the water streams over my head and I reflect on the weird encounter of the day, I have a little chuckle, and ask myself, “WWLDD?” That, of course, is short for “What Would Larry David Do?” I imagine the whole scene, knowing exactly WLDWD, but knowing that I could never, as much as I would like, behave that way. After a few days, I usually forget the whole encounter, and other than those instances where a similar scene actuality we l Llly shows up in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode (recently about a person not moving up in line in the grocery store), they fade from my memory as quickly as they came. But this experience, this thing that happened just before Christmas this year, stuck with me.

It was an unusually warm, bright and sunny day for the third week in December, and I decided to get some fresh air and Vitamin D. As I was heading out of my condo building, a neighbor stopped me in the foyer, by the counter where the Amazon packages are piled up. “You’re Benjamin, right?” the neighbor asked (I am relatively new to the building, and we were both wearing masks.) I told her twas I, and we made our polite introductions. “Those flowers-the ones there on the counter- they have been sitting out there for a day or two. Looks like they are for you.” Flowers? For me? I wasn’t expecting flowers. I mentally went through all the reasons someone would send me flowers, quickly dismissing all of them. I went over to the arrangement, and sure enough, the card was addressed to Ronna and Mike Benjamin. I was delighted to get flowers of course (who wouldn’t be?) and decided I would bring them in on the way back from my walk. As I walked, I thought about the flowers, and one thing bothered me. How had both Mike and I missed seeing the flowers? Every day, without fail that week, we each walked right by the flowers as we went to check the mail or the packages on the table. I pictured myself examining the labels on the boxes next to the flowers, moving the packages in front of and beside the flowers to get a better look. As I walked back into the foyer after my walk, I retrieved the flowers. And that is when I realized why I had never really even seen those flowers, or if I had seen them, why they didn’t register in my brain. It was a Christmas arrangement It never occurred to me that the flowers were meant for us.

To know Mike and I at all, you know we are Jewish. The way we talk, the things we talk about, the jokes we make (“Oy, am I thoisty!”), the values we have. We are not strangers in our synagogue. I make a challah every Friday. Regularly, I use the words “mishugas”, “machetanum” and “l’chaim”. I like chopped liver and gefilte fish. You get the picture. I brought the flowers in. I placed them in the middle of my kitchen counter. I gave them water, put them back on the counter and gave them another look. And I decided it was the literally the most Christmas-y flower arrangement I had ever seen in my life, complete with silver pine cones, red roses and carnations, and a silver candle encased in a glass flute right smack in the middle. And it was just for us! I wanted to be thankful for the flowers, but I just could not get there. The card noted “Happy Holidays!” and it was from our financial advisors. We have known them for many years. They know our family, They know our hopes and dreams. They know how much money we give every year to the synagogue for the annual appeal! And now…a Christmas arrangement? Why not a big box of secular Godiva chocolates? (that’s a hint in case, g-d forbid, our financial advisor somehow ends up reading this piece.)

Now I know, with absolute certainty, that these flowers were given with the best intentions. But really, who gives a Christmas arrangement to Jews? Would I give a Hanukkah arrangement to a non-Jew? WWLDD? My mind went crazy with all the possibilities. Do I say something? Larry would definitely say something, in that way of his. “You know, I just want to tell you we got that flower arrangement…it’s pretty, pretty Christmas-y…” I knew it wouldn’t end well for Larry. He’d end up having to switch his financial advisor and he’d lose a boatload of money because whatever he said would be way more offensive than the gift itself. But what to do? My brother suggested that I was obligated to say something or I would get the same arrangement every Christmas. “It’s the Whoopee Pie situation” my husband commented, referring to the fact that we never told my mother in law no one liked Whoopie Pies the first time she served them, and we ended up eating them for dessert for a decade. We stood around the Christmas flowers, wondering what to do. Do I just send a note that says, “thank you for your thoughtfulness”? But really, is sending a Christmas arrangement to a Jewish family really thoughtful? Do I send it anyway?

Is there a way to write a thank you card that doesn't mention thoughtfulness? Should we call them and try to make a joke out of it? Sarcasm? “You know, thanks so much for the flowers, but how much money do we have to invest with you so you actually know us?” “Can we get an ornament next year?” “What’s your address? I’d like to send you a menorah.” We had some good belly laughs.