For twenty years, at least, my mother, who knitted sweaters as a hobby, said that she wished she knew how to crochet. Twenty years, at least, of watching her page through magazines and pattern books and sigh. She was a fast knitter, though her technique was unusual, with one needle trapped under her left armpit, while her right hand did all the work. She’d learned to do it that way from a great-aunt when she was a child, and since we never, ever saw anybody else doing that, we both believed she’d learned knitting wrong. It was something she was embarrassed about. Twenty-four years after my mother’s death, I’ve learned that it is, in fact, a rustic European style, though how and where the great-aunt learned it will forever remain a mystery. But she’d never learned how to crochet and was envious of the people who could do it, who churned out baby blankets and table covers and shawls and scarves with ease. She had many different crochet needles in all kinds of sizes which the husband of a neighbor who had passed away had passed on to her, and lots and lots of yarn in a multitude of materials and colors, all kept in a great huge shopping bag in the little room next to hers that used to be my brother’s. So after twenty years, at least, of her regular wishes, I went to the library and got an instruction book, took a hook and a hunk of pink yarn from the big shopping bag, because that was not a color she often used, and began to learn the stitches: single, double, chain. I didn’t get great, but after a week or so or practicing, unraveling, and practicing some more, I had those stitches down pretty well. I made a sample square, which could serve as a potholder, if anyone wanted to put it to use, and brought it to her, with the rest of the pink yarn, and two hooks. Look, I said, look what I made. I taught myself how, and now I can show you. She was not happy. She was not excited. She said, oh, that’s nice, or somesuch, but she was not interested. She didn’t want to learn. Or, more likely, she didn’t want to learn from me. She never used the potholder, either.

Patricia Russo has had poems in One Art, Acropolis Journal, The Turning Leaf Journal, and The Twin Bird Review.