Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Wedding band


micahcable5
Originally uploaded by Wordpurler
So...the lovely and talented and also full of self control Toni has requested I post the cable chart for my wedding band celtic cable. (Seriously--check out her amazingness as she stashbusts and doesn't-buy-stuff her way across southern Idaho. Being an Idaho native myself...well, ok, I was BORN there at least...I am proud of my sistah.)

Right now the cable chart is a Word file, so I need to do a little PDF magic and will post it ASAP.

The project has taken on added urgency, since I am developing a new and alarmingly emotional attachment to my husband. (Wait, you say. Isn't one supposed to feel that way for one's spouse? Allow me to explain.)

M and I have been together for 13 years, since I was but a lass of 19 and he a much maturer older dude of...20. We'd both ended somewhat disastrous relationships and in the course of being really good friends discovered that we were actually madly in love with each other, a fact everyone but us seemed to realize much earlier. We married just 17 months later, the summer before my senior year of college, and celebrated our tenth anniversary last summer.

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, he's been having some health problems of late. Nothing urgent, nothing dangerous, just something that feels really chronic, ominously hanging on the horizon of our lives like a shadow across the sun. It's affected his energy, his patience, his spirits, and of course mine as well; the normal stress of the school year plus added responsibilities at home plus general worry equals me on the edge. Normally even-keeled, on a daily basis I am finding myself choking back tears, short-tempered with my students and my children, ducking into hallways to surreptitiously wipe my eyes, sobbing in the car. Today I burst into tears during my pre-observation meeting with my supervisor, the nicest man in the whole world. He thought I was worried about him watching me teach, which is the lowest of the worries on my ladder o' anxiety right now.

Anyway, I think I get the whole prayer shawl thing now. I've worked my way down the yoke of M's sweater and have divided for the body and sleeves. (The photo above is actually of one of the cable swatches I worked during the planning stages, not the sweater itself.) Since the body is vanilla stockinette, it's been great movie and blog-reading knitting, but I find myself just sitting and meditating--on him, on life, on what I hope and what I fear, on what I can do to be a better wife/mother/teacher/person, on how I will survive this, which is, we hope, just that shadow soon to blow away with the next wind, not the night coming early.

1 comment:

Toni said...

LOVE the cables--I think that is one of the coolest things EVER!!! And what a great gift to celebrate a happy marriage. :)

Go Idahoans! :)