Sweater girl
My mother emigrated from England when she was 11.
Born in 1913 in a little town in Cornwall, the land of King Arthur and Merlin, she and her family faced much privation during the protracted sacrifices of World War I. She filled us with stories of her girlhood. England, specifically Camborne, her “hometown,” was a fairy story place with cobbled streets and houses that had names. Their house was “Albany House.”
She had a blissful childhood surrounded by her mother’s relatives and their names resonated with us as if we had met them, as if we knew them by sight.
Two of my grandmother’s siblings, Aunt Clara and Uncle Herbert had emigrated too, but the others remained only names that struggled through the 1920s and 30s and through all of the bombing and shortages of World War II England. My mother kept up a constant stream of letters and packages of sensible warm clothing connecting her kin to us.
Life went on, my mother shouldering the burden of four children and an invalid spouse. As occupied as she was, she never closed off her connections to her former home. Her address books always had notations for Oscar or Leonard or Muriel and the myriad of other Champions, Tregenzas and Toms that made up our extended British family.
After my father died and Mom moved to Florida, she began to talk about visiting England. She hadn’t been there since she was an eleven year old girl.
“Come with me”, she pleaded, but I was too busy with my life, with my family and my work.
When she finally did buy her ticket, she asked once again if I would go with her. My answer was the same.
Looking back, or better put, feeling back, it seems that I had not an inkling of her need to connect with me.
“Can I bring you anything?” she asked
I responded by asking her to bring me an Irish knit sweater. I described what I wanted as clearly as I could and forgot about it until she returned.
I can see her now, so elated and excited to have been once again with people who were part of her happy childhood…and to have filled my request.
Smiling, she handed me a cheerfully wrapped package.
“Here’s your sweater,” she said.
Suddenly I was excited. I had always wanted one of those lovely fisherman’s sweaters.
But, it was not to be, for the sweater that she brought back was a heavy gray cotton cardigan with a shawl collar, Knit not with the intricate patterns of the Aran Isle, this was crafted with a plain garter stitch, something you might see in a caricature of an old woman with wrinkled cotton stockings and orthopedic shoes.
I was disappointed but had, thankfully, enough sense to hide my dismay. I put it on and modeled it for her. I noted that it was uncharacteristically warm for a cotton sweater.
Later I stashed it on the top shelf of my closet with a sigh of regret and put it out of my thoughts.
Eventually I got the Aran sweater that I wanted. Many lovely sweaters filled my bureau drawers and I moved that gray sweater from closet to closet and finally to the back of the door in what I jokingly call my office.
As time has passed, the sweater had gradually become my go-to garment when the house seemed cold. Wearing that sweater seemed to parallel a growing awareness of not only my own motherhood but that of my mother.
It was only last month, on an especially frigid day, when I reached for it, now more than 30 years old, that I realized, like my mother, it was not fancy but steadfastly ordinary, quietly doing what it was supposed to do.
It had also, as fashion often does, become rather chic in its austerity. My mother bought it because she loved me; it was the same as those letters, those care packages that Mom sent to our English relatives during their war torn lives.
It was her warmth, her smile and her loving arms sent through time to keep me safe and warm. Thanks, Mom.
