A Common Thread

Most Thursdays you'll find me gathering up whatever knitting project I'm working on, and crossing the street to our club house to join our Needles group.

With no fuss, or preparation, a group of women gathers. Laps are full of knitting, crocheting or embroidery work, or a bit of hand quilting. Once in awhile someone shows up with nothing to do, but be there. There is no agenda, no snack, nothing to drink, no music playing, just us. We usually number four to six, sometimes we swell to about eight, and once in awhile it's just a couple of us.

We spend about two hours together. Now and then someone is having trouble with a pattern or technique, and help is provided. Once in awhile someone brings a finished project and we all ooohhh and aaahhh with gusto and enthusiasm because we know it's already been shown at home with little accolades afforded to it, (this is likely how men feel when they show us photos of the fish they caught and released) or none at all if there is no one else at home. Many in our neighborhood have nobody else at home.

Mostly we just visit. About whatever. We tend to steer clear of politics, religion, any of the big, hot topics. We're not here to solve the problems of the world. We're just here.

Sometimes we laugh, sometimes loud. And sometimes we cry.

Almost always someone tells a story from their past, and it's such sweetness to stop and listen, watch the face of the storyteller as they go back and remember, then share with us.

This past week one of the women, I'll call her 'S', apologized ahead of time, then she said, 'I'm sorry girls, but I had a really sh***y week." She proceeded to tell us about all that had gone wrong, and how discouraged she was over it all. We commiserated with her - we would have felt the same! Then we found humor in some of the situation, laughed with her, and told stories pulled from our own history of less than stellar weeks.

There's such comfort in not feeling alone in whatever you're going through.

Two of us at this week's gathering are in the middle of nursing husbands back to health after major surgeries. One has a husband who is newly retired and trying to find his place in the world. One has a friend about to undergo a mastectomy. All of us are in that stage of life that isn't old but isn't young or even middle age anymore, because none of us expects to live to be one hundred and twenty years old. Mostly we are just women with a common thread in our laps, spending a bit of the day together.

At the end of our time this same woman, 'S' said, 'thank you ladies, I really needed this." All we'd done was show up, sit and listen with work in our laps. But it was together and that made all the difference.