Slipper Socks

2 oz ply wool (No.4 needles for lady’s size)

Wool shops in the High St,

wooden shelves crammed:

layers of soft yarn, shade on shade,

palest of pinks swanning into deep crimsons,

primrose yellows into rich mustard gold.

Oz, the ounce, sixteen to the pound weight.

Women were all ladies. Gender fixed

like the sun, the moon and the stars,

from the first wet gasp of breath.

Mothers, aunts, grandparents knitting:

pastel blue bootees (boys) rose pink (girls).

Knitting for the yet-to-be-born, cream or daisy yellow.

So straightforward, no question. Like a knitting pattern.

Abbreviations k-knit. Tog.-together.p-purl PSSO-pass slip-stich over

You sat quietly knitting; it keeps my hands occupied, you said,

twisting the yarn with a deft assurance.

INSTRUCTIONS

Cast on 29 stitches.

Looping each stitch onto the needle.

It is a beginning. They hang from the needle

like a warm promise.

1st row…k9: p 1: k9: p1: k9

2nd row…Knit all the row

Repeat these 2 rows 18 times.

27 twisted loops and 2 straight stitches

18 rows, 18 years in a serried row,

typing in a typing pool, retyping,

arthritic fingers pound metal keys;

work in triplicate with inky carbon. Clatter

echoing click and clack of your straight needles

knitting milk-white aran jumpers and dark blue guernseys,

against the bitter winters of our childhood. And bootees.

Next row p 1: k 1: across row

Then k 1: p 1: across row

Repeat these two rows 6 times

Shabbat Friday with your sister; the house perfumed

with the warm smells of freshly fried fish, gefilte fish, gherkins.

2 ladies knitting, 2 sets of needles chattering together.

K tog. Sharing slipped stitches as sisters do.

Toe Decrease

1st row…Rib 7: slip 1: k 1 PSSO k 1: k 2 tog Rib 5: k 2 tog k 1: sl.1: k 1: PSSO Rib 7

2nd row…Rib 7: p 3: Rib 5: p 3: Rib 7

3rd row...Rib 6: sl. 1: k 1: PSSO k 1: k 2 tog: Rib 3: k 2 tog: k 1: sl. 1: k 1: PSSO. Rib 6

4th row…Rib 6: p 3: Rib 3: Rib 6:

Cut wool.

Her finger and thumbs slide through the soft woollen yarn.

The gramophone plays Vaughan Willliam’s Pastoral Symphony.

She listens as her needles twist and turn;

she has heard it many times.

It chimes with her own quiet air of abstraction. Evening falls. Again.