Recently I’ve been a little flighty with my knitting. Having Abigail and Elliot here has meant that knitting happens in little bits and pieces, a row here, a row there -our crazy sleep (or not sleep) schedules made for times that were well suited to bashing out little accessories of a newborn nature, little hats, long baby socks, stuff like that. I had plans though – mostly for baby stuff and socks.

I even had this big idea that I’d keep my advent knitting going – I got the advent socks from Cozy Knitter this last season. It was 24 stripes all leading up to Christmas and it was so lovely and peaceful to get up each morning and knit my two stripes (one on each sock) while I had my coffee and planned my day. I thought to myself that I would very much like to be the sort of person who gets up each day and begins with a small bit of sock. I imagined it being meditative and lovely and a really good way to get 12 pairs of socks in a year. I told myself I’d try it for this year, but really I meant for the rest of my life.

I have fantasies like this all the time. “I shall knit sixteen rounds of sock each morning so long as I live” is right up there with “Henceforth I shall dust everything weekly” or “From this day on I will always make my bed” or “I will have an empty inbox at the end of each work day”. Lovely habits that seem like they’ll make me into a really impressive person but never really seem to work out. Still, the sock thing seemed reasonable and honestly I’m more likely to meet a knitting goal than a cleaning one, so I decided to give it a go.

I wound my yarn, got out two sets of DPNs (even though I was going to knit two socks at the same time I would rather lick a cat than use two circulars) and got totally ready to ring in the new year with my new meditative and inspirational daily sock practice. Enter Abigail, and suddenly the whole thing seemed impossible and I was immediately reduced to watching each day zoom by as I thought “Holy cats where did that one go and have you seen those socks?”

Since that baby turned up I have in total managed about 5 days worth of daily sock knitting and the socks aren’t even equal. Every day I think that I’ve got to get it together and get back on track and I sort of vow that I’ll catch up and make it happen before the end of January and well. I thought it might happen once there was a little more knitting time.

So today I woke up, and there is more knitting time. Quite a bit more, actually and I was so incredibly happy about it, and I spent about a half hour working on all the other stuff that’s fallen off the rails over the last 23 days (and not knitting) while planning the amazing blog post that I was going to write to you today, about how I was going to spend the next year being this amazing person who did this cool sock thing. I even had it all tied into what today is – which is the nineteenth anniversary of this blog. (I know, I can’t believe it either.) I was pretty sure that by the time I got to my desk to blog I’d have the socks caught up.

Then two things happened. First, I had rather more work to do than I thought, then I had to go to the dentist (which is not celebratory at all but good oral hygiene is important) and then I had to do the groceries and then Meg texted and then I realized I never put in that laundry and then … then just a few minutes ago, something amazing happened.

I picked up my socks to work on them (I was going to knit several inches on them in ten minutes, as one does) and then I was overcome completely by a case of startitis so bad that I actually went to the stashroom, got two sweaters worth of yarn down from a cubby, and then shot off an email to arrange buying another sweaters worth. I was helpless. (They’re not even baby sweaters which would at least make some sense. They’re for me.)

I got out the ballwinder and swift and started rooting around for the pattern and then stopped and realized that I was in the process of wrecking my perfect blog post about my amazing sock thing, and I tried to make myself pick up those socks, and then I realized that it was okay. I still had a blog post, and I actually had a way better point.

There is absolutely nobody in my life that I can call and explain this bout of startitis to.* There’s nobody who wants to hear that I was helpless in the face of a nice DK, that I don’t knit socks on two circulars because I find DPNs more satisfying. That after a lifetime of knitting the idea of a new sweater still makes my heart skip a beat. That the words “self striping yoke” are enchanting. That I think I’ll finish socks without actually knitting them – These are not gripping ideas outside of this space – and regular people aren’t going to understand that this amazing sock plan is GARBAGE NOW, BECAUSE I AM GOING TO KNIT A SWEATER I DON’T NEED IMMEDIATELY.

I can say it here though, and know that you won’t just read it, you’ll understand it. You’ll maybe leave a comment telling me about when it happened to you. That you love self striping things, that the way that I feel about DPNS, that’s how you feel about circulars, and while we may continue to be poorly understood as artists in general, here we walk among our own kind.

I am simply understood in this space, and I feel normal here, and for nineteen years it has felt more like a home than a writing thing, and I can’t thank you enough for making that always true for me. No matter how negligent or sporadic my posts. I’m going to go knit a sweater now. Maybe I’ll love the sock thing tomorrow. I’ll let you know.

*This is a lie. There are absolutely people I can call and tell that too, but you know who they are? They’re some of you. We’ve been doing this long enough that most of my oldest and dearest friends… they’re you.

** Also, today is the day that it’s traditional to kick off my Bike Rally fundraising, and this year is no different. Also, it’s traditional to freak out the accounting people over there by making those donations in an amount equal to my years of blogging. If you’d like to keep the weird going and you are inclined and able, you can make a $19 donation here.

Abigail Carol Wolf was born early in the morning on the last day of 2022.

Her birth was lovely, quiet and peaceful, another beautiful waterbirth for Meg, and another birth I was privileged to attend. She – individually as a person, as an isolate being in time apart from all other things brought me nothing but pure happiness. Her safe arrival and the safety of Meg were a relief that felt like bricks were being lifted from me.

I know I haven’t spoken much here about Charlotte’s death, and I don’t think I will either – it was an intimate and terrible time that’s kept in the hearts of the people who lived that night and the days and weeks afterwards. That experience and its traumatic events somehow became then entangled with the unfolding pandemic and its isolation and to say we are changed would be an understatement. Some wounds – even once they are healed, just leave scars.

We knew this leading up to Abigail’s birth, that we were scarred and frightened people, and that it wasn’t going to be an easy time for any of us, but Meg and Alex especially, of course. For all of us the idea of putting her down to sleep was unimaginable. The idea that something might happen to her or that Meg would have to endure something more wasn’t anything my grandmothers heart could seem to manage, and I know her parents were certainly more scared than I was.

After speaking with grief counselors and mental health professionals, we came up with a plan. It was loose, but it was a plan, and it was this: As a family and a team we were going to do whatever it took for everyone to feel as safe as possible for as long as it needed to happen. I know. It’s a plan that was a little loose on the details.

The day Abigail was born – so was her team, and our willingness as a family to lean into each other and this experience has been one of the most amazing periods of my life. After her birth Megan, Alex, Elliot and Abigail came here to live with us, and for the first sixteen days of her life, around the clock, day and night… at every moment… we held Abigail.

We watched her breathe, we touched her sweet cheeks. We supported each other and passed her off from loving arms to loving arms as we each got too tired or needed sleep. Meg would tend her while she was awake, then when she wanted to sleep, her father would take her. When he got tired, Alex would wake Joe, Joe would wake me, I’d wake Alex again, and all of us would trot her immediately to her mother if she made so much as a peep.

While our first goal was always to take care of Meg and Abigail, so much more happened. We cooked, we talked, we cried and told each other what we were afraid of. We supported Elliot as he worked through his own fears for his sister and every one of us was gentle, and kind and grateful and scared. Each one of us held that wee sweetness in the night and smelled her hair and breathed her in, and willed her with our own steadiness. Please be able to stay, please stay.

Shortly after Charlotte died, another baby was born in our family and from our place of grief we couldn’t figure out how those people could possibly be relaxed. We asked and were told that they had been frightened, but that after a few days it had been so clear to them that the baby was healthy that they’d relaxed and stopped worrying. Maybe, we thought, maybe that will happen to us.

It didn’t, or I guess it would be fairer to say it hasn’t. Maybe it’s coming, but so far Abigail’s hearty good health just seems so irrelevant. Charlotte was perfect too, and it was no protection.

Around the two week mark, we started talking about what would happen next. How long could we keep doing this? How long is it realistic to live this way? Every time it came up the answer was the same. As long as it takes. We can do this as long as it takes, and until we are all ready. Over the next nights, deciding that we were kinda sorta ready (or as ready as we ever would be) Alex started putting Abigail down, but still watching her as she slept. When he needed to sleep she got passed off to me or her Poppy, and we still stayed awake and held and rocked her. Over a few more nights we transitioned to sleeping when she slept. None of us were forced, none of us were pushed. If any one member of Team Abigail didn’t feel ready for a next step, it wasn’t taken until we were all there. (Joe and I are immeasurably grateful that Alex and Megan gave us this gift.) Each one of us (including Ellie) were allowed the time and the space to work through everything we needed to without judgement or pressure, and in return, we all did the best we could.

I know that some of you reading this will think we’re bananas. I know that because there are people in our real life who think we’re bananas, and I kinda see it. We’re talking about a team of people sleeping in shifts to prevent something unpreventable but this has all made so much sense to all of us and in my heart I know that supporting my child as she learns how to live after loss, as this family learns how to live with this sort of fear has made so much more sense than asking people to buck up – to even expecting myself to buck up. That first night, if you’d have told me that I was to put Abigail in her bed and walk away you’d have had more luck convincing me that I should leave her in a snowbank. The idea terrified me, and no amount of therapy, good thinking or resolve has changed that. This time we’ve spent together though, not only did it feel like the only right plan for us, it also turned out to make it possible to have something other than the fear – to be able to enjoy Abigail and celebrate her as much as we have been. Oddly, this bananas plan has ended up with everyone being the least bananas.

Last night we had a lovely dinner together and thanked each other for this remarkable time, and today after 22 days in the embrace of the team, Meg and Alex and Elliot and little Abbie went home to all sleep in their own beds, and I am not going to say that all of us feel safe, but I am saying we all feel ready, and I am so proud of Meg and Alex.

Someday when she is big enough, I look forward to telling Abigail the story of her first few weeks, and how very loved she is, and how far the gift of her life inspired us to go for her.

* Honourable mention to our sweet Amanda who isn’t in the team picture, but was here almost every night for dinner, for every phone call, for all we needed. We couldn’t have done it without her.

**I’ll post about Abigail’s blanket soon.