My Grandma
Jensen was a talented musician and a professional secretary; I doubt she thought of herself as "a knitter," and I don't imagine that, fifty years ago, she was trying to start a tradition when she made a small scarf for
my father of variegated wool yarn. The scarf was a small and simple
thing: just rows and rows of knit
stitch. Dad wore that scarf on his
mission to France and for many years after, until the treasure eventually fell apart. Twenty-five years ago, when my brother left
to serve in Washington, D.C., Grandma was asked to make a similar
scarf for him. Now that my son is
similarly serving a mission, I purchased some variegated wool and began work on a scarf for him.
The ladies at the store tried to redirect my attention to
yarns that were less expensive and more bulky, warning (truly) that such a scarf as I described would be costly and “take forever” to complete; I can now see why
Grandma’s scarves were (as I thought) somewhat narrow and short! Though my amateurish knitting is imperfect and
though I was unable to locate the primary color variety that I remember from my
youth, my son’s scarf in shades of avocado and copper – and which works up looking
suspiciously like camouflage – is part of Grandma’s larger, if inadvertent,
tradition. I was not the recipient of a handmade scarf; yet as I make time to work
on one for my son, I become a part of her tradition of love and effort and have hope to connect my children to the qualities I've admired in her life.
Many of our most cherished traditions are like this. Mothers plan and work to create what we think
will be meaningful ways to mark the lives of our family members; but the
seemingly insignificant, unexpected things often are the ones about which
memories are made. The Christmas my
oldest children began to read, I had a few gifts wrapped for one and nothing
ready for some others; I wanted to set out the gifts but avoid discontent, so I
made up a simple code and let everyone wonder and hope each gift could be for
him. The next year I had prepared better
and saw no need for a code, but the hopeful Code Crackers pleaded in favor of
the “tradition.” And so it
continues: when my children are assigned
to write about Christmas Traditions,
they always mention the fun of The Code.
(Incidentally, this was the way my husband got his wish that we open presents one at a time: our inadvertent tradition has unexpectedly facilitated anticipation of and appreciation for each gift, rather than a greedy hoarding and unwrapping frenzy on Christmas morning.)

“What they remembered might have happened once or twice,” she said with
a shrug, “but to them it was our family tradition.”
Looking at the neighbor with admiration, I realized this was probably
because a tradition of real love undergirded everything, even the occasional
unpleasantness.
Which gave me hope.
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