Friends

I need to find friends with smaller feet.

This pair was knit from fiber from Aries, my rose gray alpaca. That foot liked to take forever to knit!

Today is the two year anniversary of Mom moving in with me. When I think back to then, I wonder that I made it through. At that point, I had been living alone here on the farm for five years. I wasn't used to having anyone else around. My brother had just been killed in a car accident. She was actually going to move in the week before, but we had the funeral that day. She was confused about why she wasn't going home. I was working full time, with a two hour each way commute three days a week, and Mom rode with me and attended an adult day care. The other two days I worked from home, and then tried to get all my outside chores done on those two days, all the while making sure that Mom didn't wander off, trying to walk "home". She was used to walking at the lake for hours on end. Every day she would ask about my brother, where he was, why he wasn't coming to visit. I would just say that I hadn't seen him for a while, and try to not let her see me crying. Sometimes she would remember, and cry. That was so much worse.

The friend (in Philadelphia) that I knit those socks for called me literally every day that first year. I'm sure the first two months I cried every time I talked to him. I was exhausted. So was Mom. The least I could do was knit him some nice warm socks, gigantor feet or not.

Don't get me wrong, I do not regret for a moment having Mom here. Every day she makes me laugh. I get to see her in a way I've never seen her before, sort of like I get to see her how she was as a young girl.

It has been a good two years.