With all the yarn and dye and blogging business that goes on, sometimes it’s easy to forget those little important moments, the ones that bring tears to your eyes when, years later, you look at your mental snapshots.

I had one of those moments today. Someone asked me to teach them to knit. But not just any someone, someone who in the past year has been pulling away from me gradually. It’s normal, but part of me was grieving for the slow loss of closeness between the two of us, the gradual increase in distance as this person grew and changed. So when they asked me to teach them to knit, my heart leapt at the chance to once again have something we shared in common.

And so I held them in my lap and showed them the knit stitch, held their hands in mine as we both went through stitch after stitch together, one row at a time. Praise, cheers, gentle corrections and clapping. A few misshapen rows later, and they were making their first tentative stitches alone - though still needing the occasional help when half a row would pull off a needle or a new row needed to be started.

And they loved all it, mistakes and frustrations, slipped and dropped stitches. And I loved it, knowing we had something in common, something to relate to each other with again. Something to do together, as they continue growing up and away - even as their learning to knit is proof how much growing up they have done, how far they have come, how much they have overcome. The amazing part?

He asked me to teach him… and he’s learning it all a year earlier than I did.

(And, yes, that is a ball of green Malabrigo yarn my 5 year old son is learning to knit with. /grin)