Tuesday 200 - #29
“I didn’t know you knit,” Mabel said, pointing to the yarn and needles near the sofa.
Mabel chaired the Altar Guild. She’d come to enlist.
Doris nodded. She believed your knitting, like your spirituality, was best kept to yourself.
She didn’t knit in public. Not on a bus or plane, certainly not in someone else’s house. Same went for her spirituality. Like knitting, it was a private comfort you could come back to anytime. If it unraveled, it could be stitched back up with a little patience.
Knitting, and your beliefs, created results that kept you warm. True spirituality, unlike Mabel’s religion and machine-made sweaters, couldn’t be found on a rack.
“So what are you making?” Mabel asked, grabbing a donut.
“A shroud,” Doris said.
“For … a corpse?”
“No, for my niggling little demons that never leave. I’ve learned to live with them. Once they’ve been acknowledged, they tend to quiet down and rest under their blanket.”
Mabel chewed on this, and her cruller, for a bit. “Can’t you just put them in a bag and toss ‘em in the river?”
“Well, I could, but then their families come looking for them, causing bigger problems than when you’ve started.”
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