IN MY PRIVATE, HOPEFUL HEART of hearts (and I know I can’t be the only knitter who has thought this) I have a secret wish: to injure a lower limb.
Now, if this hasn’t occurred to you yet, I know it sounds crazy, but try and imagine it for a minute. I’m not a masochist; I don’t enjoy pain, so I don’t really want the injury to be something permanent or painful, just a mild and slow-to-heal injury to my foot or leg. Imagine going to the doctor with a vague and minor ache in your knee and being told that the only cure, what you simply must do, is sit down and rest for six weeks. Surely, as a knitter, you can see where I’m going with this.
I want just enough of an injury that no matter how much I want to — because heaven knows I want to — I simply wouldn’t be able to do all of those things that, as much as I love them, eat up knitting time. Things like washing the kitchen floor, going grocery shopping, doing the laundry or scrubbing the toilet. (I’m sure that, like me, you’d feel especially sad about not being able to scrub the toilet.) Imagine six glorious, guilt-free weeks of sitting and knitting (in my best version of this fantasy, it’s the six weeks before Christmas), and now ask yourself if wishing for a sprained ankle is really so wrong?
A while ago, I met a knitter who, in a terribly unfortunate incident involving her husband, poor judgment, and a car door, had found herself in exactly this place. In early November, she got a cast on her foot and began a knitting marathon of epic proportions. She couldn’t go to work, she couldn’t do the housework…. there was nothing she could do but knit. She knit and watched old movies. She knit and listened to the radio. She knit with her foot up on a pillow in the sunroom and watched birds at the feeder in the morning sunshine. It was wonderful, because she had very little pain, and the fantastic bonus (this really is too much to hope for) of a husband who was responsible for her injury and thus exceedingly guilty, attentive, and kind. He brought her tea in the morning and wine and dinner in the evening, and in between his loving ministrations, she knit.
It was, I thought, the best thing that could happen to a knitter. I was jealous — very jealous — right up until two weeks into her fortunate and fantastic knitting jag, when she was on her way to her stash for reinforcements. She tripped on her crutches, pitched forward wildly, and in a horrible, terrible moment which she regrets to this day … she instinctively put out her hands to break her fall and …
She broke her wrist.
I take it all back. I forgot the Fates have a sense of humor. Be careful what you wish for.