Knit Nation
Things I’d perhaps spurn at a more composed time become a healing balm for my sore soul—I put on songs of nameless origin that were written for weddings, births, bitterness, desperation. I bake orange slices in the oven to make silly little garlands, knit almost useless mittens, and chop up old copies of the NYT to craft ominous poems. I wouldn’t call myself a fine artist, but I still enjoy making, so let me explain to you its inexplicable healing powers in a language familiar to me: folk music and dance.
People still grin funny at me when I tell them I play the fiddle, but they don’t understand that it’s in my bones. Clapping along to the beat was the first thing I remember learning in my mother’s basement dance studio in Maryland. After evenings gracing the adult Irish dance classes with my five-year-old skip-two-threes, I was lulled to sleep by the insistent beat of a jig below me.
My mother and grandmother both danced for the BYU International Folk Dance Ensemble. In fact, through a fairytale-style turn of events, my dad first saw my mom dancing a solo Irish dance number she choreographed for a BYU Homecoming Spectacular. Her photo from the front page of the Daily Universe hangs on our wall, and naturally I grew up dancing jigs and reels. Muscle memory makes the most sense to my mom. She still tap dances twenty years and one hip surgery later. This helps me take heart. As long as I am dancing I know I am doing something good.
Nourished on dance class and family dinner, my sisters and I still bond over particularly good reels or a hornpipe step that drove us crazy. With them, I’m still ten years old, sitting snuggled hip to hip, watching a musical my Nana costumed or listening to stories about my great-grandma’s rhubarb. I love it. I still go to my sister’s dance competitions and feed them grapes for energy before they’re on stage. As for me, after a dance-career-ending surgery at sixteen, the tips of my fingers calloused when I learned my beloved folk tunes on the fiddle. When I play I feel that my instrument is my voice, channeling pure emotion better than my words ever could.
And it’s more than individual healing; it’s about connection. During my time at BYU, I have attended and observed jam sessions, knitting clubs, and collage nights. I’ve seen the kinship of two people huddled over a pattern or jump-heart smiles between musicians when they’re tapping along to the same beat. It’s deep-rooted ritual. This is the kind of making that feels like touching the soul of what we lost when we stopped drawing Crayola family portraits for our parents to post on the fridge.
Maybe I’m just searching for the source of that thrumming in my veins or an explanation for my obsession with knitting needle sets. But the thing about knitting is that the fabric pulls four ways. I am sealed to my mom, sisters, grandma with even stitches and hand-holds, sealed to my friends with felt and sing-alongs. We’re the most recent squares on the family quilt, connected by what we’ve made.
The hundreds of iterations of songs, dances, and symbols web us together like a big patchwork blanket sewn to cover cold knees and soften heavy hearts. So don’t discount your doodles or the scarf you’ve started four times. If folk art is a tether to the mystical realm of who came before, then I’m holding on tight.