Grandma’s Knit Stocking Memory – great story!

GRANDMA’S KNIT STOCKING

How much love went into each stitch

(Transcribed from Brewton Banner (Brewton, Alabama June 2, 1883)

THE OLD CUSTOM OF WINDING THE YARN

A Few of the Memories that Cling Around it

The stocking grandma knit; how much love went into every stitch; how many prayers were wrought into every round. Somewhere I once read about a nun, who bent over her needle work and as oft as a tear fell from her eyes upon the snowy fabric she wrought about it and worked it with her deft needle, until at last the strange design wrought out a touching story of her loneliness and sorrow. And if we could read all the dreams, and thoughts and prayers that grandma wrought with those patient needles, we would wear the stockings she knit on our hearts, rather than on our feet.

SUPPORT ALABAMA PIONEERS

BECOME AN ALABAMA PIONEERS PATRON

Tap to see how to Become a Patron!

For here is a dream of John, and there is a tear for Chris’s Robbie, and here is a plan for Will, and here comes creeping in a quivering strain from some old, old hymn that is hallowed to us now because her lips blessed it so often; see how a prayer quivered all along this round; here the stocking was laid down while the old hands turned over the leaves of the Bible that seemed never to be out of her lap; here the old eyes looked out across the pasture and the mowing lot down to the wooded hills where the birds are answering winds; here the old eyes slept for a few minutes, and here is a knot.

Ah, yes, Phillie and Annie are home this week, and the house is full of their children. There will be many more knots in the yarn before the stocking is finished. Who is the boy whose fate it is to hold on his extended hands the skein of yarn while grandma winds it on after the romping youngsters who taunt him with shrieks of laughter as they desert him. But never mind, grandma comforts him with splendid stories of Uncle Doc’s pranks when he was a boy and went to school at Carmichaelton, until the boy wishes the skein was five miles long. And then he is rewarded by a great big cookie, sweeter than honey, because he was such a good boy.

The only thing that took the edge off this reward was that all the other children got just as big cookies as he did, because some how grandma’s rewards for the good boy and girl managed to include all the other boys and girls. To grandma, all children were good; some children were better than others, but there were no bad children. A thousand blessings, a thousand times told, on the dear old face and the silver hair that crowned the placid brow; on the wrinkled hands and the work they wrought; on the dear lips and blessed old hymns they sung; on the dear old book that lay in her lap, and the life that drew so much of love and faith and help from its pages. In every household and every nook of the land, in the city tenement and in the roomy old farm house; in the mansion of the avenue and in the cottage down the lane, God bless the grandma and the beautiful memories her figure always invokes. –BURDETTE

SEE ALL BOOKS BY DONNA R CAUSEY AT https://www.amazon.com/author/donnarcausey