Nana Knits and Jams

My mother has a blog: Nana Knits and Jams.

She has been an avid knitter as long as I've known her. In the past twenty years or so, her knitting habit has become a full-time hobby. Christmases are filled with anxious anticipation of new socks, warm fingerless mitts or a new loose winter hat. She is constantly gifting dish towels, scarves, shawls and the other work of her hands to all sorts of people. Friends and loved ones wear her handiwork, as do strangers--women in poorer countries and strangers struggling with cancer.

In the last several years, another lifelong joy of hers has become a more full-fledged hobby. She cans jam and other preservable delights.

My mother has shown me by her example the way to live a life of thoughtful contemplation, a life where the gifts we give can be held and tasted. She spreads her warmth with her gifts, her empathy, and her smile.

She's a giver, a lifelong teacher who took the curriculum of love she developed with us when we were children and brought it into the professional classroom for decades. She started her teaching career inspiring Ap English students to reach higher and dig deeper, and her Lake Lehman students from the late '80s and early '90s still leave her warm notes on her facebook and send her letters and emails. She ends her full-time career in teaching this June caring for struggling readers in 9th and 10th grade. She's run the gamut, taught every kind of high schooler imaginable with equal dedication, poise, patience and care. They know when they walk into her classroom that they are safe, they are cared for, and that, beyond a doubt, they will learn something today. She gives students who hate school a haven where they can love to learn. She's the best English teacher I ever had, and I had some damn good ones. I never had my mom's English class (Barb was lucky in that regard; I was not), but every paper I handed in got the full corrective treatment from her from about 7th grade until my freshman year of college. She pushed me to make precise rhetorical choices and to stand up for my own voice. She prepped me and my then-girlfriend Courtney for the AP 12 test in my senior year of high school when we wanted to take an unusual experimental curriculum instead of AP this and AP that. We spent a Sunday afternoon being quizzed by Ellen. We each got a 5 on that test. She makes it look easy, but she works diligently and she puts her heart and soul into it every day.

I am so excited for my mother as she looks ahead to mornings and afternoons with my dad, who's been retired for years now. I am so excited for more hats, more mitts, more tokens of love and thoughtfulness. I am excited for the day she gets to hug a grandchild of ours.

She took the handle of "Nana" when Alexander, my precocious nephew, was born. That's what we called her mom. Lydia was a Nana without compare (of course I'm biased), and Ellen now embraces the title and renews it every day with her daily living. Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do." What my mom shows me proclaims her love, her honoring of the gift God gave her in having life and breath, her faith in His love made manifest in the example of Jesus of Nazareth, and all I can say is that I'm grateful.

I got to see her the day before Mother's Day. We had coffee and a tasty continental breakfast at the hotel where she and my dad were staying. They came to town the night before and offered their blessing on a home Alexis and I hope to live in for a long time. We clinked beers the night before at ABC with Patti, my awesome mother-in-law, and we shared smiles and hugs. That morning, we talked quietly about planning a guest room she and my dad could stay in and made plans for a little place Dad can sit to have his cigar while he and I hang out at night.

I'm beyond blessed to have her for a mom. I'm also beyond blessed to have her for a mentor, an inspiration, a teacher, and a friend.