yesterday my best friend and ex partner trent turned fifty. its also four years since we separated and i moved away from sydney to live closer to work, here in wollongong. so its been a pretty emotional week and i am reminded yet again of how my attraction to history as an academic discipline stems from my own personal need to hang on to the past. i used to think that was a bad thing, but this week has been a lesson in self acceptance, and i realise its just what it is, a belief that we are all the sum of our past and you can try and wriggle out from under it but it makes you who you are. better to just embrace it.
for trents birthday i knitted him a pair of socks. when we were together i made him socks all the time. at first he was sceptical about the power of the hand knitted sock, but having discovered their amazing comfort and ‘wicking’ capacity, he is a true convert. but you know, when you split up with someone, you dont go around knitting socks for them anymore, even if you do manage to stay friends. but for his 50th, i thought he deserved a new pair. i had some lovely grey wollmeise and a good pattern called ‘Hex’ by my favourite sock designer, and off i went. knit knit knit, using the ‘medium’ size measurements in the pattern, thinking that i remembered his foot measurement, but after 4 years, apparently not.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
when i checked, he said close to 27 centimetres. sigh. so i knit the second one to the correct size and then yesterday morning ripped back the first one
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
and reknit it, so that they were now kind of more the same.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
they turned out great
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
once i got the hang of how to do the ‘cable’ without a cable needle (its only really a one stitch cross over) i remembered the pattern and also managed to make the changes for the left sock so that they would be symmetrical
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
we had a discussion about this last night at dinner – if they look the same, why did i need to do something different for the second sock, and i tried to explain that if i HAD knit them the same they would actually look different, but then suddenly i didnt understand what i was talking about and now im confused. anyway, they are lovely and i want to knit them again for me, but in red wollmeise!
dinner was at beppis, trents favourite restaurant. it was amazing.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
trent and i had been there together quite some time ago and it was impressive then and was even more so last night, especially when trent was presented with a tiramisu cake and card hand signed by Beppi himself.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
it was a really nice touch. in keeping with the theme of trips down memory lane, a funny thing happened yesterday when i was in one of my cupboards looking for wrapping paper. earlier this week trent and i had been talking about a bag of his old photos including a baby book and his birth certificate. we thought it might be mixed up with my stuff and i meant to look for it and didnt, and then yesterday when i was rummaging through the cupboard, it literally fell out on the floor. i picked up the bag and tipped its contents out on my bed: old photos
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
and lots of cards, mostly from me
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
one of them evendated back to 1995. it made me incredibly sad, waves of grief and memory, reminders of how i’d felt, things i’d said, things i wish i’d said. memories of what trent and i had been through together, how hard we had fought to make it work together, how hard we had just ended up fighting each other, that moment where we decided to let it go. i was 26 when we got together, not even 2 years clean. i had no idea who i was, what i wanted. 15 years we stayed together, loving and fighting, dogs not kids, a phd for me, hard work in the IT industry for trent. i was crying not because i wanted any of that back, but because it was such a strong physical reminder, to see my hand writing like that and remember what we had been through, and really how amazing it is that we made it out the other side. then i wrapped all the photos and reminders up in seperate packages and added them to the socks and took them up with me to sydney.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
at first i didnt want to go to dinner. i thought i would be too emotional, and that it would be too weird also to be there with trents oldest friend and his new partner and her two teenage boys. i felt kind of nauseous actually, thinking how uncomfortable i might be. and then i thought it wasnt about me, it was about trent, and celebrating the fact that he’d made it to 50 when many people thought he wouldnt, and that was more important than any little qualms i had. i shouldnt have worried, it was a lovely night, and giving trent the photos over coffee so he could show his new family these little pieces of his past, it was really nice. i cried a little, but not much, and now i feel like i’ve passed some kind of milestone in a way, that the act of handing all those things over was an act of moving on.
also, reminiscing like that made me realise how incredibly lucky i am and what a fantastic life i have now. it reminded me how far we’ve both come, nearly 20 years and so much has changed, so many people we used to know dead or in jail. how lucky are we to have made it through? looking at those old cards and photos made me realise too i am a better person now than i ever thought i would be. these 4 years have been hard, but i like who i am now, i dont ever want to go back to who i was. living alone can be hard, but its also incredibly freeing, very empowering, you figure out you’re much stronger and cleverer and resourceful than you ever realised. not having someone around to point out your faults all the time also really helps!
last night made me realise what love is, that its not about me and what i need or what i get, but about what i can give. im not a religious person, in fact im the worst kind of nihilistic atheist, but i remembered reading something good in the bible once, many years ago, about how ‘Love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous; love is not boastful or conceited, it is never rude and never seeks its own advantage, it does not take offense or store up grievances’. how quickly do we forget that? how quickly do we make love about what we can get, what we need, and how quickly does that kill love, strangle it and make it narrow and mean.
so even when i get sad about what i’ve lost, i will think about how its better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all, and i will remember how loved i have been and how loved i am, and be thankful for the chance to make my life over.
so today i am happy because it is raining and cold
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
and i am tucked up inside my nice warm house, with tomatoes roasting for soup, surrounded by dogs i adore, and who adore me. i am not working, but knitting, finishing a cardigan and a pair of socks for me
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
and i am suddenly struck with the thought that there is nothing more representative of true love than a pair of hand knitted socks! may your life be full of them.
k xx
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
