Deborah sinks down and heavy into the shop’s recliner. Her right hand makes an empty swipe for a handle that is not there. She reminds herself that this is not her home recliner. She places her hands on the arms of the chair, and with all of her strength, pushes back, forcing the back of the chair into the recline position, which automatically swings the footrest and her legs upward. She settles back, closes her eyes and settles in. “This is your first day back to work, you are allowed to put your feet up,” she says. When she is alone in the shop, Deborah has a long history of talking to herself as loud and as often as she wishes. 
     For the past 15 years Deborah has been the mainstay employee in a small town yarn shop that is the regional hub for enthusiasts and wannabe enthusiasts of every fiber art you can shake a shuttle at. This is where knitters, crocheters, spinners, weavers, rug hookers, marcramers, lace makers, embroiderers, and felters gather to learn, share, chat and buy. Deborah works the till most days. Her fiber knowledge base is deep in some areas and wide overall. She teaches classes and hosts Sit’N’Knit on Friday nights. 
     If Netflix decided to make a reality TV show called “Extreme Knitting,” and they set up hidden cameras in the shop to film Deborah in real-time, they would find that most of her day is spent guiding and coaching. She helps customers choose, begin and finish projects. Deborah understands the value of stepwise progression and takes care that customers do not choose a project that is too far above their current level. At the same time she is on the watch for customers who stay stuck in a comfort zone that does not allow for progression. After all, one does not need a lifetime’s worth of identical knitted scarves. There may be several times during a project when customers are unsure about directions or how to do a technique, and Deborah is more helpful even than YouTube. 
     But the bulk of her time, and the most critical of her skills, lies in correcting mistakes. She has a gift for identifying when people make a mistake and get off-track. She knows how to correct the mistake and help them find the way back onto the right track. Deborah has a gift of removing road blocks on the way. 
     And let’s not forget finishing. It’s surprising how many people see a project through to nearly the end. . . but not quite. They may even start another project rather than make those last few finishing steps. The dominatrix in Deborah takes pleasure in following them through their project, and when they come to the end, she makes sure they make those final flourishes. Even if it means standing over them with her arms crossed, she makes sure they weave in the ends. Then she gives them a standing ovation for having reached their destinations. 
     Today is Deborah’s big day. It’s her first day back to work. After her mastectomy, she allowed herself two weeks to get back on her feet. Now she is staring down the barrel of upcoming radiation treatment. She believes that working will help her heal from the surgery and conquer radiation. She’s banking that the more she keeps her mind on work, the less time her mind will have to wander into her nooks, crannies, and dark places. 
      She’s taking her first break of the day. It’s early afternoon, right after lunch, which is usually a quiet time of the day. She knows she can kick back, meditate, and even if she does doze off, the electronic bell on the front door will awaken her. She has the gift of being a light sleeper. She read somewhere that light sleeping is a trait shared by people who have inherited a larger than normal dose of Neanderthal–which according to 23andMe, fits her genetic profile. She orders the Neanderthal part of herself to stand guard while she rests. “So far so good,” she says out loud to herself while she leans back and considers her first day back to work. 
     She showed up for work at the yarn shop 30 minutes early, as is her habit. Good thing, because it took her longer than usual to open. Starting up the computer, signing into the sales software, opening the Ravelry website, turning on the printer, checking for phone messages, even prepping the sitting area for knitters was not a problem. What she did not realize, until she tried, is that she uses two arms above her head to turn on the neon “OPEN” sign. Although the drain, stitches and dressing have been removed, the long incision made to allow the removal of underarm lymph nodes limits her range of motion. Try as she might, she could not reach her left arm above her head. So she dragged a chair over to the sign, and being careful to hold on to the back of the chair, stepped up. “Do not fall. Just please do not fall,” she said over and over again as she gradually, very gradually, unfolded herself to stand upright on the chair. When she is alone in the shop, she has never been shy about talking out loud to herself. “This is such a bad idea.” But it worked. The added height enabled her to use both hands to turn on the sign’s switch. She could tell by the reflection in the plate glass picture window when each of the letters was dancing in its own brightly colored light. “Mission accomplished, now be careful on the way down.”  When she looked past the sign’s reflection, she could see that there were already two customers waiting in the lot. They were polite and waited in their cars until she unlocked the door and flipped the old-fashioned door sign from “CLOSED” to “OPEN.” 
     Her first two customers were typical of first customers on a school day. School bus doors squeezing shut with the kids safely inside, means that mothers can go where they please. And it pleases some of them to go to the yarn shop. One of the young mothers had two toddlers. The other must have worked retail at some point in her life because she said, “Take care of her first, because I just have a quick question about this pattern.” 
     “Sure thing. Just make yourself comfortable in the seating area if you like,” Deborah told her. “There is fresh coffee and tea. Help yourself.” 
     Then Deborah turned her attention to the other mother’s children. She squatted down and greeted each personally. Easy to do. They were adorable, of course. Plus giving them attention first, increased the odds that they would not tear the shop apart. This customer had run out of yarn and needed to buy the same, matching yarn, to finish her project. She had not brought the yarn or sleeve, so Deborah used the computer’s sales software to look up the yarn and dye lot of her purchase. 
     “This is your lucky day,” Deborah said, “there is more of this dye lot left.” And because Deborah is nowadays a judgmental woman, which makes her a natural teacher, she adds,  “When I buy yarn for a project, I always buy an extra skein—just in case. You can bring it back any time, you know. But of course, in reality, no one ever brings yarn back, do they?” 
     The next customer’s question was not as “quick” as promised. The customer had lost her way in lacework, and Deborah had to match project rows with chart rows, and tear back, and re-seat stitches, explain and place a lace life-line, show her how to use stick-on highlighter, identify her next row and watch her execute it. All of this while intermittently having to leave her from time to time to tend to other customers. It took a “quick” two hours to help her unravel her mistakes and get back on track.
 
Deborah lifts her hands from the armrests, places them on her belly and interlaces her fingers so they won’t slide down when she doses off. “God, if I’m this tired now, what will it be like when I start radiation?” 
     Genetic testing is in her favor. The oncologist explained that adding chemotherapy to her treatment plan would add very little to her survival odds. So “no” to chemo, and “yes” to radiation. She’s already met with the radiation oncologist. Starting tomorrow, for six weeks, every day, first thing in the morning, she will drive into Anchorage, lie down under the Cyber Knife, take a deep breath, hold perfectly still, and let The Knife have its way with her. She already has her tattoos. The first in her life. Three small, immovable, carefully placed dots—one on each side of her rib cage and one square between her breasts. She is nervous, of course, who wouldn’t’ be, mostly about her ability to hold perfectly still while the machine pierces her with a perfectly calibrated, aligned and lethal beam. He explained to her that as the radiation builds up in her body she will become increasingly more tired. Her skin, through which the knife passes, will become increasingly more tender. He has left her to understand that exhaustion and skin damage will continue to build even after her last treatment.  Deborah makes a point to remind herself of the upside: It is very, likely that this radiation will destroy any remaining cancer cells. The Cyber Knife will vastly increase her odds. Deborah also reminds herself that she has always been the kind of person that can do hard things. She closes her eyes and shimmies herself sideways so that her hip hugs an armrest of the wide chair. She pats the empty space beside her. "Just in case,” she says. She’s drifting off. Instead of speaking, she might be dreaming the next thought. Mom, just in case you decide to join me.


She awakens to the sound of a car pulling into the lot. The driver revs the engine. She recognizes the sound of the vehicle’s jerk when the engine is turned off during acceleration. Interesting. Her right arm reaches for the recliner’s lever, and finding only air, she latches on to the armrests to pull herself forward. As she walks across the shop toward her station behind the counter she sees the interesting couple, an old woman and a young boy. He steps out of the driver’s seat, walks around the car and holds the door open for the old lady. They continue to talk to each other as they enter the shop.
      “Yes, yes,” the old woman says. “I totally agree, the problem is that your feet have become large, and hard to control. Which makes it hard to avoid pushing both the gas peddle and break at the same time.” She pushes her thick glasses back and laughs as she speaks, “But let me point out, those same feet, large as they are, know how to make sensitive and complex movements on your skateboard, such that you could maneuver that board safely through enemy lines complete with landmines, war dogs and soldiers. That’s how I know that those same clever feet of yours will also learn how not to push the gas peddle and breaks at the same time,” the old woman says, still laughing. 
     “Glad you think it’s so funny, Grandma.” He’s shaking his head, dramatically rolling his eyes while himself, smiling.
     “It’s well known that the feet of boys grow first and then their height catches up,” she continues. “You’re about to have a spike in height, that’s why your feet have grown. Perfectly normal,” Grandma says. 
     By this time they have approached the counter and Grandma turns her attention to Deborah, “I’m Margaret and this my chauffeur, Jake.” 
     As they step up to the counter, Deborah notices Margaret’s unusual height. Probably in her seventies, she still stands an easy six feet. Deborah guesses she has been over six feet tall for nearly her entire adult life. That must be interesting. Although Jake has at least a foot to grow before he catches up to his grandmother, Deborah guesses him to be in his very early adolescence, with easily several more growth spurts in his future. Other than their height and thick glasses, the pair do not resemble each other. The grandmother is blonde and blue eyed with a pink glow and turned up nose. The grandson is dark haired, with dark eyes, heavy brows and the prediction of a irresistible beard in his future.        
     “Good to meet you both. I’m Deborah. What can I do for you?”
     “I know how to knit and purl,” Margaret continues. “I can even cable. Now I want to learn how to knit lace. My friend, Larraine, gave me this pattern.” She hands the pattern to Deborah, who begins to study it. “Larraine says it’s a good beginner pattern for lace. It even has a YouTube tutorial. I read the instructions, I watched the tutorial and still manage to mess up. Can you help me with it? I’d be glad to pay for a class, if that’s what it takes.” 
     “No I bet this will not require a class. Let’s sit down with it and see if we can figure out what is going on. It’s probably some simple mistake that can be made right.” She beckons them to the seating area. “We have a Keurig; would you guys like a cup of something warm to drink?” 
      Jake approaches the machine, pushes his coke bottle glasses back up the bridge of his nose, tilts his head to the side and looks over the Keurig set-up. “Grandma can I make you a cup of coffee?” He turns toward Deborah, “Can I have a cup of hot chocolate?” 
     “You bet, help yourself. There is cream in the fridge if you use it.”  
     Still making eye contact with Deborah he asks her, “Do you want a cup of coffee too?”
     “No I’m good,” she replies. Then to Margaret, “I have your pattern here, now can I also take a look at your piece?” I’ve just been working on lace with another knitter and have everything ready to go here,” and she gestures toward the large central coffee table covered in knitting paraphernalia. She begins by placing Margaret’s crumpled and coffee stained, paper pattern into a clear plastic sleeve. Then, using highlighter tape she marks the single lace row, trenched between rows of simple stockinette. 
     “Okay I can tell by looking at your work that you already have the two borders marked and are remembering to always knit the borders. Likewise, you are correctly working the center of the piece in stockinette—knit on one side and purl on the other. Okay now let’s focus on the lacework. First, let’s make sure you know how to do the lace stitches. We will use this for practice.” Here Deborah hands Margaret a wide scarf on large needles, with thick yarn. Margaret is able to successfully demonstrate, yarn overs and knit two togethers. She needs a little help with pass slipped stitch overs. 
     “So far so good,” Deborah says. Next we will learn lace-math.”
     “Oh, I’m not so good at math,” Margaret says. “Jake here, is the family’s official mathematician.” 
     Deborah looks over at Jake, who is sitting a few chairs away, sipping hot chocolate and on his phone. She pats the chair beside her. “Jake, come and sit on my other side so you can see the counts.”
     “Oh I don’t know how to knit,” Jake says. 
     “No worries, we’ll leave the stitches to Grandma. You job is strictly the math.” 
     With Jake on one side and Margaret on the other, she points to the top of the pattern. “The first step in lace-math is to identify the repeat. It’s eight.” With this, she takes locking stitch markers from a shallow bowl on the table and snaps them into place, marking eight-stitch sections. “Okay, the lace sections are set up. If ever there are not eight stitches within a section, then it’s time for knitting math. Each of these symbols tells us how to do the stitch; but they are also mathematical symbols.” Deborah reviewed which symbols add zero or one, subtract one or two and how the total comes our to be eight. So far so good, right?” 
    “Okay here is another potential glitch. What if you end up with the correct count of eight stitches, but they are the wrong eight stitches?” 
     Using Margaret’s pattern, Deborah sketches out each of the eight stitches, and then points them out in Margaret’s lace-work. She repeats the triple identification of symbols, sketch and stitches. “Do you think you are solid with this?” 
     “Yeah, it’s kinda fun,” Jake says. 
      “If you get lost and can’t find your way back, feel free to stop by again, Deborah says, looking at Margaret.“You guys are a good team.” Then continues, “Friday nights are Sit’N’Knit. It goes from five to eight in the evening. You are both welcome to come. There are usually all manner of fiber enthusiasts here. There are knitters, and crocheters. Sometimes people even bring their spinning wheels and looms. Some are beginners and others are very experienced. I’ll be here and If you run into trouble, there will be someone to help you, and you might know some things that will help others.”
     “I don’t think I will be of much help to anyone. Not unless, there are skate boarders.” Jake says.
     “I would’t be too sure. It’s amazing the topics that come up, plus we have already established that you are a whiz at knitting math.”
     “Thank you for inviting us. We will keep Friday nights in mind. You never know,” Margaret said.

 “No you never know what’s up ahead, that’s for sure,” Deborah says as she starts reorganizing the coffee table. Margaret packs up her knitting and Jake puts the cups in the sink. As Deborah walks them to the front door, she notes Jake does a double take as a red, decked out Jeep pulls into the lot. “Grandma, it’s Dr. Waldt.” Jake says as he heads to the door. The man stepping out of the Rubicon is wearing a fedora hat. Deborah can see from the shop that he is wearing a grey cardigan sweater with a front zipper, along with a striped tie and carrying a wide leather briefcase. 

     They all three, Jake, Margaret and Deborah are standing behind the double wide class doors as he approaches. Jake steps forward, opens the door and is holding it open as the doctor approaches the threshold. 

     “Dr. Waldt!” In his excitement, Jake forgets to censor, and his voice cracks as it waivers between boy and man. 

     “Jacob is that you? My goodness, how you are growing.” Waldt puts down his briefcase, which is a welcoming signal to Jake, who embraces him. Dr. Waldt encircles Jake and pats the back of his head. They are very nearly the same height. They let go, release each other and take a step back. “Let me look at you,” Dr Waldt says. “‘You are a sight for sore eyes,’ as my mother would say. I hope you are doing well.” Then he looks up at Margaret, who stands a head and shoulders above them both, “I hope you are both doing well.” 

     “We’re good,” Jake says. “We’re good.” 

     “Jake, we should let Dr. Waldt go,” she says. The man and boy change places, the man now inside the shop and the boy leaving. As Margaret passes Dr Waldt, she kisses the palm of her hand and places it, lightly, and for just a moment, on his upper arm as she passes. 

     Jake, standing beside the car, turns back toward the shop. “Dr. Waldt,” his smile widens, “Grandma’s teaching me to drive.” Dr. Waldt gives him a thumbs up sign, watches them pull out of the parking lot, then turns toward Deborah. 

     “Is there something I can help you with today,” she asks. She is aware of him watching her as she walks around the counter and take up her work station. 

     “Hello, my name is Robert and he reaches his hand across the counter to shake hers. Now that he is closer she notes that his grey wool cardigan has a dark brown narrow leather piping running down the zippered and collared edge. It puts her in mind of Mr. Rodgers.

      “I’m, Deborah,” she says returning his handshake. “Now what can I do for you?”

     “My neighbor, Agnes, recommended you. She thinks you can solve a problem that I have.” He removes his hat, sets the fedora on the counter. He is thoroughly bald. Unnaturally bald. A flash of an image of him in the mornings—every single morning—carefully shaving his beard and then his head. His whole head? Probably just the sides and back, she judges. With only the width of the counter between them, Deborah realizes he is older than she’d thought. Probably in his sixties. Maybe just a little younger than I am, she estimates. His eyes are deep-set and dark and she gets the sense that she is leaning in, or maybe even falling forward. She braces her two hands against the counter to stop her forward momentum, to regain her balance. “Agnes?  Is that the Agnes that keeps alpaca up on Highland?” He’s wearing a beige dress shirt. His narrow tie has a diagonal stripe of browns and golds with three narrow, asymmetrical stripes of burgundy red. The red has a tad more blue in it than his Jeep. 

     “One and the same,” he says.

     “She’s a smart woman. She’s probably right. What is the problem?”

     He opens the briefcase, takes out an old paper bag, places it on the counter and puts his briefcase on the floor. He opens the paper bag and removes a package wrapped in newspaper. She can smell the must of old. The newspaper is yellowed and in a foreign language. “My grandmother made these for me when I was a young man and left home for college.”  With care he unfolds the newspaper. He is still pressing the old paper flat onto the counter when Deborah speaks.     

     “Oh, these are thrummed mittens,” she says. Her knitter’s mind begins to calculate. Just by looking, without even touching, she can tell the wool has been homespun into bulky, probably three and a half stitches per inch. The yarn is navy blue; she can’t tell if it was dyed as fiber or after being spun. The thrums are grey. Both thumbs and one palm have frayed away with wear. One cuff is totally unraveled. She’s thinking that the fiber is too fragile to repair, when he says. “They are too fragile to repair. I understand that. But do you think you could knit me another pair? I find, as I get older, that the circulation in my hands is not as good as it used to be. My hands were always warm when I wore Grandma’s mittens.”

     Deborah flashes a smile, lifts her brows and says, “You were also a twenty year old college boy when you were wearing Grandma’s mittens.”

     He laughs, “You got that right. Yes, my circulation was better then. You called these mittens ‘thrummed’. Are they not an especially warm mitten?” 

     “Indeed, they are. Your own body heat warms the air trapped by the wool fibers. Over time the thrums inside the mittens turn to felt and add another layer of warmth. Plus you can add a third layer of warmth because they were made for you by someone who knit her desire that you have warm hands into the mittens. Three layers of warmth.”

     His smile is slow and growing. He tilts his head to the side as he studies her. “Yes, I believe you are right. She did knit her desire for my wellbeing into these mittens. Now I will add to your three layer theory of warm hands. The fourth layer is that wearing her mittens also warmed my heart.”

     “Warm heart. Warm hands,” Deborah says. She notes that he tilts his head back when he laughs, and that the irises of his eyes are not solid dark. There is a faint round of amber flecks surrounding the pupils that sometimes catch the light. 

     “You are precisely correct,” he says. 

     “May I?” she asks. He nods, and she reaches across, and slides the newspaper with the mittens to her side of the counter. She first runs the tips of her middle three fingers down each mitten. The wool is from a hardy, winter sheep.” Then she picks up a mitten and carefully turns it inside out. Rubbing a thrum between her thumb and forefinger she says, “The thrum fiber is Gotland, if I”m not mistaken.” 

     “Gotland?”

     “Yes, it’s a Swedish island. The sheep there have unusually long fiber—more like hair than ordinary sleeps’ wool. And this is the right color for Gotland. They are usually this same shade of grey.  I wouldn’t have thought of using it for thrums. But I can see that it felts well.”

     “Can you knit a replacement pair of mittens for me?”  

     “I can. I actually have some un-spun Gotland that I can use for the thrums. Let’s go choose some wool for the body of the mittens.” She comes around the counter and beckons him to the rear display shelves, “This is the wool that we can use. Do you want that same navy blue?” 

     “No, actually I think I’ll choose a different color. As you pointed out, I am no longer identical to the lad who wore out these mittens. I’d like my new pair to reflect that.”

     “You have a lot of colors to choose from. I’d like you to choose two identical skeins. Here is the dye-lot number.” He removes his reading glasses from his breast pocket and they stand shoulder to shoulder peering down as she pointes out one enigmatic number among the many on the sleeve of the skein. 

     “This number needs to be the same on both skeins,” she says. He meets her eyes for just a spark of a moment, before she steps back. She does not want to notice, but she does. During that moment she saw his pupils expand. She steps away and begins to back toward the counter. 

     “While you look at the yarn, I’m going to use your mittens as a guide to write a  pattern to use.” As she walks away, she knows damn well he is watching her instead of looking at the yarn. Okay, she says to herself, you have until he comes back with the yarn to stop your foolish blushing. She aims her focus on the project at hand. Using her sketch book, she first traces the outline of the mittens, then takes a proper gauge. She sketches the mitten and from bottom up, she writes the pattern in sequence, for each part of the mitten, beginning with needle size and cast on. She is just finishing instructions for bind-off of the thumb when he approaches the counter. 

     “Will these work?” He has chosen burgundy red. Not the grey or black that she expected, but instead the shade of the random stripe-splash in his tie. 

     “Oh yes, that is the perfect color.”

     “Yes, it reminds me of warmed mulled wine,” he says.

     “In a clear glass mug,” she adds.

     “Reflecting the light of a winter bonfire,” he finishes. She is aware that her blush has returned. 

     “I’m finished with these,” she says and slides the mittens back across the counter to him. He places the mittens onto the newspaper and meticulously refolds it around them, places them back into the paper bag and then into his briefcase. He gives her his contact information. She gives him the estimated cost and completion date. 

     “I’m very fortunate to have mentioned my mittens to Agnes, and that she directed me to you and that you will be able to make mittens like my grandmother’s.”

     “Yes. Way opens,” Deborah says.

     His brows knit, he leans in toward her, “I know that saying. . . I’ve heard it somewhere. Oh yes, I remember now. It’s Quaker. ‘Proceed when way opens.”  

     “I’ve only heard it as ‘way opens.’” My mother used to say that.

     “Yes. Way opens. I look forward to seeing you again,” he says. He takes the fedora off the counter, and holding it by the triangle’s peak, dons it. Then, moves his hand to the brim, and dips his head and his hat down toward her. 

    “Yes,” she says. And “Yes,” she repeats.

     He crosses back into his Rubicon and leaves.