Knitting Prayers

My grandmother kept prayers in her knitting basket.

To me, it seemed an odd place to keep them. Prayers are meant to be kept in a Bible on the parlor shelf, or stuffed away in a church, gathering dust with the rest of the relics. At the very least, they’re supposed to be kept somewhere that’s just a little reverent. Somewhere solemn and quiet, like a graveyard or a room you don’t visit every day.

But my grandmother keeps them with her knitting, and sometimes they get tangled up in her yarn.

She knits in her sitting room, in her rocking chair beside the fire. It’s bright and sunny, with a rag rug on the wood floor and flowers on the windowsill. I come to sit with her sometimes when my mother is working and the house is empty. She’ll send me after fresh daisies from the field outside and a pitcher of well water for the two of us, and I’ll lie on the floor and color while she talks to me and to God.

I don’t think the preacher would like the way she prays much. He uses fancy words when he prays, thees and thous, and he always spreads his hands out wide as if he’s trying to push the prayers right into heaven.

When she prays, I have to glance up to make sure God isn’t sitting right there next to her. Some days, I don’t think she’s praying at all. At least, not the sort of praying that I know. She talks to Him the way she talks to just about anybody. She tells Him about my new haircut, or the families who’ve been coming to live with us from the cities, or about mama’s new job in the factory. If I don’t look up every now and then, I’ll forget that He isn’t sitting in the rocking chair across from her and maybe whittling or something.

She’s knitting socks today. The sky is gray, and it’s snowing hard enough that I should have started for home an hour ago. But she used up a whole tea ration for just the two of us, and I’d rather not wait in a cold house until six o’clock. So I watch the fire crackling and the cardinal pecking at the snow outside the window and listen to her talking to God about the snow in Russia and the man who’s going to be wearing the socks she’s making. Her prayers get caught up in her needles, and by the time she’s finished the gray wool is just a little silver too.

I’ve lost count of how many socks she’s sent out. She keeps them in a basket, and when she’s got ten or twelve pairs she sends them off. We never find out what happens to them, or to the prayers she’s knitted in with the wool, but she always tells me that God keeps track of those things.

I hope he does. I haven’t heard that knitted prayers keep a man’s feet warm, but I’d bet they’re good for something.