My mother sat for hours on end on the other side of the mesh fence, counting "eyes", losing "eyes", processing thoughts, muttering to herself, trying to rearrange the personal-familial politics and history, as well as the village and national ones, the entire war - internal and external.
Knitting is a way of weaving threads around holes (or Maybe on the other way around - of turning holes into patterns). My mother tried to forget Romania, the war, the pogrom, the trauma of her injury there as a child, but somehow her hands didn't stop knitting, covering us with sweaters and vests, and the house in the Middle East village with Eastern European patterns; trying to forge imaginary roots and connections. To me, she sometimes sat there on the border of another time and knitted.
Almost three years since she passed away. I too try to perform some kind of healing or mending ritual, to recall borders, to soften boundaries, to process wars.
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