For the first eight years of my life, I spent my life draped in my mother's knitting: her blankets, socks, shawls, sweaters, scarves, hats, gloves. It seemed like my mother could do anything with some needles and yarn.
At one point, I picked up one of my mother's pieces and said, "Can I finish this?"
She smiled. "I think this is a little too hard for you just yet, Bella."
"But I want to," I said.
"You want to learn how to knit?"
"Yeah," I said.
At that point in my life, I had a pretty terrible track record. I had wanted to take art classes too, swimming lessons, soccer, horsebackriding, none of which I stuck with for more than a couple of weeks.
My mother could have mentioned this, but she didn't.
"Tell you what," she said. "Pick a ball of yarn in there and get some needles. I'll get you started in the morning."
I smiled. "Thanks, Mom."

And so, true to her word, she put the yarn basket next to me at breakfast the next morning.
"We can get started after you're done eating," she said as she plopped a pancake on my plate. "That is, if you still want to learn."
"Yeah, I do," I said.
"Well, okay then," she said, smiling. "Eat up, I'll be out in the kitchen."
I grinned. I'd be knitting like my mom!
I met her out in the living room.
"Here you go," she said, handing me my needles and yarn. “Do you like the color?”
It was bright pink and sparkly, just like everything else in my room. “I love it! It’s so pretty.”
“Good, that’s important. Don’t want to start out with ugly yarn,” she said.
I sat next to her on the couch.
“Now, the first thing you need to do to get started is to make a slipknot,” she said. “So it’s kind of like tying a knot except instead of actually tying it all the way, you take it and put it on the needle.”
“What?”
“Here, I’ll show you,” she said. “You have to make a bit of a tail, though. So go, about this much, about an inch, and then you go and tie it.”
She made a loose knot. “Instead of tying, it, though, I’m going to take the upper part of the knot and pull on it a little bit to make it bigger. See, watch. Then I’ll put it on, just like this, and now we can cast on so that we’re ready to knit.”
I tried to follow her lead, but I only made another knot. “Ugh!”
“It’s okay, we can start over,” she said. “It takes some practice.”
She untied my knot and gave the yarn back to me. “Try again.”
I did with the same result. “It’s not working.”
“Watch me,” she said.
I did. This time, she said what she was doing with every step that she did.
“Ohhhh, I think I get it now.”
“Do you? Try it.”
I did and sure enough, it worked.
“Great job!” she said. “Now we have to cast on. This will be a little bit harder, but you’ll get it.”
“Look at me first, and then you can try. Now, casting on is sort of like knitting, but instead of pulling it off to the other needle, you kind of put it back on to the needle. Watch me.”
I leaned in closer to her to watch and tried to follow along.
“Put your right needle under the loop. No, no, Bella, make sure it goes through the loop. Like that, yes. Now put your yarn over the needle underneath and pull it through. Yes, like that. Now take that loop and put it on the needle like this.”
I tried to do that, but the loop slipped off.
“It’s so annoying!”
“Do you want to stop?” she asked, eyebrow raised.
Even so young, I knew that if I quit, she would think I wasn’t serious enough to really learn. So I was going to learn.
“No.”
“Then let me help you, I’ll guide you.”
She took my hands in hers and did the motions for me. Sure enough, she was able to cast on a stitch.
“You try.”
She handed me the yarn back.
At first, I hesitated.
“Over, under, loop,” she said. “Just do that.”
“Over, under, loop,” I said as I did.
“You did it!”
I looked under my loop. Sure enough, there was a tiny loop.
“Now keep doing that,” she said. “You need twenty seven stitches.”
And so I did. She then taught me how to knit, which was very similar to casting on except instead of putting the stitch on the other needle, I had to push the stitch off the needle. It took me a little while to put two and two together, but eventually I did.
“Wow, you’re a fast learner,” she said.
I grinned. I was like her now!
“How do I keep going?” I asked.
“Just keep doing what you did on the first row.”

Despite all of the other activities, I quit, I stuck with knitting.  Knitting my first scarf was a crowning achievement in my life and, for the first few months after I made it, I wore it every day I went to school and would brag to everyone that would listen to me that I made that scarf. Of course, my first scarf was awful: riddled with holes, the stitches loose in some places and tight in others. But still, it was my first.
At first, I was content with knitting plain garter stitch. But as I saw my mother’s products with its intricate patterns, I wanted more.
“I want to knit pretty like you,” I said.
“But you already knit pretty, baby,” she said. “You’ve been doing so well.”
“I want to do that,” I said, pointing to one of her lace shawls.
“You still have a while until you can knit that,” she said. “I’ve been knitting for years and you’ve only been knitting for a few months.”
“But it’s pretty,” I said.
“I know, honey,” she said. “In order to start to knit patterns, you need to learn how to purl.”
“What’s ‘purl’?”
“It’s sort of like reverse knitting,” she said. “Do you want me to show you?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay, now the first pattern that will really help you get your knitting down is called stockinette…”
From there on, I was on my way to becoming like her. I learned how to purl, creating my first stockinette scarf.

In the next five years, she taught me everything I needed to know about knitting. By the time I was thirteen, I could knit pretty much anything and I could knit pretty complex designs. I was almost as good as my mother.  Whenever we needed yarn, we would go into the store together and we went so often that the people in the arts and craft store knew us by name.
Most nights we could be found sitting by the fireplace, chatting about our day as we knit our most current project by the fireplace.
“I don’t know how you guys have the patience to do that,” my father would tell us as he passed us by.
But we did.
For the first six years after I first learned how to knit, we stayed in this happy place. Then, one day I was called to take my things and go to the principal’s office.
“What’s going on?” I said.
  “Your parents are waiting for you outside,” the receptionist said.
“What’s going on?”
“They’ll tell you,” she said. “Go.”
Sure enough, my mother’s car was at the front of the school. My father was in the driving seat, his eyes bloodshot and clouded with grief, while my mother stared blankly ahead.
I opened the door. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
My father turned to me.
“Bella, your mother’s blood test came back,” he said. “She has leukemia.” 
I looked at my mother. “What?”
“Acute myeloid leukemia,” she said, still looking ahead. “That’s what the doctors said.”
“But she’s going to okay, right?” I said.
“We don’t know,” he said. “We just don’t know.”

Right from the start, my mother’s odds weren’t good. Acute myeloid leukemia is a type of leukemia that first develops in the bone marrow and then rapidly travels to the blood and other organs that usually develops in adults over forty five (my mother was forty seven), with a five-year life expectancy of around twenty four percent.
My mother started chemotherapy almost immediately, and she morphed into a different person. She slept most of the time and when she wasn’t asleep, she was watching TV. She was never hungry and when she forced herself to eat, she would always throw it up. Eventually, she developed mouth sores so painful that she couldn’t eat solid foods anymore. She stopped knitting.
Her long, blonde hair fell out in locks and soon enough, she was completely bald.  I gave her one of my beanies and knitted her a stuffed bear to take to therapy with her that she named Stumpy.
Still, at first things seemed promising. She was responding to chemotherapy, and within a year, she was in remission.
She had gained her energy back and she was back to knitting with me in no time. For that moment when she was better, everything was perfect.

The cancer came back four months later. When I came home from school that day, I found my parents huddled together crying.
Neither of them had to say it. I knew. The cancer had come back. This time, though, it had spread past her blood and to her lymph nodes, liver and spleen.
The three of us cried together.

The chemo didn’t respond nearly as well this time as it did the first time. After several rounds of chemo, her cancer was barely responding to the treatment, so the doctors had to increase the dose of the chemo drugs.
Eventually, the doctors said that she needed a bone marrow transplant. My father wasn’t a match; I was. Donating my bone marrow wasn’t even a question.
“You’re so brave, honey,” my mom said when she found out I was going to donate. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”

Treatment continued, but the cancer still continued to spread. Eventually, my mother decided to stop chemotherapy and live out what little of her life she had left. She passed away a month after my sixteenth birthday. We buried her with Stumpy and a pair of knitting needles.
For the first year after her death, I couldn’t bring myself to knit. My knitting needles and yarn stash sat barren on my desk and eventually, when I was sick of seeing them day in and day out, I put them in my closet. I had tried to knit a few months after she had died, but it felt so strange knitting without her that it brought tears to my eyes.
My father kept trying to prod me into knitting by suggesting items to knit around the house.
“I think we need a new pillow case,” he would say. Or a rug or a place mat or a coaster.
“Then buy one,” I would snap.
Eventually, he gave up trying.
And so it was like that for the first year.

“I miss seeing knitted things around the house,” my father told me one day.
“So do I,” I admitted.
“Why don’t you make me a scarf for my birthday?” he asked me.
“What good would that do, Dad? It’s blazing out.”
“Winter will be around before you know it,” he said. “I was freezing last year.”
“That’s not true. You still had the scarf made you for your fiftieth.”
“That’s true.”
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
“I don’t think I even remember how to knit anymore,” I admitted.
“Of course you do,” he said. “You don’t forget a thing like that.”
I shrugged.
“Start with something basic then,” he said. “But just do something.” 
“Fine,” I said.

I figured I would knit him a seed stitch scarf. I had learned that stitch after I learned how to do stockinette. “Knit, purl, knit,” she told me when I had first learned it. “It’s a pretty easy stitch to remember.”
It soon became one of my favorite stitches, because I loved the way the fabric felt when it rubbed against my skin.
I went to my closet and took my knitting supplies out. They had grown a little dusty, but otherwise, they were the same as when I had left them.
I pulled out the black yarn and some needles.
I took a deep breath. What if I forgot? I thought. Mom would be appalled.
  I cast on the first row with twenty seven stitches. To my surprise, it came back to me as naturally as breathing.
I started to knit the row.
“Knit, purl, knit,” I said to myself, echoing the words my mother had said to me years past.
To my surprise, the memory of her didn’t make me cry, but instead, it made me smile.
I kept knitting and knitting and knitting and, to this day, I haven’t stopped.