7:40 a.m. I am wearing a shirt with a bow (something I never thought I'd do) and standing on one of the busiest street corners in town, knitting (something I always do). The construction gods have blessed us with two months of road-closure-for-unknown-watery-purposes, so I now catch my bus at much more public locale. There is no shelter, no cozy bench, but this does not stop me. I lean my back against the post and knit. Drivers stopped for the light notice me. How could they not? Huge pregnant lady overdressed for public transit (in this town at least) knitting on a street corner.
I am my own piece of performance art, a testament to the power of knitting, of doing SOMETHING with those ten minutes of waiting for the bus to appear. Some days I get a half a row in. The bus is on time. Other days, I get 10 rows in. The bus is late. A cherry red Prius checks me out. "I want that car," I think. "I want what she's smoking," the driver thinks. I can tell the ones who wish that there was no glass between us, who wish they could connect. The convertible filled with young Mexican men has no such barrier. Blasting loud Salsa music and sporting a spoiler that could double as a NASA telescope, the black car pulses with life. "Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy!" One guy drawls approvingly and his buddies all give me a thumbs up. They seem to get a total kick out of the pregnant gringa waiting for the bus and knitting like a grandmother.
I am a very public exception to the wide-spread belief that our transit system is only used by the poor, the disabled, and the immigrants. But, this morning, as I plop into the first empty seat on a full bus, I am surrounded by the usual population. The developmentally challenged young man who is unlucky enough to score me as a seat mate clutches his backpack close to him and scoots far enough away to hug the plastic wall. On intercity buses, I often see other knitters, and I almost always see them when flying. But, on a 15 minute ride on a 20 minute intracity route? I am as much an aberration as whatever demons dancing in this poor fellow's brain.
BING! He gets off a stop before his usual one. I am momentarily saddened that I might have scared him off. But, two stops later, a fellow professor joins me. "You really are a knitting fool!" she exclaims. "I just don't want to be bored," I reply. She passes the minutes until campus by chatting at me. We've formed something of a bus friendship in the last few months, moving from knitting to students to husbands as we expand our universe of acceptable topics.
Two of my favorite passengers get on. A sister and brother--maybe 12 and 9--climb on, arguing as usual about who gets to put the dollar in the slot. They always have crisp, painfully new dollars. I'm dying to ask why they go to a college campus at 8 a.m.--I'm not aware of any middle school programs offered. She is equally curious about the knitting. She always watches me with strange mix of awe and unabashed longing. I wish I could bring her some needles and yarn, but five minutes isn't enough time for a lesson, and I'm not sure how to bridge that gap other than to smile and hope that maybe someday she'll be brave enough to sit closer.
At school, three other harried adjuncts wait for the copier. We're all guilty of not using the copy-center, so we try to avoid eye contact as much as possible. I dodge the awkward silence by knitting a few rows until my turn arrives. As he finishes his stack of forty copies of a ten page double-sided and stapled handout (big no-no), an older gentleman notices my knitting and shakes his head and sighs. I know he's probably bemoaning the quality of teachers being hired. If they let in the flaky knitters, what next? His own wait was marked with much sighing and toe-tapping.
He's probably right to be concerned. When I'm not living every waking moment in grading hell, I often knit in the few minutes before class time begins. "That's new," a student remarks as he opens up his paper. We share a bond of dying hobbies, and I love picturing this young man growing up to be an efficient business man, complete with Wall Street Journal and black coffee. "Is it for the baby?" he asks. I laugh. Knitting and pregnancy are inexorably linked in the American psyche. "No, it's a Mother's Day present," I explain. "Couldn't you just buy it?" he asks. Apparently, our bond is weaker than I thought.
However, later I run into a former student in the hall. She greets me with all the enthusiasm of someone seeing a familiar face after a long journey. I am captivated by her bubbly good nature. An implicit agreement passes between smiles--I will not mention the final she never turned in, and she won't mention the disappointing grade that resulted. Instead, she asks about the baby and tells me that she can't wait to see me in another month when I"ll be "waddling from class to class." She makes this sound like a good thing, so I laugh. As I turn to go, she asks, "Hey, did you ever finish those socks?"
"Which pair?" There have been so many this year, as I struggle to meet Nana's need for socks. "The soft blue pair," she prompts me. I am transported back to the early days of this pregnancy, the second pair of socks for Nana, and a core group of early-morning students who watched me knit as their classmates raced the clock.
On the way home, I am forced to practice knitting Zen. Annoying driver = knit faster. Pregnant bladder protesting that 15 minutes is way too long to be away from a bathroom = knit way faster. I knit faster and avoid doing the squirmy must-go-now dance. If I drove in, I couldn't knit. My pee-dance might be dangerous to drivers. The force my knitting propels me closer to sweet porcelain relief.
My doctor has also seen me through several pairs of socks. Today, she is running behind and the waiting room is clogged. I stand and knit. "That's handy," a woman remarks. "You must like waiting." My impatience is legendary, and the knitting is the only thing keeping me from bugging the nurse. "This makes it tolerable," I say serenely. We talk about due dates and crafts, and I am rewarded by the universe when I am called first, while she thumbs through the slim pickings in the magazine rack. If I see her again at Childbirth class, we will have something to chat about.
Later, I take this good karma for a test-drive when I'm car hunting with Freak. The forklift required to get me out of the front seat of the Insight has hammered home the fact that the two-seater's days are numbered. During the long-wait for keys designed to make us more eager to buy right-that-minute, I knit. This is my answer to their little games. The salesman blanches and hurries the keys over. He can't have me advertising the game to the other buyers. On the test drive, I take out my knitting again. "Don't you want to test out the seat warmer?" he wheedles.
"She knits," Freak explains. "It's all about the knitting." Indeed it is, and the moon roof is seriously screwing with my tension. This is not a good car for us. I snap the knitting into my purse, decision made.
11:20 p.m. Freak's spare computer (yes, he keeps a computer just for me in his office) is taking forever to load up my before-bed card game. Rather than curse his "linux is better" mantra, I knit a half-row. Right as I'm about to declare the hard-drive DOA, the game appears. Knitting is just that powerful.
