Appropriated Culture

I can't remember why or when I got the gift of the afghan from my grandmother. We all received one eventually, all of us grandchildren, I mean. Jessica, my first wife, got one too. I am not sure now if all the spouses of grandchildren also received one or if Jessica had commented on how much she liked mine. That kind of narrows the time frame for when I got mine as I do not think I had it in college when it would have been nice to wrap up in to read with, as, being an English literature major, I averaged reading two novels a week. Some years after we had divorced and Jessica already had children with her new husband, she found her afghan hidden away in some closet and called me to see if I wanted it. I told her to keep it and give it to her little girl someday. Jessica passed away from cancer several years ago. I hope now that her daughter wraps up in it at night reading one of Jessica's favorite books.

I think now that I must have received my afghan as a birthday gift. My birthday is in August and I vaguely remember there was some slight incongruence on opening up a gift on a sweltering summer day to find a crocheted wool blanket. Looking back on the use I have gotten out of it and how important this blanket has become to me, my face should have been one of delirious happiness. Instead at the time it probably said that I thought my grandmother delirious with heat to be gifting such a thing. Thinking back, it might have been that I received it while I was in college yet, but that it got put up in a closet since it was of no immediate use and did not get pulled back down until sometime when I was at home at Christmas thinking about how between home in Chicago and my former home in Michigan finding as many warm layers to pile onto myself would be smart.

An afghan, if one hasn't heard the term before, is simply a throw, usually knitted or crocheted and usually in bright colors. The term entered the English lexicon after wealthy travelers and soldiers brought back colorful, hand-woven blankets from their travels to Afghanistan in the 10th century. American women began making their own versions as alternatives to quilted blankets. I had to go look it up to ensure that I was not just using some esoteric term that only my grandmother seemed to keep around from days of yore. (Like "snot rag". I swear that the Kleenex people got to Grandma when they became afraid they would lose their trademark to the common use of their name for their facial tissue and convinced her that she should keep using "snot rag" to refer to their product.)

Mine, having been created by a little woman in Saginaw, Michigan, who understood my own sensibilities and not by some Pashtun woman thousands of miles away, is not brightly colored. I think one would say it is of a natural wool color or something like cafe au lait, heavy on the lait. It is done in a pattern of alternating two inch by two inch squares, one where the pattern seems to go up and down and the other where it appears to go left to right, giving the entire thing a sort of basket weave appearance. Over the many years of use it has become pilled and some of the crochets have slipped out and developed holes like runs in a woman's nylons. But it has also become softer, and, though I am certainly biased, has an appearance more of being well-loved than ratty.

Grandma was constantly knitting or crocheting while we watched Barney Miller or Wheel of Fortune together. Like I said, each of us grandchildren got one, and I am sure that many other people have one as well. Of course, it took time to make one and probably more and more time as she got older and her eyes got worse and her hands became arthritic. I honestly couldn't say how long it took Grandma to make one, Some ballpark of several weeks to several months, but it was why you just got your afghan when you got it. She couldn't churn out a couple dozen like some sort of Nike factory worker to hand out all at once at Christmas. If yours was coming up on her list and your birthday was coming up in August, she was going to do it and not worry about the weather. She had other orders to be filled.

I said it is well-loved and it is. In today's world of the commercial fleece blanket and (ugh) the Snuggie, the hand-made afghan is worth its weight in gold. (Okay, perhaps not literally because gold is like $2000 per ounce, and every man has his price. Sorry, Grandma.) I wrap up in it every night as I leisurely read or watch "The Last of Us". It doesn't even need to be cold out. Now that we have central air here and Jen has the occasional hot flash, I am more than certain I've used it even on hot August nights. Jen says she knows when I am sick when I drag my well-loved security blanket off behind me like Linus as I head to bed. Then there are those days when one feels alone and is alone. Those days when even those of us who are non-huggers could really use one, but no one else is around. On that kind of day, I can still wrap myself in love.