Ain't We All Amazing?

I got the nicest comment on one of my posts calling me "an amazing woman."

And, while I was ever so pitifully grateful that SOMEONE, somewhere, thinks I'm amazing, I know in my heart of hearts that I'm not.

Or, more to the point, that we all are.

When I look around at the women I know, we're all pretty darned amazing. We manage jobs, and houses, and spouses, and children, and grandchildren, and even our own parents, and somehow we manage to fit knitting  and friends in too.

Now, mind you, the women of previous generations managed most of those things, too, but I don't think they had nearly as much fun doing it as we do. Most of the women in my family were proud in a dour, Scottish/New England pilgrim kind of a way of the fact that they ... survived. They struggled through, with complaints never voiced but with an attitude that screamed that they were eking out a barren existence for themselves and their families against all odds. The sense of pride of accomplishment was often accompanied by a grim mouth and frown lines across the forehead.

And, by the way, we Never Air Our Dirty Linen in Public, so those women probably couldn't sit down at the local coffee shop and complain about what ungrateful rats their husbands and kids were, or that the bank was coming to foreclose on the South Forty.

That Massachusetts blood still runs through my veins and every so often I can get that cranky feeling that I'm holding the entire world on my shoulders and damn it, you better appreciate the sacrifices I've made for you!

But not too often.

Most of the time, I have a pretty good time.

Of the women I know well, most have gone through something crappy in the last year or two--a husband with a health problem, or a kid with a divorce or a drug problem, or even the death of a parent or a spouse or a sibling or their own health issues.

And, amazingly, we're all still laughing and buying yarn and knitting wild and crazy knitted objects and taking and teaching classes and reading books and playing games and, basically, just enjoying Life on Life's Terms. We sit around tables and knit together and share our successes and occasionally our failures and we don't worry too much about our frown lines.

Amazing, isn't it?

EZ was right: Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises.