Cosmic Reflections

The Sandy Hook school shooting so undid me that I frantically started knitting. I gathered up all the yarn left over from previous projects and began making child-sized scarves.
I didn’t know what else to do in the face of such tragedy. Of course I signed every on-line petition that called for dealing with the fall-out from our national obsession with guns.
But that was not enough. One of my own grandchildren was so traumatized that her parents let the dog sleep in her bedroom to help stave off the nightmares. Because she lives across the continent, I could not comfort her.
Thus I had to do something. And knitting not only keeps my hands busy while my mind focuses on the unfolding events, it connects me with everyone who would rather construct than obstruct, make rather than break, create rather than destroy.
I apologetically took the mounting pile of scarves to a teacher friend just after Christmas. He was glad to get them. That’s when I learned that over sixty percent of the children in his school are ‘at risk.’ I had no idea: whenever I visit him there as writer in residence, all the children are wearing school uniforms, so that no one can tell who has and who has not.
The teachers know though, and send potentially hungry children to the office to stock up on food for the weekend. The batch of scarves became part of the distribution program.
My friend says he sees ‘my’ scarves wound around the necks of appreciative children as they arrive in the morning, leave in the late afternoon. One young man in his class wears his scarf all day long, wrapping it around his head as a turban.