A private work of love

My favorite sweater was seventy years old when I got it. This was the dark blue one, cowl-necked, with the rows of white stitched in. It looked like something a Scandinavian fisherman’s wife might have knitted to stave off the blistering winds on the surface of the sea. But it was several sizes too big for me, and it drowned me, like an ocean.

This was only right, because it was made for my grandfather by a former girlfriend sometime in the 1950s. To be precise, she’s known in our house as Grandpa’s Italian Ex-Girlfriend. (I love the strange, needless addition of “Italian.” She was second-generation, as far as I’m aware; her heritage has not figured whatsoever into any story I’ve heard. But it does demonstrate so wonderfully my grandparents’ Anglo-Saxon Protestant world, that she needed no further identifier than “Italian”.)

At any rate, it should be clearer now how I ever came to own a seventy-year-old sweater that was in good enough condition to be worn. My grandmother didn’t like him to wear it. So there it sat in a box or a closet for decades, slightly moth-bitten but still beautiful, still a work of art. My grandfather passed away several years ago, and a few years after that, I chanced on the sweater. I liked to wear it to the school where I teach so I could tell my history students about it. I would explain the whole story, how my grandfather never married The Italian Ex-Girlfriend, despite the many generous hours she poured into this gift—and, of course, because my grandfather married my Not Italian Grandmother instead, I exist today. This beautiful sweater is here, I would tell them, but so am I. Isn’t that strange? I called it my “Triumph of Existence Sweater.”

There was something about it that disturbed me a little. I would feel the warmth of the sweater, its fine, flawless stitches and perfect collar, the care put into them. I could glimpse a bit of the affection summed up in this old sweater, the high hopes she must have had that this gentle man, my grandfather, would always be present and always be wearing exactly this. All the time she was knitting it, she would’ve been thinking about how excited she was to give the gift and how much my grandfather would like it. I know; I’ve done things like this. But even so, for them, it wasn’t the right love. All of that, I would think, for nothing?

I could see and touch her thoughtfulness. It even kept me warm. Could I imagine going back in time, sitting down next to her at the fireplace as she works on one of the sleeves, and telling her, “One day Ben’s granddaughter will wear this, but she won’t be your granddaughter.” I wonder if she would’ve kept working, or if, humiliated, she would’ve put away this gift forever.

For his part, he never got rid of it. There’s no doubt in my mind that my grandfather loved my grandmother deeply and without compromise, but I can accept that, at the same time, he didn’t want to throw the sweater out. There was something precious about it. He didn’t wear it, probably didn’t even look at it. But it was put away in the house for the rest of his life.

He really was a good man. He was a pipe-fitter by trade, a great handyman, and respected good work. In addition, he was extremely generous with his talents and treasures. So when one day I saw woman with the cardboard sign—NEED $ FOR ROOM. GOING TO FREEZE—there was nothing else to do. I didn’t have any cash. The sweater was in the back seat of my car. I thought, “Maybe it won’t fit her.” But I knew it would. It was made for a barrel-chested pipe-fitter.

She was even more glad to have it than I expected. It was going to get down to thirty-five that night, she told me; she was going to need it. She clutched it as soon as it was offered. She was so pleased.

I’m almost embarrassed that it pained me to give it away. On the one hand, it was nice to have something of my grandfather’s, as I get older and wish I’d known him better. More difficult, though, was the thought of The Italian Ex-Girlfriend. How odd to think of her making this so long ago, and here it still was seventy years later, being handed off from one perfect stranger to another, so far from her old hopes. I don’t know the Girlfriend’s name, or whether she’s alive; I only know her by this one act of loving generosity, and even that is gone now.

Like I said, I don’t know whether she would’ve made this sweater if she knew my grandfather wouldn’t marry her. I don’t think I would’ve made it. But I saw what became of her private work of love: a long time later, it wrapped a woman against the cold. And, truly, she was grateful for it.