“When my son was a toddler, he loved to eat apples while roaming the house. I would find mushy cores stashed in the den toy bin, behind the sofa, in the toolbox or laundry hamper; everywhere but the trash can! One morning, while I was putting away a stack of clothing in my bedroom that had been piled on a chair for far too long, I stuck my hand under a silk ribbon sweater I’d just knit. I loved the feel of the basket weave pattern’s soft, bumpy waves. Except now, the soft bumps were suspiciously moist and squishy. A moldy apple core had burned a stinky, angry hole clean through the sweater front! I’d finished this sweater not long after the 9/11 attacks, at a time when writing fiction, like knitting and other intimate artistic endeavors, seemed self-indulgent and insignificant. I’d battled helplessness by finishing that sweater, a resolve that helped me return to work on a stalled story. Now the sweater was ruined. My first impulse was to throw it away, but I forced myself to lay the sweater out on the kitchen table. When I looked past the damage, I saw I could unravel the entire garment, toss the bad yarn, and have plenty left to knit another sweater if I left off the sleeves. By the time my son turned three, I was wearing a hand-knit silk tank top, and had finished up that stalled story. The story became my first literary publication.
My son, now grown, joined the Marines just before last year’s election. The turmoil in our current national politics means that I again find myself stalling, and worrying, when I should be writing more than ever. I’ve persevered through this latest test of faith in fiction by remembering how my son’s sweet carelessness once inspired me to persist, and re-invent. I’m grateful that an ordinary apple once wreaked a necessary havoc, nudged me to see what new fabric I could make from an unexpected setback.”
—Laura Hulthen Thomas, author of States of Motion (Wayne State University Press, 2017)
Photo credit: Laura Hulthen Thomas