SWEATER 

 

Mum asked me what I wanted for my thirtieth birthday, and, without hesitation I said. A jersey. She said, what kind of jersey? What colors? What pattern? I went and bought one ball of wool that had within it all the colors I wanted in a jersey, yellows, blues, greens, oranges, soft natural hues, bright enough to be awash with color but not gaudy. And I sent it to her with a drawing of a triangle. I’d like a jersey with all of these colors in triangles about this size, in the same shape as that jersey you knitted years ago, but maybe a couple of inches longer and wider. Big round neck, boxy shape. Big and loose and comfortable. Able to go over other things cos I’ll probably wear it almost like a jacket at times. And she wrote back and said, those are lovely colors Alison. I shall look in my kist to see what I have, I think I might have most of those colors already. 

 

Mum’s kist was actually the old trunk that Mum and Dad had brought all of their possessions from Scotland to New Zealand in the mid 60’s. Now it lives in the bottom of their wardrobe, filled with mum’s balls of wool. Some new, in loose balls, with paper labels holding them together with names and numbers on them and some old, ripped down old sweaters or cardigans, and rewound into tight balls. Dad, sitting in the living room with both hands up in front of him while mum tore down an old sweater and used him arms like two posts to wrap the wool around so it wouldn’t get tangled and then him sitting there all wrapped as she whipped the wool around and around into the tight balls that got bigger and bigger and bigger. 

 

All the balls of wool, new and old, gathered by color into clear plastic bags. We’d dig through the balls to knit toys or sweaters for dolls or scarves and hats for ourselves, crochet squares and circles that became pillows or blankets. Dad’s sweater colors, wool, greys and dull soft greens. Mum eventually got a knitting machine which seemed like a very complicated machine set up in their bedroom, but she could knit a finer sweater fast on that thing. A couple of days and we’d have new sweaters for school, dad a new sweater for work, Mum a cardigan. 

 

There is an old photograph of us all, Dad and my two brothers in matching mustard colored sweaters, cable knit patterns. Dad’s big, his wavy reddish hair unruly, his glasses, then smaller and smaller versions of the same sweater on my brothers. I’m not sure what us girls are wearing for jerseys I just remember that we had matching kilted skirts, Mum’s was a real skirt, long with sharp creases, my sister and I had skirts that we attached to white tunics, so they looked like skirts but allowed a lot more freedom and as we grew it allowed for a lot more use, not having to move buttons out every few months as our waists expanded. I also remember that they had huge hems, doubled over, so that they could be let down again and again as our legs got a little bit longer. We were not necessarily fast growing people, us Williams’ topped off around 5’2”. Maybe my younger brother is taller than that, he’s the tallest but way back then he was little, round faced and cute in his mustard. 

 

Hems that were turned down to lengthen a high school uniform always showed dramatically because the uniform material faded pretty quickly in the strong NZ sun. A mark of cool was short, short uniforms and faded faded faded. The more battered the better. My mother, as a sewer, didn't approve of old faded fabric, and as a Scottish Presbyterian she didn’t approve of it being too short either. The last year of having to wear a school uniform was the best because you could convince Mum that it was a waste of money to buy another one, it’ll only be a few months of wear…why waste the money, Mum? Frugality beat out propriety thankfully. And, I grew just enough to have my uniform not be quite the right length required by school regulations. 

 

I often wore my school jersey wrapped around my waist because I had a horrific period and would bleed through the pads and stain my dress. The worst one, where I possibly started wearing the jersey around my waist, was an exam, it must have been School Certificate, a big set of exams. We were all in the hall, desks separated so no-one could cheat. A three hour exam, no one allowed to leave the hall, not even for bathroom breaks. And I could feel it. I had doubled up the pads. They were really thick anyway, but I knew I’d bleed through and so I had taken the plastic sheet out of the bottom of one pad, and stuck it down on top of another and stuck it into my underwear. I can’t imagine how I managed to walk without looking weird, my little skinny legs and this huge pad stuck between them. This was before wings were invented. So they were always slipping around and bunching in the hot summer sticky air, blood leaking on either side. Or at night, before they invented extra long night time pads, I’d layer one on top of the other and sometimes lay a towel in the bed just in case. Waking in the morning in a flood of blood. That one day in exams, I bled through and onto the chair. I waited until everyone had left and I walked out of the room with my sweater wrapped around my waist, and waited for the school bus to go home. 

 

Those mustard sweaters my brothers grew out of but my fathers remained in his closet, mostly unworn. I think he got too big for it actually, there was a short phase where he put on a bit of weight. And sweaters like that, there wasn’t much call in New Zealand for a really hefty sweater, even though Tracy and Megan and I loved them, looking at beautiful women draped in thick sweaters and lace dresses, layered walking in scottish heather fields, looking romantic, scarves wrapped around lush flowing hair. And so, even though it really wasn’t cold enough, we’d wear these thick sweaters that Tracy’s Mum made, or my Mum or Megan’s mum made. All amazing knitters. And, I would sneak into Mum and Dad’s room and steal his mustard colored sweater, put it in the bottom of my bag and wait til I was on the school bus and then put it on. It was so cool, on top of my flowered lace long skirts. When I left New Zealand Mum gave me that sweater to take with me. I have it still. 

 

And in sneaking to take out that sweater, amongst all dad’s sweaters, one Norwegian one they had got when they stopped in Scandinavia on the way to New Zealand, in that stack of sweaters was a book. It fell gently to the ground when I pulled the mustard sweater out, a small paperback. Not new. The smell of old paper. Small packed font. Dad read a lot of books, Mum did too. I opened it and inside was sex. I wonder if Mum knew it was there. Why Dad would have hidden it amongst his sweaters, to hide it from us or from Mum. I loved that small book. Filled with slightly dirty, raunchy stories. Men, taking women. Women revealing themselves to men. Tucked back into the sweater pile exactly in the same way it had been found so no-one would know that I had found it and read it. Dad’s mustard sweater returned and folded exactly too so no-one would know I had borrowed it. 

 

Mum told me when I sent that ball of colored wool and asked for that jersey that she lined all the balls of wool up and chose the colors, small balls just enough for one triangle and larger balls for some multiple triangles. Then she put them all into her big basket. And she would say to Dad, John, choose the next color, and sometimes he’d look and pick one, and sometimes he’d just stick his hand into the basket and wiggle it around and grab one without looking and toss it gently to her. This one Charlotte, as he went back to his book.