My Rainbow

Posted January 06, 2004

Donovan once asked, "Do you have a shirt that you really love?"

Well, I had such a scarf.

Granny gave it to me when I went off to college in Madison, Wisconsin. She ordered it from Sears, but I appreciated it as much as if she'd made it herself. It was a rather muted scarf of many colors, a tube of fingering weight yarn, and it was long enough to wrap around my neck, over my ears, and over my mouth and nose.

Many was the cold morning that I trecked over Bascom Hill, reasonably warm in my colorful mummy-wrappings, and arrived at class with hoarfrost bedecking my scarf where the moisture in my breath had condensed and frozen upon it.

Our winters aren't as severe here in Carbondale, and I often just tossed the scarf on loosely, having to take care that the ends didn't drag and trip me up. Nonetheless, since I had a half-hour walk to work for many years, there were still a number of days each winter when I made the full wrap and blessed the warm lenght of that scarf, and fondly remembered Granny while I did it.

Unfortunately, I took it off at Hillside one winter day and just left it there. It was still balled up in a corner of my office on the October day when the nursery burned to the ground.

We closed early for that winter, being open by appointment to receive small shipments and to supply our loyal birdseed and petfood customers. We thought we could regroup ourselves and make a go of it, but nonetheless the hours I spent waiting, huddled in my metro, would have passed in a sour mood if it hadn't been for my first new project after the fire: a replacement scarf.

I made it of knitting worsted, in garter stitch, so it isn't as soft and flexible as the one it replaced. But I chose the colors of the rainbow to stripe it with. It cheered me to watch the sequence grow, band by band of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet (or Jockey Red, Tangerine, Yellow, Grass Green, Skipper Blue, and Amethist), and as I worked on it at home too, I had the full length finished by the time it was time to get out and be devoted to the clean-up and the new year's business.

We didn't recover from the fire, and there's still a hole in my heart when I think of Hillside. But the scarf has taken on a life of its own. Once, when I popped in to drop off some photos for processing, the owner's young son glanced up at me from his toy trucks. He sat stunned for a moment, then rose to his feet and made for the scarf, babbling happily (and endlessly) about how pretty it was. I usually don't get such a vigorous response, but several times perfect strangers have stopped me with big smiles to tell me how much they like it.

I'm gloomy by nature and I cling to my pain. But I don't think of the fire when I pick up the rainbow scarf. Even though it isn't the same one, I think of it as as Granny's gift to me when I set out to face the world.

By Ruby Jung, even the background! All rights reserved to the story. If you like the background, you're welcome to copy it and use it.