I want to tell you about my hearts.
A few years ago, I found this nifty pattern for knitting little hearts. I was I a business trip and had some time to kill, so I made a few. I often knit on flights, and as I was getting off the plane home, a woman behind me said, “I’ve been watching you since the terminal and I have to know: are you really knitting a heart?” I gave her one I’d finished the night before.
Since then it’s turned into a project. I’ve knitted literally hundreds, on 000s with lace weight and 6s with worsted and most things in between. They contain lavender, fiberfill, and a chip of howlite, which is said to aid those struggling with destructive ties to the past.
I took 100 to the regional burning man event as my gift to the festival. I knitted 80 for the guests at my wedding in 2017. The rest I’ve given away, some to close friends but most to people I encounter at random.
I can often tell who needs a heart, and each heart gifting is a connection with a cool human: the knitting lady at a nearby table who told me I was doing a good job knitting my first cables; the bridal store owner who treated size-28 me like I was normal and convinced me to keep the dress a secret until I was walking down the aisle (she was right); the emergency doctor with whom I had a strangely intimate conversation as she cut into my finger to drain a deep infection; the guy running a knitting shop in Barcelona, who held it up to his chest, mimed it beating, and said “clack-clack”; the woman leaving her abusive boyfriend, who clutched it tightly until we reached the train station in Portland; and so many others.
Last summer, I was in a 12-week intensive outpatient psych program. Traditionally, people bring gifts on their last night. I gave each person a little white box with a heart sticker on top. Inside was a little red heart nestled in tissue paper. A woman I’d had difficulty with but had come to really like wrote a Cummings quote on the whiteboard:
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
Hearts are how I say, “I see who you are, and it makes me happy.”