Passing Time

Passing Time

Knitting keeps strangers at bay in doctors’ waiting rooms—most days. Could be the sharp needles, the pattern of knit and purl, or the air

of busyness in otherwise listless lobbies. Grandma taught me to pass time. I’ve probably knitted near 48 feet. Never fancy. I stick to scarves

in rooms usually not quite as nice as this. The first was over six feet. Grandma hadn’t shown me how to finish yet. A lady with a cane two seats over

tells me twice she’s had a stroke and that my yarn is beautiful. Three times she repeats, she used to knit hats, scarves, mittens. “You just knit the square

and take a big needle and X stitch the edges together.” Claims she couldn’t do it now. She’s “had a stroke.” She still has all the patterns, but she’s “had a stroke.”

I ask her, why doesn’t she try again? An hour later, I learn she made dresses for years. She’s 5’11’’ too. “Store-bought clothes were never long enough.” While she waits

for her cab, she explains how to make mittens. I nod and knit and purl. “I can’t start up again though,” she says. “I’ve had a stroke.”

Therapy’s Song

The purple carpet smells of stale sweat. The soft staccato of steel plates in the circuit grounds the grunts of men and women who’ve come here to work.

Voices join this found song: chipper encouragements, annoyed chides, lewd jokes between sets, and murmurs of this week’s doctor check-ups.

It looks like a gym: worn, white muscle systems and strength training machines; elliptical trainers, recumbent bikes, and treadmills; balls and bands and benches

that flex and snap and groan; and snowy towels that hang on parts not moving. You can tell it’s therapy from the raised beds and bandaged ice packs, TENS units,

massages and ultrasound machines. Here, canes, crutches, braces, and wheel chairs litter the few empty areas where exercisers and therapists step over, through, and around

them, their focus on the next set in the circuit. Men and women, their faces pinched in pain, haul wooden boxes filled with weights in the narrow hallway past the green mats where others stretch

unwilling muscles. Fluorescent lights hiss and pop, and hope corrals them through their exercise lists. The redheaded trainer shouts his litany in the corner, “you can do it. You can do it. Only one set more!”