QotD: You're wearing a sweater that stretches down to your feet. What color belt do you put on?

They said knitting might help. I sighed and signed the chit. Maybe music would help, maybe being rolled through the park grounds would help, maybe a visit to the painting class might help, maybe, maybe, maybe. The truth was that he was locked inside and nothing was ever going to help. I agreed to every new therapy, signing to pay for it with the same emotion I experienced signing to pay for groceries, for housing, for health insurance.

The first day a skein of impossible fuchsia yarn appeared in his lap. The next day a perky blonde 14 year old volunteer arrived to sit beside him. “Okay,” she chirped. “Here’s how we cast on.” I was surprised with her tenacity. Day after day after day, and she was never anything but wildly cheerful. I later learned she had an autistic brother; perhaps patience had become an ingrained trait.

One day the knitting needles remained in his limp hands for the entire session. She patted him on the back and assured him he was making great progress. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d simply balanced them well. A month later the lesson ended with three inches of single knit fuchsia on one of his needles. The girl assured me he’d done it himself. I looked at his slack, blank face and sighed.

She’d told the truth. Over the next weeks the three-inch wide strip lengthened, and his hands would often continue the slow, simple movements she’d taught him. Eventually, he ran out of fuchsia yarn, and I put the yards and yards of his work on the bedroom dresser.

His next project involved a beautiful sky blue yarn his adolescent teacher insisted he’d selected himself. Perhaps she could read smaller signs than I. His face and posture never changed. Just fingers moving, needles clicking. Several months later, his lap was filled with soft rolls of knit blue. A surprise, said the girl. I couldn’t wait to see what dozens of skeins of yarn had gone into.

“He’s finished,” she said one day. “It’s for you. He loves you, you know.” I fled with an armful of knit, my nose and eyes stinging. So he knitted. Was I supposed to be happy?

An hour later I took a closer look. It was a pullover sweater, my size. It was longer than most, stretching clear down to my feet. My eye caught sight of his first project, still lying in a pile on the dresser. Laughing, I grabbed one end and began to twirl, allowing it to wrap ‘round and around my middle.

She lifted his head when I reappeared to model the sweater. I’m certain, certain the dimple in his left cheek deepened.