“What are you making?” asked seven-year-old Hannah
“ A toque,” replied Grammie
“Who for?”
“Whoever needs it.”
Grammie was sitting in her Lazyboy chair with a reusable grocery bag by her side.
There were many small rolls of wool in there, leftovers from shawls she had been
making. But there was one big ball of cherry-red wool and she was knitting a toque
from it.
“It’s summer time,” objected Hannah, ”Nobody wants to wear a wool cap now.”
“Ah, but it won’t always be summer time, you know. Seasons change; things change.”
Grammie sighed, resolutely knitting and purling and pushing stitches along her needle.
“ I like red, “Hannah said to fill the silence.
“So do I. That’s why I belong to the Red Hat Society.”
“Oh yeah,’ said, Hannah, interested at last. She pushed the green footstool closer and
sat down. “what is that all about?”
“It’s about being a friend and making friends, and celebrating life.”
“Like a birthday party?”
“Exactly!”
“Can I go with you..to your next party?” asked Hannah.
“Not until you are at least pushing fifty!” laughed Grammie.
Time passed, as it always does, and when Hannah turned sixteen she visited her
grandmother, sitting again in her favourite chair but she wasn’t knitting. She had just
had her second round of chemo drugs..the red devil. the kind nurses called it.
“Just two more, Hannah,” said Grammie by way of greeting , “and then I’ll be fine.”
“ It’s so sad to see that most of your lovely grey hair is gone,” said Hannah, after a
gentle hug.
“Not a bit of it, I brushed it out in the yard and two birds swooped down and carried
it away to line their nests!” chuckled her intrepid relative.
When the last drop of tea and the last crumb of chocolate chip cookies vanished,
Hannah rose from the green stool beside Grammie and said she had to go.
“Just a sec,” and out came something red from the bag beside her chair. “I’m
celebrating my life.”
And Hannah’s grandmother pulled the finished red toque over her head.
