The Way My Nan Held Me

I remember her hands. She was a fierce knitter and her hands were always click-clacking on a new project but as we both grew older my nan’s hands grew stiffer and she couldn’t knit anymore. I would sit on her lap and she would place her hand on mine and even though her hands were still, even though the magentas and teals she’d whip into a scarf had vanished, I felt safe and loved.

Her hands were covered in sunspots, gnarled with arthritis but what I saw was her sapphire ring, the way she would have carried herself in the 50s, a young Liz Taylor. Her ring spoke of grace and steely strength. Perhaps because she had these gold-edged ceramic swans on her dressing table, I always likened her to them, elegant above the surface, busy underneath.

Photo of Nan from private collection

I realise now she must have been in pain but back then all I knew was the comfort of those hands, how they’d sneak a biscuit out of the tin, play hangman with me, make her famous trifle, a staple at my Aunty’s Christmas table.

I know that my Nan used to carry me around because I remember the day she could no longer do it. I’d gotten too heavy and she’d had heart problems. She walked me to bed instead, using those hands to tuck me under the covers and turn out the light.

Nan always took my hand as we ‘went up the street’, dressed up in her heels and frock, her brooch and lipstick and black hair curled and set. When we’d chat to the butcher lady and she’d treat me to some mortadella, Nan would stand beside me as if I were a part of her; when a tall bejewelled lady at the bank said I was so good to stand so quietly and wait, Nan beamed. Nan’s holding, her hugs, her touch told me that I mattered to her, that I mattered.

You might think this kind of touch stopped when I was a teenager, those years of sorting yourself out and putting distance between yourself and those who’ve raised you, for a time, but even as well-advanced in my years as I am now, I still haven’t achieved 5 foot and back then I was tiny. As a 15-year-old I was able to sit on Nan’s knee before saying goodbye, me with braces and a late 80s perm growing out, acid wash jeans and the odd pimple, she weathered all of my sartorial and otherwise faux pas.

We spent a lot of time sitting side-by-side on her bed, looking at her dark wood drawers filled with costume jewellery, strings of pearls, medicines and various shades of pink rouge. Somehow, I always discovered new things to hold and wonder about, I must have driven her nuts.

We’d open up old photo albums and I’d listen as she told me stories about her youth before the second world war, the times later on when my Dad was young and Pop worked up the hill at the asylum, and the apple orchards the family owned. Photos of Pop in the Army, of our trips up to Beechworth when all the Christmas beetles would settle on my arms as we sat on the porch at night, and even the odd wedding photo of my mother and father.

In that strange way children have of mixing things up, the only thing I knew of my mother back then was that she’d left. Nan had received a sky-blue vase from my mother’s mother, and it stood in the little hall with thick coloured feathers erupting from it. A gift from a trip to Japan. In my mind that vase told a story: my mother had left to travel and that made sense to me.

Of course, I took for granted what I had with Nan: her hugs were normal, her attention was a given. The way her body slowed and curled as she got older just meant adjusting the way we were together; she didn’t dress up for the street as often. Playing poker at the coffee table slowed down and I did the card shuffling. She watched daytime TV more while Pop listened to the radio in the kitchen and there were a few less of her famous pies. We’d go to the shopping centre with my aunty and cousin, who was like a sister to me, that way my aunt could drive. We’d walk a bit slower. she never, ever showed me she was in pain or unhappy. Nan had a lot more appointments with specialists and then I was in my last years of high school followed by uni and I was busy, so I saw a lot less of her, preoccupied with getting good grades.

The morning Pop called my dad to say Nan had collapsed, we sped to her house. She’d had a few heart attacks by then. In the drive-way Nan and I always walked down to go to the bakers and newsagent, there was an ambulance. We ran into the little unit Nan and Pop had shared for decades, the only one of their homes I knew, and Nan was laid out on her bed.

Soon to turn twenty with the un-wavering knowledge that Nan would always be there, the next minute played out like someone else’s story. This time it was my hands that touched her face, still warm as if she were sleeping. I lent down toward her closed eyes and gently placed my arms around her. She couldn't hold me, but we still held one another all the same.

Photo by Ethan Hoover on Unsplash

In that last touch crowded two decades of memories that felt so new they sizzled between us. I could hear her voice narrating the moment: “as much as if to say, it’s okay pet”.

Those stories of us still burn today. The way Nan held me, and I was held; those moments were baked out of all those little things we did together, all those moments she gave to me and I hope, I gave to her. The touch of her hands is with me as I type, it’s so much a part of how I hold myself in the world that I barely notice it but without that touch, without our history, I would be a very different person today.

Over the years I’ve realised that Nan’s knitting didn’t stop when her hands grew too painful for the fine skills required: she was knitting us together. In the odd stitch here or there, our moments of touch and holding sparkle like sapphires amidst the wool, our stories still a warmth no winter can chill. And some of that yarn, a thread of royal blue, is woven into the ways my son and I knit our stories together, of the ways I hold him and he is held.

Photo by Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash

I wonder who held you and which of those stories, if any, do you bring into the way you hold your child?

Ariel

This post is written by Dr Ariel Moy. She is passionate about developing mother/child relationships, is an academic teacher and supervisor at The MIECAT Institute and a Professional member of ANZACATA.