88 Stitches after hours

The summer of my ninth year I spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from surgery.  I won’t get into the boring medical details, only to mention that it involved intensive bone grafting, lots of stitches, and a great deal of pain.  I was bed-ridden and pretty miserable for most of my hospital stay and in the many weeks spent recuperating at home during the hottest part of  summer vacation.

I am the youngest of seven children; the baby of the family.  In fact, I am quite a bit younger than the rest of my siblings, so I really was The Baby.  It’s even fair to say that I was babied.  But sometimes I used to feel lost in the shuffle.  With so many kids, there isn’t much time to focus on any one person for very long.

That summer, however, I was the center of attention.  Everyone felt sorry for me: my parents and siblings, grandparents, relatives, neighbors, friends and even the parents of friends.  I acquired a stack of Archie comic books (I can’t believe Archie recently chose Veronica to marry over Betty!) that reached from the floor to my bed.  My brothers took turns carrying me everywhere, and my sisters brought me  candy and played endless games of Go Fish and Old Maid without complaint.

I even remember my Mom and a nurse washing my hair over the side of the hospital bed in buckets to spare me the pain of trying to stand at a sink.  Following the surgery I couldn’t bathe or shower because of all the stitches and bandages, which was A-okay by me.  Heck, I was a kid, after all, and a bit of a tomboy to boot.  But my long hair became a snarled mass of bed-head that needed constant combing, braiding and Johnson’s No More Tears.

My Dad visited me almost every day in the hospital, even though he worked long hours at his regular job and then took on handyman jobs for some extra money.  I was used to seeing his hair and clothing spattered in paint and sawdust, and so I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when he came to visit.  Then again, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself and I am certain most of his visits were spent listening to me whine about wanting to come hooooome.

Most girls at some point go through a favorite color phase.  That summer it was all about purple for me.  I was so excited the day I got to finally leave the hospital, made doubly special by the new purple sundress Mom brought me to wear home.  I clearly remember Dad backing the car into our driveway that day, which he never did and I wondered about it, then brushed it off as maybe being easier for him to lift me out of the car.

What Dad didn’t want me to see were the new purple flowered curtains at my bedroom window.  He carried me from the car straight to my newly decorated bedroom.  Everything was painted and decorated in shades of lilac, mauve, and purple.  It was a little girl’s dream room!  I had always known I was loved by my parents, but at that moment I felt completely treasured.

Purple is the colour of love for me.  Is it any wonder that at the first signs of summer I find myself knee-deep in purple knitting projects?

Purple Love

I will post the finished projects as soon as they are completed.  Until then, go ahead and  guess what they are….

The nine year old in me double-dog dares you!