Air & Altitude

Imagine you're knitting. If you don't know how, just imagine your fingers have become wise with muscle memory, and they take the needles, flinging the yarn back and forth, stitching together something you love. And the joy is that you don't have to look at it, or even think about it. Also, imagine you are sitting cross-legged, on a very high, grassy mountain, kind of like where Heidi, Girl of the Alps lived. The atmosphere is cool and comfortable. You look down below, through a clearing, towards the town. The people are like ants, their faces too small to see, only the general direction of their travels can be made out. Now take in a breath of fresh, fresh air, the kind that cools your tubes as it goes in. Now let out the breath. Notice how everything around you is quiet. Your hair lightly brushes against your arm in the breeze, and you realize it is very long, it has grown back, it has grown fuller, softer, like a wizard's.

All at once, you know you are now old. Although your hands move quickly back and forth with each stitch of yarn, they also feel thick and heavy and dry. The colour has gone out of them, and their skin is covered with age spots. You think of the years your hands have seen and felt. You think of the work, and all of the things they have touched. And you take another deep breath of that sweetness called air, and you gulp down tears of thankfulness for the moments in time that were yours all along, realizing you were there for every bit of it. You have been left changed, etched.