Lately, during night time talks with Goldie, I have been knitting. Conversations make the rows increase faster. One night, all that was heard for a long time, was the clickity clack of the needles.

“What are you thinking about?” I finally asked as I switched from knitted row to a purl.

“Oh, just stuff.” Goldie says looking at my needles bob.

“What stuff?” I asked.

“Like you know, how I have autism.” Goldie had just said what she never said before. She had been asked “What is autism?” and she had answered “I have no idea.” But this time, she knew autism meant HER.

“YOU have autism?” I stopped purling and raised by eyebrows. My mouth opened wide to say the word again:”AUTISM? ” I knew that if I continued I would forget I had to purl and not knit. I wasn’t going to drop a stitch or lose my stitch pattern, and spoil the whole “work of art”. Here we go, for the first time, after 15 years of Goldie silently accepting she has autism, hearing the word, thinking over why’s, and analyzing the probably nots, she says the one word that she’s not said and we were waiting for her to say.

“Mom! You know I have autism! ” Goldie stretched out a grin. It’s fine I guess.” Goldie shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, I think you are more than fine.” I purposely made my needles click loudly.

“True.” Goldie has been saying that lately when she agrees. Then she stares in puzzled wonder this time. Then she says, “Why?”

I begin to knit again. Knitting the garter stitch energizes me into eloquence.

“Because you were knit!”

Goldie didn’t say “what?” She didn’t say, “No I wasn’t!” She didn’t even say, “That doesn’t make any sense!” That is what I suspected her to say. But all she did was watch me make take stitches off one needle and make new ones. The garment was getting longer and wider.

“Let’s see, I’ve done 15 rows of garter stitch, then I purl two, and then 15 rows more,” as I say this out loud, my needle touches the tiny little V’s on what I’ve finished so far

“What are you making anyway?” Goldie brushed her fingers over the garment’s edge.

“Well, it’s just a burp cloth. It’s not a sweater or a dress or hat or mittens or socks.” I shrugged. I can’t knit like your great grandmother. But still, it takes time and I have to be careful so that it can be a burp cloth for a baby to rest their head on something soft, burp, and feel fine, maybe even more than fine. “

Goldie had that same puzzling wondering look in her eyes.

“True, ” she said, “That is true.”