Pumpkin Hat

Parenthood, creativity, and making baby hats.

The baby hat I made for an expectant friend last week.

No one makes it into parenthood with their previous life (the one that existed before there was a baby) intact.

Maybe some of it stays the same, but at least three or four things will be blown to hell and then carefully rearranged so that they function, but not in any way that makes sense. Several other things will just be blown to hell. Period. Because, there’s a baby now. They take up space, they don’t know how anything works, including their own body, and they are always just one or two steps away from destroying themselves or something else.

The situation would almost be funny except that, as a parent, you know in the very core of your most primal, animal being that if this vulnerable bundle of life ever comes to real harm, you yourself will die. Or, possibly, kill someone. Or both.

Award-winning author and journalist, Elizabeth Stone, once wrote that choosing to have child “[…]is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” I would add that, once it’s old enough, you also get to watch that heart do stupid, often dangerous things that you’re pretty sure you told it not to do. Three or four times.

Being a parent will make you crazy. A very special kind of crazy that stems from a truly agonizing blend of overwhelming love, crippling fear, reckless hope, and fierce determination guaranteed to tie you into knots so bizarre that you will inevitably find yourself saying or doing some of the very things you swore that you would never say or do once you were, “the parent.” It will break you open in ways that you never thought possible and let in so much light that, at times, it is blinding.

And yet, if you’re like me, you wouldn’t have it any other way. Love is like that—all of that.

In her book All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks wrote:

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. When we commit to love, we commit to moving against fear, against alienation and separation. No one can choose this path for us. We choose it for ourselves.

Parenthood is it’s own kind of Hero’s Journey. No one can tell you what it will give to you. No one can tell you what it will take from you, either. The stakes are no less than your life and the only certainty is that you will be changed. Bring your radical optimism with you, if you can. You’ll need it.

Into The Crucible

After my first kid, Bigs, was born, I didn’t touch any of my art or craft for months. I was too busy surviving.

Bigs and I went through over 50 hours of labor together. A proverbial baptism by fire, if ever there was one. By the time our ordeal was finally over, none of us had gotten decent sleep in nearly three days and, as it turned out, my husband and I wouldn’t get anything close to good sleep for another 8 months after that.

We discovered very quickly that Bigs wouldn’t stay asleep for more than an hour, unless he was being held. After the second sleepless night in the hospital, I began to hallucinate music and something moving at the foot of my bed. My husband struggled to form coherent sentences when he spoke.

We finally called the nurse on duty and begged her to hold Bigs while we got some sleep. Her smile was as large as the circles under our eyes. “That’s why I love my job! People pay me to hold babies!”

Thank god.

Finally discharged and back at home, my husband and I figured out a system for sleeping in shifts. One of us would wear Bigs in a soft baby wrap and sit upright in a rocking chair while the other one passed-out in the bed. And so, the first two weeks of our lives as newly-minted parents went by in a state of unrelenting purgatory.

The days and nights were divided into two-to-three hour chunks punctuated by feeding, diaper changes, clothing changes, and helpless crying—his and ours. Twenty-four hours was an eternity. Dates on the calendar no longer made any sense.

He was brand new.

He had been here forever.

He was our entire universe—a tiny being that so thoroughly occupied every spare inch of our brains, hearts, and house that nothing else could be squeezed in. There was only the baby and crushing fatigue.

The first time Bigs slept in his bassinet for three hours it felt like a miracle. Later, after a few weeks of waking only three times a night instead of five, the exhaustion started to become manageable. We were still forgetting words and misplacing objects, but driving no longer felt like playing Russian roulette with cars.

Making things was so far off of my agenda, at this point, that I wondered if I would ever get back to it again. At the time, my experience of parenthood seemed to beat every creative impulse out of me. Between a newborn and a strained ligament in my right hip—one of several souvenirs from the birth—even standing to cook was now excruciating.

Postpartum depression is a real thing, but I wonder how many cases might be ameliorated simply by giving new parents adequate support. Show me one person who can make it through months of sleep deprivation and drastic lifestyle changes (while being bombarded by media messages indicating they are doing everything wrong) without becoming depressed.

A Gift from the Past

“Don’t you want to get some pictures of him in that cute little outfit you made?” my mom asked. She and my dad were visiting—doing dishes and laundry and keeping the fridge stocked, like a couple of living saints. Bigs was now two and a half weeks old.

It took me a minute to dig the memory out of the mush in my skull. Oh, right. I did make something, didn’t I?

“I brought a nice basket with me,” Mom offered. “Maybe we can put some cozy blankets in it and get a few shots for the birth announcement cards?”

Sure. Why not? If I could remember where I put the outfit. I poked around in the quagmire of baby things that occupied our bedroom and finally located the small, orange, pumpkin hat and matching diaper cover.

It seemed so silly, now. Why did I make them? Who did I think I was, Anne Geddes? The idea of dressing my baby up like a pumpkin had been irresistible three months ago, when I had knit the tiny ensemble. Now, it felt like I was making future blackmail material.

But, Mom wanted to see her grandbaby all dressed-up and I didn’t have the heart to say no. I did make the cute little outfit, after all.

We managed to get five pictures before Bigs decided he’d had enough. Whatever he thinks of them once he’s grown, I’ve got to admit, I’m glad that we took them. Ever since that day, seeing those pictures is like receiving a small gift from my past self.

That version of me had very little idea of what she was about to experience or become. No one does, however many parenting books you read or birthing classes you attend. But, still, the child-free woman I was took her dreams of the future and made them into something that could meet me there. Hope, knitted in orange and brown.

Over the following year, whenever I despaired of ever having time or energy to make anything ever again (aside from our next meal) the pumpkin pictures were proof of who I had been. They reassured me that the skills and knowledge I had once used so often were still rattling around inside of me somewhere, waiting.

Baby Hat Lady

These days, I make baby hats for my community. It’s become a…habit? Tradition? Maybe those two things are not so different.

If there’s a friend or acquaintance who is expecting, I ask about their support needs, but I also make a hat. I’m sure that a good half of them are probably never worn. Either they don’t quite fit or the design just isn’t in line with the parents’ personal aesthetics. They get made anyway.

I think the internal reasoning, somewhere in the recesses of my hindbrain, goes something like, “If there is a hat, then there will be a healthy baby.” So, maybe what I’m really doing is knitting charms or fervent wishes. If I were less agnostic, I’d call it embodied prayer. Hope, made manifest.

Whenever I make something and send it out into the world, there’s a taste of that same anxious joy that Elizabeth Stone found words for. Another little piece of my heart, wandering around. Maybe it will make a few friends. Maybe it will really help someone. Maybe it will be ignored or even condemned. All I know is, I made it with what was inside of me and I hope that it will do good. The rest is out of my hands.

This past week, I made…

• One baby hat shaped like a pumpkin with a curly vine. I found the pattern for free on Ravelry so long ago that the website it came from no longer exists. I’ve made little tweaks to it over the years, but the nice thing about baby hats is that they are often very simple patterns and easy to adapt. Let me know in the comments if you’d like me to post a revamped version of the pattern for this hat here on Substack.

• Miso soup from scratch. This was a personal cooking goal of mine. I really enjoyed making it, but added too much of the bonito flakes to the dashi. I also kind of mangled the silken tofu when I tried to cut it into cubes. It was quite smokey (thanks to the overabundance of bonito), savory, and still delicious—mangled tofu and all. Not bad for a first try.

• Fried rice for breakfast! Anytime we have leftover rice in the fridge, I try to turn it into a savory breakfast the next day. This time, I included some shiitake mushrooms that were starting to dehydrate in the fridge, scrambled egg, and green peas from the freezer. Fresh garlic and ginger, soy sauce, and toasted sesame oil complete the dish. I like kimchi, so I spooned a good amount into my bowl as well. Delicious!

• Fruit salad with apples, bosc pear, three types of oranges, blackberries, pomegranate seeds, and chopped crystalized ginger. Serve with yogurt or whipped cream. This is a more autumnal take on fruit salad and is so, so delicious. I made it just this morning to bring to my kids’ school as hospitality for a special presenter who is visiting. We live about a 20 minute drive away from the school, so our days already start early around here. I had to cram-in chopping the apples and pears while helping the kids get ready to go. Oranges were sectioned the previous night. By the time I finished getting myself and the fruit salad ready, it was time to get in the car. I dashed out the door without remembering to take a picture… Sorry!

Photographic Evidence

Inquiring minds want to know…

Is there anything in particular that you are “known” for creating in your family/community? How do you feel about it? Are you a bit pigeonholed, or is it comforting to know that others have taken notice of your abilities?