Claire Henley
A package came in the mail the other day addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Caleb Miller. Caleb and I had just returned from a walk along the Tennessee River where we discussed our wide-open future, the river before us running into its many blind bends. He and I are living in a season of uncertainty right now—uncertainty about what we will do, uncertainty about where we will live.
We weren’t expecting anything to come for us in the mail. But as we parked and got out of the car, we saw the big cardboard box leaning against the front door.
I assumed it was for my dad, whose home Caleb and I have been staying at the last few weeks. However, a closer look revealed the box was actually for us.
“What could it be?” I asked as Caleb brought the package inside and placed it on the dining room table.
“I have no idea,” he said. “The return address is my grandma’s house.”
Caleb pulled out his pocketknife and carefully cut the tape around the box. “You open it,” he urged as he refolded his knife and slipped it back into his jeans. I lifted the cardboard flaps then unwrapped the packing paper inside. Within the paper lay a neatly folded knit blanket. Together, Caleb and I took the blanket out of the box and unfolded it to reveal its colorful square pattern and beautiful king size. We spread the blanket on our bed then searched the box for a card or note from Caleb’s grandmother, but found nothing.
I looked at the blanket as Caleb called his grandmother. Thousands of intricate weaves made up the single cover that was undoubtedly handmade. When Caleb got off the phone, he told me what his grandmother had said. Her name is Liz Noll, and she had knitted the blanket herself over the last two years. She would sit on her back porch by Indian Lake in Denville, New Jersey and work on the blanket one piece at a time. Liz didn’t know who she was making the blanket for when she started. But by the time she finished she understood why she had been knitting it all along, and she sent it our way as a wedding gift.
The blanket arrived on a cold fall day and couldn’t have been more timely. See, Caleb and I are newlyweds who are in the process of “putting our lives together.” The handmade gift, woven over time into a beautiful blanket, came as a comforting reminder that to put something together worth cherishing, you must work patiently, with faith and a lot of love.
Over the course of two years, Liz Noll worked diligently on her blanket not knowing who it was for.
Now Caleb and I have a very special memento we will cherish for years and years to come.
* * *
* * *
Claire Henley is a Chattanooga writer who can be reached at cchenley11@gmail.com
Her first book on her adventures while living in Colorado can be ordered here:
http://www.amazon.com/51-Weeks-The-Unfinished-Journey-ebook/dp/B00IWYDLBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394801373&sr=8-1&keywords=51+Weeks
She is also working on a book on her adventures hiking the Pacific Coast Trail, where she met her husband Caleb. They live in North Chattanooga.