I Never Knit for Molly Ivins

One of my writing heroes has always been Molly Ivins. I liked her wit and style. Every week I would read her column and feel some hope that I wasn’t alone in my observations about government in general. When I visited Texas a couple of years ago, I thought wouldn’t it be a giggle to knit for the woman whose writing I enjoyed so much. Some flamboyant hand knit socks to wear with her famed red cowboy boots.

Because I vacillated between thinking it was the stalking thing to do and something really nice, I never knit those socks. The odd thing is that I would never think the same thing about knitting something for charity. I could knit hats, socks, scarves, and underwear for those in need without a second thought, but to knit something out of admiration seemed too much, too personal, too mentally deranged.

The more I have thought about it, the more I have wondered why I should think that. People in the knitting community join groups where they exchange knitted gifts all the time with cyber secret pals they have never met in person. What makes knowing the person through the writing, acting, painting, or music any different?

I think the difference is this concept that admiration of this sort in an adult is a bit silly and infantile. Teenagers and little kids are the ones who join fan clubs or write letters to Santa. In an adult, it is just, well, unseemly and has the faint whiff of the Elvis obsessed.

Then again perhaps because I am a writer, I have a different perspective on the whole fan club thing. Writing is a solitary act. Basically it is you and the computer thumping it out, or you and the pen scratching it out. So, you work alone in relative anonymity unless you are one of the rock stars of the writing world – like Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, or J. K. Rowling.

I write for many of the same reasons I knit. It gives me great pleasure and I am arrogant enough to think that people might enjoy what I write, and terrified and humbled when I meet people who actually do.

When Molly Ivins died not too long after that other Too Much Texas Woman, Anne Richards, I was very sad. I was sad that breast cancer had claimed, yet another life. Most of all I was sad that I hadn’t knit those Opal socks to go with those red boots and risked her thinking me a stalker.