Disclaimer: Jericho is not mine.
Knitting was something that she could do no matter what the conditions around her might be. It was soothing when her nerves were raw. It was familiar when she was in need of something mindless. It was busy work for her hands when she was talking on the phone. It was portable and convenient when she had to take the subway (and the needles provided a convenient deterrent at the occasional opportune moment). It was an all-purpose, all mood sort of an activity, and she had missed it.
She had not brought any knitting with her on her trip to Jericho. Trying to take it with her when she was flying was something that she had learned was more trouble than it was worth. She was usually so busy doing paperwork when she was in the field that she did not have time for it anyway. The farm where she was currently ensconced was supposed to be a quick trip. She would evaluate, she would make recommendations, and she would leave. It was only supposed to be a few days.
Her life was full of supposed to bes now. Nothing was the way that it was supposed to be. Nothing was familiar. She was a little lost, and the unfinished knitting in the chest had beckoned to her as something that she could handle. She could finish it. She could complete the project (unlike all the other projects in her life that she was scared to admit that she was convinced that she would never be finishing). This was familiar - the click of the needles and the slow progress toward completion. She had almost forgotten what soothing felt like.
Bonnie was angry, and she understood that in a way that the teenager would never believe that she could. She understood resistance to change. She understood resentment for things that were outside of your control. She understood feeling like people were slipping through your fingers. There was tension - a different kind than the not completely welcome guest in the house tension that had existed in the early days of her coming to stay. Bonnie silently seethed, and Mimi was pretty certain that there were angry signs happening behind her back every time that she turned around.
When she first noticed that the girl was peering at her from corners of the room and doorways, she thought that it was simply for the sake of glaring at her some more. It took her a couple of days to realize that she was not looking at her. She was looking at the knitting. She felt badly for causing the girl more grief. She didn't suppose that she appreciated the interloper touching something that had belonged to the mother that by Mimi's reckoning the girl should scarcely be able to remember. She was all ready to give up the comfort that the yarn and needles brought her when she actually processed the expression on Bonnie's face. It wasn't angry. It was longing - as if she was staring at something that she wished she could have but did not think was possible. Mimi decided to keep knitting.
It was after she walked by the girl's open bedroom door to see her sitting and running her hands over a tiny knitted pink scarf clearly intended for a very little girl that she decided to take a chance. It was awkward and the words came out so clumsily that she was shocked that Bonnie could follow what she was saying at all, but the invitation was given. She could teach her - if she was interested. There was a seemingly never ending pause where she was certain that the girl was about to tell her just where she could shove those knitting needles before an expression that she could not identify flitted across Bonnie's face. She was partially surprised, partially pleased, and partially terrified when the girl actually accepted. This had the potential to blow up in their faces, but something needed to happen between the two of them now that Stanley was no longer there to provide a buffer.
It was not the easiest thing she had ever done in her life. She was not always patient when the things that came so easily to her fingers after years of practice needed to be broken down and explained to someone who had no context for the terms that she was in the habit of using. Bonnie had days when she seemed to be looking for an excuse to quit. She threw the needles down in disgust on more than one occasion insisting that she couldn't do it, it was stupid anyway, and there were things that needed to be done to take care of the farm so she couldn't sit there wasting her time as well as half a dozen other excuses to give it up that she came up with in the course of the first week. She always came back, and Mimi always picked up where they had left off without comment. Bonnie's fingers were used to movement from signing, but knitting was a different sort of a deftness that was not going to come without repetition. Eventually, things that looked like stitches began to appear, and both of their tempers got a break.
The first evening they found themselves alone in the living room each with needles clacking seemed to take both of them by surprise. They caught each other's eyes and the expression in them and seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same time. They gave each other tentative smiles and continued knitting for the rest of the evening.
Those evenings and the shared activity became common for them, and the shared smiles gave way to traded confidences over the soothing motion of the yarn across their fingers. They taught each other things and worked together to keep things going as best they could. They weren't just people sharing a house any longer; they were becoming a family sharing a home.
They were going to be okay, and Stanley was going to have a pleasant surprise when he came back to them. (It might even make up for the not so pleasant surprise he was going to feel when he realized that a teenage boy had moved in in his absence.)