I own an old white sweater. My wife Margo had knitted it for me over twenty-five years ago. I have to admit, it is getting old, even has two small tea stains, but it is so comfortable. Actually it is much more than just comfortable. It does something to my mood when I put it on. It just makes me feel good. Why that is so, took me a long time to find out.

But first I have to tell you a bit about Margo. She just loves to knit, rarely for herself, rather for the rest of the family or for close friends. She wouldn’t dream of knitting for money. That would be against her principles.

Let’s go back in time a bit to the end of WWII, about 1947-48. She had left Berlin in 1944 to find a safe place in my father’s summer home. This house was located in the mountains near Heidelberg in a picturesque valley. It was a small house, built on a hillside overlooking the valley. The rooms were tiny, after all the house was built in 1631, so the lintel proudly proclaimed.

Sometimes I could come home from work in the city for a one night visit. On those rare occasions Margo, my father, and his second wife, and I, would almost fill that small living room. Most of the time we just sat and talked. We needed that quiet time after six years of war.

I can still see Margo sitting in a corner in her straight backed chair, her knitting in her lap, the needles making little clickety-clickety sounds. At other times, she would carry in her spinning wheel and then small whirring sounds would emanate from her corner. And every so often my father would play lively German dance tunes on his old pump organ and everyone would sing along. Everyone but me that is; why spoil pleasant music?

It was at those times that I first noticed something about Margo. She sometimes slowed her knitting, or even stopped momentarily, and sort of looked into a distant universe that only she could see. I said I ‘noticed’, but it did not really and fully penetrate my consciousness. It was many years later, after we both had turned seventy, when I finally was given the answer.

One evening Margo was sitting in her favorite chair with her knitting. It was to be a sweater for our oldest daughter. And while I watched her needles doing their dance I saw her again slow down and sometimes even stop for a moment.

It had never before occurred to me to ask her why she did that. But now I did ask and she took me into her confidence.

“Every really earnest knitter”, she confided in me, “will knit good thoughts and good wishes in among the stitches every so often. I always do.”

Now I finally know why my old white sweater is not only comfortable but makes me feel good.