"I'm knitting a shawl for one of my daughters," she responded.

"It's beautiful," I said. I noticed the shawl's intricate pattern and its colors were beginning to work their magic on me.

"Thank you. The design just comes to me here—" She tapped her forehead. "I follow it to see where it will lead me."

We sat together in silence for at least half-an-hour. I watched the shawl increasing in length. She added fuchsia, magenta, lilac, and indigo and a few ineluctable shades for which I had no name. So intense was my involvement that I didn't hear the nurse call my name. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up into Nurse Stacy's kind face.

The woman raised her eyes from the knitting. She smiled.

"It was nice talking to you," I said. "I'm sure that your daughter will love her shawl."

I could feel the knitting woman watching me as I followed the nurse across the room and through the door. Somehow, I felt protected rather than disturbed by this feeling that her eyes were following me into the examination room.

When I returned to the waiting room the woman was gone. I wondered who she was and if her daughter or granddaughter were having a baby. Perhaps, like me, she had some mysterious, undiagnosed disease that was also gradually consuming her. I hoped that it was the former rather than the later. My thoughts wandered... While babies and baby blankets are life-affirming what of death? What could she be knitting? And Death? Isn't it another birth of sorts?

Weeks passed and my condition seemed to worsen. I could barely walk now from the pain. I felt as if I lived underwater, and that an undertow were gradually pulling me out to sea and away from the shore. My doctors continued to urge me to undergo more embarrassing and painful tests, to try this or that new medication, to be part of a study for some new experimental drug, or to swallow some stronger pain medication.

I kept my doctors' appointments but was gradually realizing that they weren't doing anything worthwhile to help. It felt like they were treating the symptoms rather than the causes. Why did I continue to go? Well, it gave me a chance to leave the house for one, and for another? I wanted to see if the knitting woman and I would meet again. She intrigued me.

I hoped that she would be there the next time I went, but she wasn't. I leafed through a year of Prevention Magazine while I waited for my appointment alone. I made a mental note to ask her what her name was the next time I saw her. But, then my regular doctor decided that she couldn't do anything more for me, and so she referred me to another specialist. It was at this new office that I saw the woman again.

"How are you dear?" she asked genuinely, as I slowly eased myself into the overstuffed mauve velvet chair.

I couldn't help but notice that the more ill these doctors believed you to be, the more comfortable were the furnishings--the more expensive, too. There was even a couch in this room, and a young woman with short dark hair lay asleep against a young man. He was staring into the corner of the room, hypnotically stroking her hair, seeing perhaps a life without this woman, as there were tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.

The knitting woman was holding her needles again. She began looping a new color--a warm beige--around her fingers and then over a needle. Now the shawl was folded into a bag at her feet.

"It looks like you're almost finished," I said.

I was eager to see the work's completion.

"We'll see, dear. We'll see. I think that I need to expand this pattern here--" pointing to a row of blues which seemed like a dense cloud bank unfurling to reveal a brilliant summer day. "What else does it need? What colors do you like?"

A number of combinations appealed to me, but she had included nearly every imaginable color. An image was beginning to take form in my mind, and I welcomed the opportunity to embellish it. I was about to tell her....when she spoke for me.

"The blues, you like the blues, don't you, dear?"

She then reached into her bag and drew out a generous handful of blue yarn -- many blues together, intertwined. They seemed to be one unitary tone reflecting the others in intermitent spells.

"I always come prepared. One never knows what might be needed," she responded to my exclamation of delight. Then, she placed all her yarn in my lap. Its warmth was like nothing I had felt before.

"Pick one or two--whatever you like," the woman said.

I closed my eyes and allowed my fingers to feel all their textures: some smooth and cool like the underside of a rock, others rough and knobby like the branch of a tree. The chill in my body began to dissipate as I chose first one and then another. I was far from the waiting room then, and as I opened my eyes I looked at the yarn before returning it to her. A part of me did not want to let it go.

"A good choice, my dear," she replied as she took the yarn, a deepish blue with slender strands of gold, and an aquamarine with subtle hints of emerald green and flecks of bronze.

The woman began to add my choices to the pattern with great fluidity. I was so engrossed that I didn't hear to nurse call my name.

"Oh, there you are. We were afraid that you had gone. Come this way, please."

I rose reluctantly, steadying myself by placing my hand on the chair's padded arm. The woman set her knitting down and lightly touched my arm.

"It won't be much longer now, dear. You'll see."

When I returned to the waiting room, the receptionist gave me an envelope that had my name written on it. In it was a generous strand of each color that I had chosen, wound together into a spiral, and taped loosely to a note which read: Enjoy these. I pulled, and the end of the yarn unraveled in my hand. I didn't think that I would ever see the woman again. This was her knitting woman way of saying, "good-bye." We were two strangers, casual acquaintances at best. But, it seemed that we were made more, connected as we were by waiting.

Less than a week later, I returned to the specialist's office once again for another consultation--surgical this time. Amazingly, the knitting woman was there again knitting. Also there were the young couple who I had seen before. I sat down next to the woman. I realized that she had already cast off the last row and that she was adding fringe which draped across her knees and cascaded to the floor.

"How is your daughter?" I asked, realizing that I had been remiss in inquiring after her.

"Oh she's just fine, dear. Just fine. Coming along quite nicely."

"Thank you for the yarn--"

"Oh that's quite all right. I wanted you to have it."

Something compelled me to look into her eyes. They were so dark that I could barely distinguish the pupils from the irises. The darkness grew deeper still, and a kaleidoscope of images began to emerge and then to separate into unfamiliar forms. A silvery light appeared around the periphery of my vision, infusing the room. The light was so intense that I squinted. The woman came towards me with the shawl and placed it around my shoulders.

"This should warm you, dear daughter." Then she whispered, "good journey" into my ear, and placed her lips against my cheek.

I stood there for awhile, savoring the warmth of the shawl, the tenderness of this special woman, and the surprise that this had been a gift for me all along. When I turned away from these thoughts, it was to see my doctor and her nurses crouched over my body, shaking their heads. I heard the words "Is she gone?"

I never saw the knitting woman after that.