I’m writing this post today because it’s my grandaunt’s birthday.

Ma. Luz Pura Ykalina Fuentes was simply Lola Luz to me. Having never married, she lived with us up until her death several years ago. I had other talented grandmothers who introduced me to the crafts I’ve grown to love and practice today. But it was only Lola Luz who taught me ganchillo, which is the Spanish word for crochet.

She was a schoolteacher and so had the skill and patience to teach an overly anxious, impatient little kid like me how to sit still and be quiet with some thread and a crochet hook. My first attempts at it were disastrous. Angsty even at eight years old, my first projects were granny squares so tight they curled up into tight little wads of jumbled thread. And I was a perfectionist even then, so I would throw my projects on the floor with a frustrated wail and with hot, fat tears rolling down my cheeks, I’d dramatically declare: “I’m NEVEEEERRR going to be good at this!”

Lola Luz loved us with her own brand of stern. So when my would-be doilies ended up on the floor, she didn’t coax me back to them with a gentle voice. She would knit her brows, purse her lips and with a harrumph say something she often repeated to me as I faced the challenges of growing up, “Indi ka mag siling indi! Kabalo ka gid lang pro!” (“Don’t say ‘never!’ You KNOW how to do it!”) The confidence in her voice often snapped me back to my own. And I would somehow sniffle my way to a semblance of calm as she sat there quietly working on her own project, patiently waiting for me to come around. I would eventually, though pouting the whole time, reach for the yarn to try again. It took several tries, I actually think it even took years, before I really learned to do it correctly—with the right thread tension, the right way to hold the hook, the right way to crochet, just like Lola Luz.

This is one of my own crochet projects from last year.

It’s going to be a Babette Blanket, a crocheted throw made of different-sized granny squares joined together. (Like the one you see below, from The Purl Bee. If you’re interested in the pattern, you can purchase and download it from the Interweave online store, HERE.)

I had to abandon it because I still tend to be much like the impatient little kid when I was eight. It’s somewhat of a large undertaking. I have to crochet more than 60 granny squares, some of them very large, some of them tiny. I was off to a good start, as you’ll see. But I was soon overwhelmed by the enormity of it. And the longer I spent away from it, the more I couldn’t bring myself to go back to it. (If you crochet, you’ll understand that your tension changes when you’re not working on a specific project anymore.)

But I’m looking at these pictures, all my beautiful thread colors and remembering Lola Luz, I HAVE to go back to it, don’t I? If I said I’m going back to it to honor my grandma’s memory, I don’t think she’d like that very much. That was her way. I think if she were alive she would say, “Do it because I KNOW you can.” Her confidence in me then is something that I have, in the dregs of crafting or through the anxieties of everyday life, learned to unlock from the rooms of my mind.

And so maybe this weekend, in a little spot of sun somewhere, in a tiny patch of quiet, I’ll loop yarn through my fingers the way she taught me and crochet again. With confidence.

Happy birthday, Lola Luz. Thank you for everything you taught me. And like you always used to tell me, ten cuidado, wherever you are.

—

Thank you to Tito Boy and Tita Edwina for all those awesome, old-school Fuentes photos from days of yore.