When I was pregnant with my firstborn, I started crocheting a baby blanket. I started it the day I found out I was expecting. I was very excited to have just found out I was going to be a mother and I wanted to do everything perfectly right. I got the crib and little tiny booties, bottles, diapers, everything.

“Everything” was going to include a lovely, hand-made baby blanket that his mother had crocheted while waiting on him. Don’t all pregnant women crochet? I wasn’t experienced enough to make those delicate little caps and sweaters my mother made, but I could handle a blanket. It’s just one big granny square, right?

I went to the cloth store and took my time touching yarn and deciding on colors. I finally bought just the perfect yarn in cheerful baby colors.

At home, I got out my crochet hook, and I began to crochet. Every spare minute and in all the waiting rooms, I industrially turned out stitches. It was starting to get baby blanket size! It was so close to being done.

Then, sitting at the table for supper, my water broke. There was the usual dropping everything and rushing to the hospital cliché. The crocheting got left behind.

A fine baby boy was born. Mathew Aaron Ostrander. We took him home to his cutely decorated room with all fresh stuff. Brand new crib and soft clean sheets, pictures on the wall, stuffed animals surrounding him, blankets, mobile, and an unfinished baby blanket. Mathew loved me anyway.

I never did finish that blanket, but I kept it as an object lesson for myself. Every once in a while I would see it at the back of the closet and feel nostalgic about my pregnancy, and how young and naïve I was. I laugh at how I vastly underestimated the time it was going to take. I’m still a bit this way. I always start out thinking I can save the world by noon and go on a picnic afterward. Consequently, I keep the unfinished baby blanket.

My second born, Thomas, was not such a new and shiny experience and I knew there was no such thing as doing everything right. But like his brother, Thomas should have an unfinished blanket. See how my expectations were much more realistic? I went to the store and bought yarn.

It would help if at this point you would ask me, “How far did you get on Thomas’s blanket?”

You: “How far did you get on Thomas’s blanket?”

I went to the store and bought yarn.