My Origin Story

I remember feeling mesmerized by the sight of blue on wool yarn as my greedy little hands squeezed the blue exiler. This is my memory of the event.

The First Time My Hands Were Indigo Blue

I am five years old. I just learned how to write my name and where I live. I am on “The Hill.” Daniel Hill. We live at 403 Spruce Street. But I am next door at 405 Spruce Street, propped up in my little chair because I’m wearing casts on both feet and legs. Yat and I are on the back porch eyeballing several large glass pickle jars filled with yarn. I’m straining to see into the cloudy underwater world in the jars, with amazement and pure joy.

One by one, Yat slowly pours the contents into a metal bucket. I put my small hands under the flowing liquid on instinct. My hands feel electric as the liquid flows over them. My fingertips. My palms. The cuffs of my shirt. The liquid is like a drug. The smell makes me feel tipsy.

I reach into the bucket and pull out a dripping skein of yarn. It looks strange at first. Not blue. Yellowish. Greenish. Almost like Contentnea Creek water clinging to the base of a Bald Cypress tree after a rain. 

I squeeze.

Green runs between my fingers.

I squeeze again.

Then something happens.

The yarn begins to change right in front of my eyes.

I stop breathing for a second.

I watch.

And watch.

And watch.

The color creeps across the wet strands like a sunrise after a stormy night. Green turns blue. Pale blue turns deeper blue. The blue gets darker with every bounce of the yarn in the air.

By now, I’m giddy with excitement. Squealing with delight. 

Grounded. Connected. To the land and my people.

That is the only way I know to describe it. That feeling of being in time as it stands still, and you’re connected to all living things. You’re in the space between this world and the spirit world.

I hold the yarn up close to my face. Drops fall on my shoes. I do not notice. The whole world has disappeared except for my hands and that yarn.

The blue keeps coming.

It is the color of the evening. The color of deep water. The color that hides inside the sky after the sun goes down.

I squeeze again just to see it happen one more time.

Every squeeze feels like I am helping the color wake up.

Every squeeze feels like I am part of the miracle.

I can smell the contents of the bucket. Earthy. Murky green. Ancient. Though I do not know that word yet. I only know it smells old and alive, like wet roots and creek banks and the garden after a summer storm.

The grown folks are talking, but I barely hear them.

I am busy watching blue being born.

Over and over.

I cannot stop.

The yarn is changing, and I am changing with it.

Years later, I would learn the word oxidation. I would learn about air, chemistry, and indigo molecules. But at five years old, standing there with blue-stained hands, I knew something just as true.

The yarn was breathing.

And every time I squeezed it, the blue came home.