Well I don't actually knit. Knitting seems too complicated as it employs both hands simultaneously. I crochet. But the word crochet can look like crotch at first glance and I want to make a good impression with this initial column.

It's a week before Christmas and I am feverishly creating afghans for my kids. Huddled over my ball of yarn, dreading the next knot in the skein, I notice a single hair from my own head laying upon the current stitch. Now I can remove it and go on says my crafty self, but my freaky, esoteric self is louder and more obnoxious and it tells me to leave it there. It hints that if I weave the hair into the blanket, it will mean that when my son wraps it around himself to keep warm, I am with him.

Since social boundaries have always been a struggle with me, I wove the hair, a foot long and mousy blond, into the granny square and was quite satisfied to see that it was unnoticeable. My son will never know, but it means something to me. I gave him a part of who I am.

Metaphorically, we are all the products of weaving. We are each the culmination of generations upon generations of people who came before us. This was never so evident to me than when I visited my aunt this spring. She gave me a photograph of her grandmother, a young Italian immigrant fresh from Ellis Island, Domenica Evangelista. The shape of her mouth, the slight downward curve of her eyes, the arched brows, stunned me. I was looking at someone whom I have never met, yet who looks so much like what I see in the mirror. And subsequently, like the little boy that I brought into the world.

My mind began to race. When the doctors placed each of my children into my arms, my first instinct was to look for familiar features. With the first, I looked for myself and my husband. With the second on, I looked for their brothers. What I was searching for is evidence of belonging. A shared eye color or hairline is an indelible stamp that this person is mine. Were Domenica alive today, she might feel the same way about me for I undeniably belong to her.  

Let's go deeper. If we penetrate the surface of what is visible and physical we have also been woven using the consequences of the decisions made by those who came before. I am American because Domenica boarded a boat at the turn of the last century and brought her eggs here. I am a native Pennsylvanian because her son married a Lancaster area farm girl and moved her to Philadelphia. I am fair skinned and light haired because her son's daughter fell for a blond, blue eyed merchant marine. I am a person of conscience and conviction because my mother would have it no other way. Like my hair in the granny square, they gave me who they were.

As mothers, we are the source of great influence over our children. However, the consequences of our decisions may not be immediately evident. Often overwhelmed with the drama of daily life, it is easy to minimize the effect that our choices will have on our children and future generations. However, while we aren't solely responsible for where we are today, it is upon our shoulders what will happen to those below us on the family tree.

The creation of our children did not begin at fertilization of the egg. It occurred earlier, in the character of those who would raise the child. We hold within us generations of attitudes, and opinions, and habits that we will unleash on these little ones. As parents, we must be critical of what we are teaching through both actions and restraint. Good or bad, we are always examples.

Parents are the door. They are the keepers of the keys to the kingdom. Nothing crosses the threshold of our children's lives without our permission. And make no mistake of putting your head in the sand. Silence is implied consent.

Hair can be colored, straighten or waxed. Plastic surgery can fix that unfortunate nose from Grandpa. But character is not so easy to change. Self-respect is built, or eroded, over the course of years. There is no 30 day program for valuing yourself. Conditioned helplessness cannot be surgically removed. The effects of our behavior and attitudes on our children could easily resonate for generations to come.

Like Legos, children are built. Yes, they have their own personalities, but their understanding of life, of right and wrong, of their own worth and potential, lies at the feet of the family. These things, not blue eyes or pointy ears or webbed feet, are our true legacy.  

by Lorna Peden Waterman contributing writer for Fabulously40