I want to write about needlework. I want to write about the woman who sat beside me for two hours, and as complex legal arguments flew across the room — a room designed to look exactly like the real Supreme Court, right down to the color of the drapes, the style of the clock and the pattern of the carpet — her fingers flew, too.
She was knitting a sweater of warm burgundy wool, cable stitch. And every time my eyes would glaze over with strategies and counter-strategies, I would glance down at her hands, the surety of every knit and perl. I watched the sweater as it grew. Work of the hands, not of the head.
It was precious time for the petitioner, taking his strategies out for a test drive just days before facing the black-robed justices themselves. But it was precious time for the knitter, too, for the sweater that advanced several rows that morning — and for the person who will be wearing it soon.