Title Card for two pieces:

Mother Sweater and The Curse of Ulster

 Crochet is the language I speak best. So it’s no surprise that when I was pregnant with our first child, I knew I would crochet myself a sweater. Since the baby was due in spring, I needed a wool sweater to wear for the winter months. I wanted all the images crocheted into the piece to be positive. I’d had a miscarriage a few years before and wanted everything to go right this time. The sweater also had to be practical—3/4 length sleeves and snaps on the front so I could breast feed. This became my Mother Sweater.

As for Curse of Ulster, after my son Owen was born I read the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. I was thinking how I’m living in a unique time. I can make decisions about my body and choose when or if I want another child. I felt powerful and strong. But I took Atwood’s book as a warning that all this could change if we didn’t protect our rights.

I can’t help asking myself, what is it about women and pregnancy that scares some people so much? Why must these weak people feel the need to control powerful women, make us possessions, deny us the dignity of our minds and bodies? I needed to crochet something strong about a pregnant woman.

A few years before, I’d read an interesting story in Cuchulain of Muirthemne, a book of ancient Celtic legends collected by Lady Augusta Gregory. The goddess, Macha, had come to earth when she fell in love with a poor farmer. She is forced to run a race against the king’s fastest horses even though she is in the last days of her pregnancy, “in her time.” She turns to the townspeople, the men of Ulster, and begs for mercy, but they refuse to support her against the king.

Macha wins the race and immediately falls down on the field giving birth to twins. She rises up and calls out: “I curse you, Men of Ulster, for not having pity on me when I was in my time. For nine times nine generations, I curse you, to fall down in the pangs of childbirth when your strength is needed most. I curse you!” Then she tucks one child under each arm and disappears forever leaving the lands barren and in ruins.

Curse of Ulster shows a woman of strength whose curses cause devastation to those who have no compassion for women. Sadly, since the recent reversal of Roe v. Wade, I fear the fictional dystopia of Gilead that Atwood wrote about is becoming a reality. Have we just cursed ourselves?