I froze in the doorway of my own bedroom, torn between the selfish teenager who had rolled her eyes at handmade things and the woman now staring at the proof of a love she hadn’t deserved but always had. My daughter’s fingers traced the cardigan’s worn cuffs like they were something holy. The paper in my hand trembled, fragile as the woman who’d written on it, long gone but suddenly everywhere. My grandmother’s letter wasn’t poetic or perfect. It was simple, clumsy, full of misspellings and apologies for not being able to “buy better.” She wrote about saving for yarn, about praying the color wouldn’t fade, about hoping I’d feel “brave and warm” whenever I wore it.

My throat burned as I realized how easily I could have tossed it all away. I told my daughter about the woman who never missed a birthday, who sent soup across town when anyone coughed, who believed warmth was something you made, not something you bought. We agreed the cardigan would not go back into hiding. It would carry grocery lists, late-night movies, first heartbreaks, and quiet mornings. As my daughter slipped her hand into mine, wool scratching our wrists, I understood: love doesn’t always arrive wrapped in what we want. Sometimes it waits, patient and silent, inside the very things we’ve spent years trying not to see.