,__ __         _       _         ,
/|  |  |       | |  o  | |       /|   /         o        o
 |  |  |   __  | |     | |  _     |__/   _  _     _|__|_     _  _    __,
 |  |  |  /  \_|/ \_|  |/  |/     | \   / |/ |  |  |  |  |  / |/ |  /  |
 |  |  |_/\__/  \_/ |_/|__/|__/   |  \_/  |  |_/|_/|_/|_/|_/  |  |_/\_/|/
                                                                      /|
                                                                      \|
         ____            _ _        ____  _             _
        / ___|  __ _  __| (_) ___  |  _ \| | __ _ _ __ | |_
        \___ \ / _` |/ _` | |/ _ \ | |_) | |/ _` | '_ \| __|
         ___) | (_| | (_| | |  __/ |  __/| | (_| | | | | |_
        |____/ \__,_|\__,_|_|\___| |_|   |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__|

I know an old Swiss woman who has knitted socks for 80 years. She is the cur-
rent matriarch of a family that has been rooted in the same Swiss canton for
countless generations. Marriages have always been made locally; family mem-
bers have rarely traveled far. Now she has 15 grown-up grandchildren. Ten of
them have settled with foreigners and several live abroad. Her family – so Swiss,
white, and Protestant for so long – now extends across three continents and
includes Hungarians, Romanians, Russians, Italians, English, Jamaicans, Koreans,
Somalis and Canadians. In one jump, this monocultural family has become
multinational, multiracial, multi-faith. There are Buddhists, Catholics, a Muslim;
African and Asian great-grandchildren. It took her a while to get used to it, this
sudden distribution of her close-knit, close-by family. But now she knits socks
for all of them, even parceling them up to send to her in-laws in Africa or the
Americas. They are good socks and make useful gifts. And so many people in this
dispersed and extended family wear them that they also seem to function as this
great-grandmother’s way of adding to their connectivity and, perhaps, knitting
them all into her own life.