by stacey palevsky
Upon first glance, Jean Soffa’s hands are fairly typical for an elderly woman. Wrinkled, faint tributaries of veins visible on her soft skin, fingers slightly crooked from arthritis.
But the hands are those of a creator. Soffa, 97, continues to knit and crochet in her old age, a craft she learned when she was just 5 years old.
It is so much a part of her past that she cannot imagine a life without it.
“It’s my whole … ” She paused. “It’s my whole life. When my husband died, I took to knitting. When my mother died, I took to knitting. I’m wrapped up in it. In knitting.”
Soffa lives at the Jewish Home in San Francisco. Every Thursday afternoon, she and six other residents gather in the lobby of the Friedman building to knit, crochet or needlepoint. They arrive in wheelchairs and with walkers, and they sit around a large rectangular table to chat about their days, their latest craft project, their families.
Soffa was born in Detroit. Her mother taught her to knit only because “she was always knitting and I wanted to be with her.”
She cannot recall how many blankets, sweaters, hats, gloves, scarves she’s knitted, nor how many have received her homemade goods. All of her 13 grandchildren have been gifted numerous knitted items.
Soffa wears pearl earrings, oversized glasses and an apricot-sized gold chai around her neck. The absence of her dentures makes her face delicate, malleable and kind.
“If I go through any trouble at all, I run right away to the knitting and crocheting,” she said, her voice two decibels above a whisper.
Ila Cherney, a physical therapist at the Jewish Home, said the fiber arts offer residents a wealth of benefits.
“It’s a tremendous boost of self-confidence, giving them the opportunity to continue to experience successes in areas where folks have had a great deal of experience and expertise in the past,” she said.
The movement is even helpful for women with arthritis, since the craft keeps their fingers moving and flexible, preventing the hands from becoming too stiff. Some occupational therapists have found that knitting uses both sides of the brain and therefore helps lessen the symptoms of dementia.
Knitting and crocheting also provides companionship and socialization.
“We have people who come to this group who go to nothing else,” Cherney said.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California