Chew fresh broccoli.
Knit a hat.
Down a few popcorn shrimp.
Knit a hat.
Take a sip of ice tea and keep those needles blazing.
Twice a week at Old Country Buffet in Marysville, Debbie Nava replays that scene. Her diligent work provides kids at the restaurant with darling hats.
She arrives around 11 a.m. Tuesdays and Sundays, sits in the end booth, knit hats, and gives them away to customers.
“It’s my realm,” Nava said. “It’s my corner.”
She likes to knit, give back, and take no credit for her unique paying-it-forward deal. I twisted her arm get her to talk to me, but once we got started, she was as friendly as a puppy at the pound.
Her husband David Nava, a mechanic for the post office, doesn’t mind that she spends a few hours at her project when he’s at work. He is used to her knitting at the movie theater, at the beauty salon, at the dentist and at home.
I can just see him asking her to put down the darn needles at bedtime.
Nava, the oldest of 12 kids, designs the cutest hats. She showed me ones that look like rabbits, caps for babies, little-girl pink models with attached flowers, green ones with a shamrock and cutie pies with tassels and colorful cotton-ball tops.
Nava made red, white and green ones for local firefighters and staff at Christmas time. One kid at the restaurant who saw her work was certain she was Mrs. Santa Claus.
“My nephew came in for his birthday when he was 5,” said restaurant assistant manager Debbie Wilber. “He loves his pumpkin hat. He’s still wearing it and he’s 8.”
One year, Nava made 1,400 hats. She also gives bags full to charities.
A military brat born in Edmonds, Nava’s husband, a Vietnam veteran, proposed on their first date. They looked at rings, then went to McDonalds. She laughed as she shared their love story.
They have a daughter who works for the government and a Navy pilot son who gave them four grandsons.
Nava has another side job — making miniatures that she sells to a museum in southern California.
She sells miniatures, and hats at craft shows, to keep her sewing basket filled with yarn. And yarn arrives anonymously on her doorstep. A neighbor drops off aluminum cans that Nava recycles for (what else?) yarn money.
Every inch is used. Scraps make multicolored hats and puffs for the top.
“I can’t explain why I do this,” she said. “I believe everyone can do something.”
Kids seems to know instinctively, Nava says, about her mission to give back. Parents sometimes stare, stunned, when she offers their child a hat then hurries back to her booth.
Her mother used to say good deeds are done quickly and quietly.
Debbie Nava listened.
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
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