As I drape this quilt about my shoulders, cozying up for a vacant night’s read, I think about how she needled and threaded me, and weaved each string into my heart. How she patched up each skidded elbow and every pair of banged up knees, and transformed them into bright patterns of daisies, sunflowers and madras print. She threaded me together, bit by bit, without rushing one spool of my life, but instead offering the greatest joy at each toil of the needle. Each memory lies not alone, but comfortably pieced alongside countless others, in the span of a tattered eight by twelve spread that now warms me in her place.
She spun with caution and wise counsel, forever leaving pieces of her heart and mind intricately embedded into their counterparts in me. She cross-stitched a love of books, a passion for travel, and an aching for adventure, framing them each upon the wall of my soul. I think of how she held me, just hours old, in the hospital’s delivery room, at the first stitch of our never-ending journey. She warmed me with her handiwork, the unending selfless acts I long ago took for granted. The trips to the theater, to the neighborhood pool, to Chuck E Cheese, to King’s Island, to Martha’s Vineyard, to Seabrook Island, to Tennessee...
When I gaze over its many pieces perfectly puzzled together, I think of how she mended up each broken heart, and never let a holiday pass without sending me a thoughtfully wrapped goody-bag in the mail. I think of the countless recipes she’s fixed into the book in my drawer: the chicken stew, the Texas sheet cake, the ‘little chickens.’ I think of how she twined me along, braving me up before each first day of school. I think of her Snowbabies, and their strategic ability to live on much longer than us both.
I think of her artisan attention to detail, her piqued interest at every trivial story I could muster, and her perfection in the tear-inducing braiding of my freshly-washed hair. I see her handiwork all around me: in the eyes of my sisters, in the laughter of her grandchildren, and in the kindness of her daughters. Not one day passes without benefitting from her craft. She has sewn up loose ends, tied ribbons and bows on countless smock-dressed little toddlers, and woven her legacy into every life she has touched. Her patchwork has finished, for her labor was relentless but her toiling has tired.
As I lie here softly under the cocoon of this security blanket, this hodgepodge of makeshift patterns made from flour seed bags, I think of how its stitches hold me tightly together, how her life is woven deep within me, though it is now unraveled. It has hemmed up my seams, though its stitches are now coming undone. It intricately soothes with its nostalgic scent of Rainbath and microwaved chocolate milk, its well-worn sepia tinge and its accidental coffee stains while she hangs patiently by a string. Though her patchwork is complete, her presence it still at work, laboriously spinning and spinning in the fibers of my soul, at the foot of my bedframe, in the oversized crockpot on the stovetop, in the checking out of library books, in the taking out of Christmas decorations, and in the gathering of a hand-quilted family and friends.
