Grandma's Quilts

My Grandma John, it is told, made a quilt for each one of her grandchildren, and she had 59 grandchildren. It was a beautiful labor of love. 

I still have my quilt, the patches worn beyond repair. It sits at the bottom of my blanket cabinet, and every so often I pull it out and wrap it around me, enjoying the flood of memories embedded in its tired threads.

My sister Maria's quilt ended up in the hands of her son. It's not quite as worn as mine, and after one of his many army moves, it found its way to my hands for repair.

This past week, I finally pulled it out to see if it could indeed be fixed. The back is too worn to save, but it wasn't anything special - one of those old corded twin bedspreads, its harvest gold color advertising its decade of origin. The front now, the front is in tolerable condition. Just one of the random fabrics she used to assemble its cheerful striped face has given way to time. 

So, I've spent the last several days working to bring it back to usable shape. It took me longer than I'd anticipated to undo Grandma's handiwork. The normal guideline for sewing is 10-12 stitches per inch; this piece has at least double that, so when picking the stitches out, I needed to take great care not to damage the fabric.

As I worked, I thought of the hard-working hands that had assembled the quilt so long ago. She was not as OCD as I - the edges of her handiwork are not precisely lined up; that is part of their beauty. (But then, I'm pretty sure I'd let go of my OCDness if I were working to assemble more than half a hundred quilts, so there is that.)

I grew sad, because as I searched my memories I couldn't find a moment where I'd ever had a one-on-one conversation with her. The memories I do have are good ones - feelings of loving welcome when my family showed up at one of the large family gatherings held several times each year - but I was always one in a crowd. I wrote her letters when I was in college, but ours was a one-way correspondence; by that time she was unable to respond.

As I continued to pull apart the seams, I like to think I felt her hand on my shoulder, letting me know those memories of love were real. No, I have it wrong. It's not that they were real. She was letting me know her love IS real, reaching across the miles and the years, woven into the threads of the quilt I am working to repair.

Love Is.