Connecting

I am currently in Louisiana, visiting my father, who has just been widowed after 45+ years of marriage.

My stepmother was from down here (the deeeeeep south!) and she had four children of her own when she married my daddy, so I have two step-sisters and two step-brothers.

Well, around 35years ago Mother made me a quilt. I was in my twenties (and that's all I'm saying about that!). She and Daddy had come up to Canada for a visit, and they brought with them one of Mother' neices, a lady called Fay. Mother had the quilt all sandwiched when they got in the car and set out to drive to Montreal, a three-day trip. (Note: it might take a normal person five days, but Daddy was a bit of a maniac behind the wheel in his heyday!)

We'll, Mother sat in the co-pilot's seat, and Fay sat behind her, and each of them took a needle and started working furiously on that thing for the duration of the drive to Montreal.

And they did it! By the time they pulled up in our driveway, they had hand-quilted a queen-size quilt!
Sure, some of the stitches were a tad large, and not every seam was done...it was a pattern if hexagons made into diamond shapes. Some of the little hexagonal inside seams didn't get done, but it has held together for all these years, despite some rude treatment by yours truly...

See I knew absolutely nothing about quilts at the time I received this wonderful gift. It went through the washer, and yes, I am sorry to report, it went through the dryer as well. Till about a decade ago, when I began quilting and I suddenly realized the value of what I had. Then I started treating it with a tad more respect!

Well, about three years ago my step-sister asked me to come down south and visit my daddy and my stepmother while they both still knew who I was. See, they both had either Alzheimer's or dementia, and their faculties were slipping away visibly. While I was down on that visit I told my step-sister the story of the quilt, and she couldn't hold back her tears, because apparently, though my stepmother sewed her heart out on her machine every day of her life till she got sick, she never made a quilt for her children.

We'll, I started looking at that quilt differently after that. See, being a child of divorced parents, I know how the parent you don't live with becomes kind of super human in a child's eyes, having no discernable faults in the eyes of the child. And the same process happens to parents. So, because I was the child that was far away, I kind if became set on a bit of a pedestal. I'm very much afraid that my father and stepmother probably talked a lot about me to their children. It was more than likely a case of "Debbie-this" and "Debbie-that" for all the long years they lived in Louisiana. And that is why I received the gift of a quilt when none of them did.

We'll, my stepmother passed away last Sunday morning, and the family flew me down so I could be here with them and with my daddy, who is quite far gone in Alzheimer's now. And I brought the quilt down with me and gave it to the sister who has been caring for them in her home, who had wept that her Momma had never got around to making any of them a quilt.

Of course she cried again when I gave it to her, but this story doesn't stop there.

At Momma's funeral I met up again with Fay, and we clung on to each other for dear life and wept our hearts out. I don't know anything about Fay' life before or since that one summer I met her, but being a woman over 50 I could see she had endured some hardship in her life. We clung to each other, two women connected by the life of one woman, and by the quilt Fay had helped her make for me.

And seeing her, and helping care for my dad, and just being around my step-family, has been just like tying a knot and burying the threads of a quilt. It is the end of a story, the finishing-up of one pattern, the securing in place of bonds.

If I can, I'll post a picture if the quilt before my day on the blogathon, but I'm doing this from my cellphone and it's pretty hard! I hope you all enjoy the blogs that link us as quilters together, and more importantly, enjoy making those quilts for the people you love, and who love you. http://sewsisters.blogspot.ca/p/blogathon-canada-is-back.html