Fabric of Life

The Fabric of Life

Nearly sixty years have passed, but I clearly remember the day when a coworker came into the office with a fabric work-of-art. The colorful piece, her first effort at quilting, received “oohs and ahs”. When I joined the group admiring her craftiness, my overly confident young adult reaction was, “I can certainly accomplish something like that!”.

With minimal instruction, tiny pieces of paper, and scavenged fabric from old shirts, dresses, and sheets, I began paper-piecing a quilt. The tiny fabric shapes were carefully hand-sewn onto paper, and then painstakingly stitched together. I worked on the project as time allowed and as the pile of colorful pieces grew, my life continued. The years were strewn with baby clothes, worn-out play clothes, and teenagers’ discards. Births and deaths, joys and tears, celebrations and setbacks, difficulties and successes . . . and the years passed.

The time came when going up and down steps became difficult, and living independently was increasingly unwise and unsafe. Through eyes of concern, my grown children recommended I downsize and relocate. I was told I needed to consider what was worth keeping, and what I would discard or donate. Some decisions were easy — the chipped dish. Others difficult — the silver wedding cake tray. I slowly sorted through the possessions that were stored in my cabinets, shoved into my drawers, and folded lovingly into my hope chest. The pieces of the never-completed quilt, nearly a living thing, haunted me. “The quilt” had required too much work to simply discard, though too daunting to complete. I hesitantly spread “the quilt” out on my cleared, soon to be moved, dining room table. Some pieces I wished I could redo with more careful stitches or different colors because they appeared dull and uninteresting; others were vibrant and alive with color. As I smoothed out each piece, I realized that “the quilt” had become a graphic presentation of my life, openly displaying those experiences that I wished I could redo as well as those that were exciting and fulfilling. Lost in thought, an hour then two ticked by and I needed to pull myself out of my reflections. My children were coming to help load necessary furniture into a small U-Haul trailer, and I hurriedly stuffed all of the fabric pieces into an old pillowcase.

As I sat down, cradling the bundle, I lowered my head to simply weep in its softness. I knew I didn’t have the energy nor the inclination to heave the bundle into the dumpster that had appeared in my driveway a day earlier. I decided I could quietly sneak the filled pillowcase into my small apartment without attracting too much attention. “The quilt” was shoved into a corner of my closet that was barely large enough to hold my clothes. And there it remained as I addressed concerns from my friends and calls from my children to check on me. I fell into a daily rhythm of rinsing my favorite coffee mug, pushing a dust mop, reading the daily news — the simplified daily chores for those who could no longer live independently.

Then one day my granddaughter, while looking for my most comfortable well-worn slippers, discovered the pillowcase and carried it in to my recliner. She inquisitively peeked in the bag and spread the fabric pieces on the floor, commenting about the ones that she liked best and least, peppering her comments with “oohs and ahs”. She was engaged in her activity and was not aware that each piece she touched and placed, commented on favorably or critically, brought back a vivid memory and I was nearly choked with emotion. When all of the pieces were scattered on the floor, in an order that was pleasant to her young artistic eye, she asked if she could stitch them together to use as a cover for her bed. I simply smiled and nodded saying quietly, “You can certainly accomplish something like that!”.

Looking back at my life, I concluded that my life experiences were not book-worthy because my accomplishments and undertakings had been neither amazing nor adventuresome, but my unfinished quilt openly displayed my life story more fully than words ever could. I realized, as I watched my granddaughter gently handle “the quilt”, that the story was not complete. It was merely time to take a sustaining deep breath, and gently turned a page.