Threads Through Memories Lost and Memories Made

I sat alone in the hospital next to my mother. It was her seventy-first birthday and she just lay there, breathing heavily with her eyes closed- the same way she had for many days prior. I knew this would be her last birthday, and we sang quietly to her even though she did not show us she heard. I knew she did.

In times of crisis I always need a project. I have two or three little bags equipped with thread and needles, yarn and hooks, scissors and thimbles and snips. And in the hospital I would alternate between English paper piecing (quilting without use of a machine), and crochet.

She could not respond but I sat and worked quietly by her side. Each time I pulled the thread through the fabric I would release the thoughts of how we ended up here, me at not quite forty years old, while my mom’s mind and body were not present. And yet, she was still here and I knew she was in there- even if the shell outside was so very different than how she had been.

I thought back to when I was about fourteen years old and sitting cross-legged on the floor of the local quilt shop in front of what seemed like a mountain of fat quarters of fabric all arranged by color, rolled up tidily, and tied up in little bits of string. My mom and my dad had recently separated, and even though I was used to entertaining myself while my mother was shopping, this was one shopping excursion I actually enjoyed going to. The mall women’s dressing rooms were full of sad-looking husbands and loud kids jostling for the one-and-only seat near the large mirror, so shopping there was not fun. But here, in the quilt shop, I could sit cross-legged on the floor and pick out and arrange tidy little rolls of fabric all tied up with their neat little twine. Every fabric had a place. Every one was unique but still belonged. They could be organized and reorganized into countless designs and patterns, but each still retained it’s own authenticity and voice. I realize now that sitting in front of those fabrics, and organizing and reorganizing them into different color stories, was a metaphor for me and my life at the time. How can I be unique and yet still fit in? How can I find my voice? How are we all connected?

My mom loved primitive quilts. The more crows, pumpkins, hearts, and stray vintage buttons on them, the happier they made her heart. So she’d flit and chat her way around the shop- naturally engaging others and instantly make friends, while I sat quietly and arranged fabrics.

A few times one of the shop teachers would come and say about me, “Lauren has such a good eye for fabrics and colors. She would be a great quilter!” and I’d shyly start putting them away, hardly knowing how much fabric, textiles, cutting, and piecing would become an integral part of my life and how much handcrafts would later save my sanity and keep my grounded to where I came from and how connected I was to my mother.

At seventeen I enrolled with my mom in our first quilt class together. It was a simple nine-patch pattern but the perfect one for a beginner. I was the youngest person in the class by about thirty years, and I sat quietly and stitched while the women chatted. I watched my mom do her usual flitting and socializing, but I was intent on the price of piecing together the most perfectly-matched squares I could muster. I learned through that class that cutting-to-size and seam allowance really *do* matter, and I took this with me through my sewing passions. I still, to this day, will say that quilting taught me the importance of seam allowances.

Fabrics, textiles, and design continued for me and in college and I had enrolled and completed my fashion design degree. My mother, ever my champion, would tell people “When she was young and would arrange fabrics so perfectly for quilts and I knew she was good at design.” In fact, it went back much further- to her encouraging me as a young child while I taped together Barbie dresses, shaped together fabrics for my cousins to wear as costumes, and eventually graduated to a real-life needle and thread for American Girl doll clothes. And with every creation, mom would praise me and my creativity, and encourage me to keep going on my artistic journey.

When I started my business my mom went with me to every trade show and vintage fair. She’d talk and engage while I sat back in the background. We were two complete opposites in personality, but still understood and encouraged each other, in spite of our differences. Mom bought all my sewing patterns even though she seldom sewed. Mom cheered the loudest at my one-and-only fashion show. Mom was there. She made me fit in. And she made herself fit in. Just like those little quilt pieces- two difference fabrics of the same quilt and telling the same story.

We were all so surprised when she started acting differently. She started telling us things we didn’t comprehend. She could not remember we had talked. She was paranoid. She was snippy. I started to wonder what had happened to my mom? She looked the same. She talked the same. But she didn’t act the same at all.

I started noticing she wouldn’t do her crafts. The fabrics were untouched. The sewing machine wasn’t used. In fact, she would loan it to me when mine rebelled and stopped working and wouldn’t even miss it. She would still cheer me on, still shop, still chat and make friends. But things were different and stories started running together and she started getting lost.

We made the appointment and at first, the doctor was totally engaged while my mom talked about travel and books and art. She was always so good at being a hostess and engaging people she had just met. But slowly, he started to see what we did. Questions would get unusual answers. When asked to draw a clock and it’s numbers she could not complete the task. I was in my 30s, been married for just a few years, and my mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

The next few years were very challenging as we saw her change quickly. But still, I would sit quietly, cut my fabrics, stitch my seams, and entirely pour myself into the ultimate therapy that crafting and creating can bring. In creating something new I was releasing something old. I would take a whole piece of fabric, cut it up into bits, and sew it back up into something entirely different and yet still the same. The same could be said of my life. I started as one fabric, cut up by life and experience into jumbles of shapes that didn’t make sense, but things slowly were starting to come together and something completely different and yet valuable in it’s own right.

I took up English paper piecing as a new hobby when I was a new mother. Having a small child meant I needed something safe, small, portable, and yet engaging helped me to pour my angst of being a new mom in an unfamiliar territory into something familiar. I often lamented that mom couldn’t tell me the stories of when I was young. I was sad I couldn’t ask her about her pregnancy, my birth, and my early childhood. And yet, I know she would have reveled in every second if she had been able to. But, because it’s such a strange disease and I did not want to cause her any undue pain, I just continued to talk to her and tell her things as though she knew and could follow.

“She can roll over now, mom!”

“Your grandbaby can walk now!”

“Can you believe it, she can say so many words!”

“Look at how well she dances! Just like grandma!”

And as my daughter grew, and as my mom’s mind became younger, I sat and stitched, cut pieces of fabric, and hand sewed them all back together.

We had beed wanting a family vacation all year long and we had finally booked a little cabin in the woods for the weekend for my small family of three. We were on our way out of town when the call came. “Your mom had a health scare. We have to put her in care until we can find a long-term age facility.” And just like that, the world changed.

My step dad was an absolute saint and had done absolutely everything in his power to keep her at home and with him for as long as possible. He truly was the vision of never ending, unconditional love. And I knew if he was willing to do this, after all the sacrifices he had made, that this was the right thing to do.

Even though sitting in the cabin in the woods that weekend was not the most restful time, I did have my English paper piecing with me so sat next to the fireplace and stitched my feelings into the quilt. Small little stitches, big basting stitches, snipping stray threads, and everything going in to it’s place and fitting in to it’s time. Just the way it was supposed to.

That quilt went with me to my mom’s facility. Previously she had a tendency to roam, but she was now in a wheelchair, and we would sit on the patio and sing oldies while I stitched fabric to paper. Mom may not have remembered my name or who I was, but she knew she loved me and I was important to her. And she knew every darn word to every darn Beach Boys song ever written. Memory is funny like that.

I’d show her the pieces I was basting for my quilt and tell her about the fabrics and how much fun we had had in our quilting classes. I’d hand her my hexagons, and even if she tried to eat them like cookies, I knew that in her way, with her mind might mix things up, old mom was telling me how delicious my quilt was looking.

Finally, one night, her body had had enough. It was just before her birthday, and although we weren’t sure she’d do it, she made sure to see out that extra year. Mom always was stubborn and loved a birthday. I would sit next to her bed and stitch and pray. I’d sing her oldies and crochet. I’d watch TV and ask for water and sit and wait with her and chat with her, as she must have done with me when I was an infant through many sleepless nights and groggy days. And while I put my feelings into thread and yarn to leave a story that existed beyond that time and into a quilt that will exist longer than we both will, I knew that time was ending for this part of the story and her earthly quilt was fraying around the binding.

And one evening, it just stopped. Her story quilt was finished. It was her time to go Home.

I had my husband hide my quilt from me. The delicious cookie pieces were just too much for a heart that had not expected to lose so much so soon and had mourned for many years the slow loss of a mother to Alzheimers.

Nearly two years later I have found the quilt. And these past few weeks I’ve been picking up again basting fabric to paper. My little girl says to me, “Mama, what are you doing?” And I say “Making a quilt, baby.” And my hexagons still look delicious.

I sit just as my mom must have done to me when I was young. Working the stitches. Teaching the stitches. Living the stitches. Making our life and our quilt continue because these fibers and stories will exist long after our earthy fingers have finished their work.