Stitching In The Womb

I have always thought of creating a child as stitching it together in the womb. One of my children was born with a faulty heart valve. I missed a stitch.

Perhaps I am still trying to correct my error as I now love to hand quilt baby quilts for expected great-grandchildren. A great-granddaughter is due in July and I am stitching away day by day.

Her quilt has a white crescent moon with a dark blue background. I adore the thought the moon will shelter a soft precious form.

Actually, I may be trying to correct the many missed stitches of my life. If you make a mistake in quilting you can always cut another patch to make it the right size.

I married a wonderful boy I had known for twenty-nine days. He disappeared two years later leaving me with one child and expecting a second. We had just enjoyed a breakfast of scrambled eggs with bacon.

He had a job interview ( he said ) and was wearing his best clothes and a new pair of shoes. He walked over the the daughter in a play pen, patted her hair. He embraced me at the front door and walked to the car , turning for a very last wave.

I never saw his face nor heard his voice again. The child in the playpen never received a birthday card or received a Christmas gift.

The son born in August never looked into his father's eyes. ( Just like Eric Clapton and his father ).

Evidently he was merely taking a well worn path. Dale had been disappearing since he was a mere child.

"When Dale was talkative and telling me he loved me dearly, I wouldn't put a plate on the table at suppertime."

The stepmother was trying to comfort me. Which was important because I faced years trying to comfort the man's children.

His own mother had left the five child home when he was around four years old. When the lad was nine he had been gone for four days and the police turned to the media.

" The father believes he may be looking for his mother. She isn't living where she was when he visited her. "

For three years nothing seemed to be where it was.

My second miss-stitch was to marry a gay man. Why would a gay man marry a single mother of two? He feared my desperate behavior would cause to marry a "bad news" man. At least that is what he said when I asked one day.

The gay man was very kind to me and my children. He provided well. As pleasant bonus, he had a smile which gently began each day. . However, our embraces had no destinations. The quilt patches didn't match. He was also a Black man so the world in general in 1963 thought the patch was the wrong color.

We went our own ways very quietly after a mere two years.

I lugged my tattered quilt around the block in a lonely and wandering path. The two children held the seams together. They believed in my ability to mend everything.

The oldest child, a daughter, discovered a lovely patch of cloth which had remarkable strength. His name was Carl and he too was a tattered quilt now alone upon the shelf.

We discovered we were an excellent match. We assembled our quilt for some fifty years. It was warm and comforting amid storms. Some days it was the most beautiful quilt in the neighborhood.

In 2011, Alzheimer's Disease tried like the dickens to tear the quilt into shreds. One day Carl asked me "Why aren't we together? What did I do wrong".

"Nothing, my darling. Nothing my dear heart. "

In fact, Carl continued to give. He added the patches called compassion and empathy. A grandson built a day bed for the living room when a son and I cared for him at home. I watched an adult granddaughter visit his care home on her wedding day wearing the wedding gown.

The Alzheimer's quilt held its seams until death at seven P.M. on 2018 thought it had torn the threads and sent them to the four winds.

However, just as the gifted surgeon who fixed the first son's heart valve, Memory ( with a capital M ) has kept the love story quilt in tact. It comforts the soul. It eases the arthritis. It rests upon the shoulder.

The baby quilt I will stitch later today is our victory.