One Quilt's Story.....

For years the unfinished piece hung on the wall in my mom's kitchen. She had pinned the rough edges so they wouldn't show. Whenever we visited I would tell her that I could take it and add some fabric so she could hang it as a complete piece. I had no intention of finishing the needlework stitching, but just add a kind of fabric border or frame. However, each time we would leave to go home, the piece remained on her wall and never made it into my suitcase.

I don't know who did the needlework, perhaps my maternal grandmother who emigrated from Sweden? I never met her because she died when my mom was just out of high school. Maybe some other Swedish relative? I googled the Swedish phrase that was part of the work to find out what it meant.

Om dagen vid mitt arbete Ar du uti mitt sinn.

During the day at my work You are in my mind.

Then I took the needlework to my small quilting group for their advice and several friends told me to look at all the colors in the figure's apron.....and so I raided my stash! As I look at the quilt now hanging on the wall in our den, the phrase means more to me. Remembering my mother and how she "mothered" this Swedish sentiment fits her perfectly.

I know just how much she loved my sister and me. What she did as a mother/homemaker was always with our needs and wishes at center stage. We were "in her mind".

Thanks mom....I'm just sorry I didn't finish this while you were alive to see it. 

Our Place....

I gave up any attempt at gardening when we moved to the condo up in Port Washington. I was never very good at it and although I love to look at flowers I don't like to plant/weed them! As we've moved from place to place during our marriage our homes did have flowers and varieties of hosta as decoration. Most usually looked pretty nice until about mid-July when they began to look raggedy and I was tired of weeding.

But here's "my" new garden in July! It looks beautiful  and I don't have to do anything except walk by and enjoy it.

For me this is just one more benefit of living at ECP! :-)

I Never Knew Him....But.....

We had dinner the other night with a nice couple who live in an apartment on the second floor. Pat and I are on a committee exploring the idea of displaying changing art shows in one hallway here at Eastcastle. She's a very well-educated and much more "sophisticated" woman than I am....but we seem to enjoy each other's company.

At dinner she was talking about her daughter, coming for a visit from the east coast. She too sounds like a very capable and educated woman involved, with her husband, in the NYC theater world. Somehow the conversation included sharing the fact that Pat's grandson, her daughter's son, committed suicide when he was 16. Although this was years ago.... sharing the information brought the pain right back as Pat described the unfathomable grief that came with the loss of this very special young man. And her daughter's methods of trying to cope with the empty chair at their table.

Pat told me her daughter had spent some time after writing poetry and that this seemed to help a little. This morning I found a small blue book outside my door, the note inside said "You can keep this." 

A mere 32 pages with about a dozen poems, I sat with my coffee, opened the cover and began to read. I'm not a poetry lover but these, or maybe because I knew the reason they were composed, hit hard. The imagery was so sadly beautiful....and I was glad to have the Kleenex box next to my chair. For her to share her grief in this way was just so heartrending.  One stanza of one poem was especially heartbreaking:

I used to have a son who didn't wear jeans

Only khakis and never clothing with a logo.

He liked clever T-shirts in a philosophical

Vein and white socks and Merrill shoes.

He liked the secondhand belt

I bought him at Housing Works.

It was what he used to end his life.

We have four grandsons....I will hug each of them a little harder next time we are together.

Once Again.....

We met at quilt guild after I retired. I joined a guild that meets during the day and quickly found a few special friends who are as "addicted" to this creative craft as I am. But this one special friendship moved from connecting once a month at guild meetings to sharing many other activities after Dave and I moved to Ozaukee County and I could join the Newcomers Club. 

Our husbands connected when we began to do things together as couples and, happily, the two of them got along just fine too. Shared dinners, competitive games of dominoes or hand and foot canasta. Shared trips to Akumal, Puerto Rico and several joint camping adventures. Quick phone calls to say "Let's meet for a burger." They would bike to Port Washington and we would walk over to the marina to meet for a quick visit. Outdoor summer concerts, cups of coffee at local stops, finding ways to visit outdoors during the height of the COVID pandemic. 

You get the idea. The two of us met the two of them and we became fast friends here in the Milwaukee area. For me, after so many moves, finding a new "bestie" is really special....and moving means leaving a new "bestie" behind and starting all over again. It's not easy, as I age, to find someone who fits so "easily" because we don't share a history together and have to find and create our own new connections. 

This time we aren't the ones packing up and moving....they are. And we say goodbye wishing them nothing but the best but wishing too that they just were not going. We hugged goodbye last night at a lovely dinner hosted by mutual friends....and I held it together. I didn't need Kleenex...but I didn't hang around for more than a minute after those hugs.

Yes....we have some other good friends here and I know we'll find other couples we enjoy spending time with, but still. I've looked and looked for a bestie at each of the eleven homes we've owned. In Milwaukee, she was mine.

Maybe I'll find another such connection....maybe not. Wishing them the best....but selfishly, wishing their moving truck just doesn't show up tomorrow. Usually I am in the car moving on down the road....this time I am the one left behind. Perhaps we'll be far apart in mileage, but I know we will be close in our hearts.

 

 

Just That Kind of Day....

I can think of so many cliches....the road not taken....one door closes and another one opens. I look back at my life and realize just how many millions and millions of small decisions or choices have brought me to today.

It was September 1965 and I was starting my sophomore year at Ripon College in Wisconsin. A small liberal arts school, Ripon was home to just over 900 students. For me it was a very good fit. My high school years spent at a giant school with over 4,000 enrolled was, for a number of personal reasons, quite an unhappy time for me. So when the opportunity came to choose college, I went small.

Within the first week or so my roommate and I were down at the new 18-year-olds-allowed pub in town, sitting at the bar enjoying a beer. She and I were becoming best of friends (a friendship that still endures). We were having fun just talking and sipping, comparing classes, listening to the music from the juke box and sort of watching other students dance.

I don't know how long we'd been there when a young man I vaguely recognized came up and asked me to dance. My friend nodded her OK so he and I took to the floor to match our skills to the latest dance craze....perhaps the jerk? It was fun,, he was easy to be with and I was happy he'd approached me at the bar. After perhaps two songs I smiled, thanked him and went back to sit with my friend. She and I left about 10:00 to head back to the dorm and I waved to him as we left.

No one could have convinced me that those two dances would  lead to almost three years of dating, a winter wedding in 1967, two children, 11 houses, two moves from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic states and back again, two years of living on a sailboat, four grandsons, 12 years of retirement traveling the US and Canada in a small RV and so much more.

As he tells the story, David Mulford Woodard says he walked toward the bar where we were sitting unsure of who he would ask to dance. 

A small choice....just the kind of day that paints a new future. If it had been a different kind of day and my friend and I had gone to study at the library instead of walking down to the pub, every day following would also have been very different.

Small choices.....just that kind of day.....