[The last voting blogpost, I promise! Enough hatred and vitriol for a lifetime, and in only one week!]
I knew nothing of quilts until I met my husband. As it were, I failed my sewing badge miserably in Girl Scouts and had the worst leader in the world. Her idea of judging said badge entry was calling the entire Troop over to laugh at my work. Nice. I was seven and still remember. So, sewing wasn’t exactly something I gravitated toward.
When we married, my M-I-L gave me a priceless hexagonal quilt made of flour sacks, 100 years old, made in her family. She told me to use it as a tablecloth, covered with plastic. No way. It deserved a proper hanging. Each hexagon was a single flower surrounded by groups of flowers in the same color scheme. Until her relative began getting a little senile. Then the colors got brighter and the combinations around the edges of the quilt a bit strange. There are two motifs across the quilt that fall in that dimension, and those I named my husband and I, two peas out of pods who met each other across miles and life choices to get together anyway. That’s the Flour Flower Power quilt.
Then, my M-I-L gave me a polyester (!) bright geometric quilt she designed and sewed while her two sons were young, in the seventies. It’s wild and I call it the Crazy Quilt. Another is a really cute quilt of little boys in overalls wearing sun hats. I’ve yet to have her sew pockets on the back for hanging but will soon so I can hang it in our next home.
When we moved three years ago and each got our own office, I picked out two quilts. His is a muted version (kinder, gentler) of a Texas flag. Mine is a sampler quilt made by a group of 12 Canadian women (my mom was Canadian). So we’re big into hanging quilts now.
Each quilt brings a story or two. Just like every American. Tomorrow, we have a choice to respect and care for each other as fellow citizens, no matter how different we may be in terms of race, gender, religion, sexual identity, social status. Or we can choose to leave our walls bare, our neighborhoods bereft of activity and just hate and punish each other for our differences.
I’ve chosen to love my neighbor, even if one plays his music a bit too loud, and another parks a bit too close to the line in the parking garage.
Americans come in many shapes and sizes and that’s what makes each “quilt” unique. I learn from others every day, and hopefully at my advanced age I’m able to share some wisdom as well. We’re all Americans. Our nation was created as one of immigrants, and together we’ve made it the greatest in the world. I look forward to sharing America’s 250th birthday with my fellow Americans. I hope you voted, and that we’ll be able to share in a brighter future for all. Thanks, as always, for reading. Dee
Cooking with Dee 