Memory Quilt

When I was 10 years old, I learned how to embroider outlines that were ironed on to plain white fabric. I had a real fascination with some little Dutch figures that my mother found and transferred onto the cloth for me. I stayed busy working on these squares for hours. We seldom watched television and in fact, for many years we didn't own a television. Therefore, we occupied ourselves with handiwork, talking to one another, or in the games and mischief we could manufacture. After I finished quite a number of embroidered squares, I put them aside and forgot about them.

It was after I moved out to California that Mother surprised me by sending me a completed baby quilt that she put together with this bright pink patterned flannel. It is very soft and bright and is pouffy from the polyfil that she sewed into it. Any small child would like it because it's so cheerful and cuddly. I think that Mother despaired that I would ever have children. After all, I was at the ripe age of 24 and was barely dating anyone. Maybe this baby quilt would make me think about motherhood.

In fact, I thought about it all the time. A brood of sons would have suited me quite well, since I didn't think my sensibilities were delicate enough to raise daughters. But a broken engagement and the family response to my near marriage deterred me from moving toward any kind of permanent relationship for many years. Even though I longed for a family of my own, it was just not to be.

So my quilt stayed rolled up and carefully wrapped, stored in the antique travel trunk of my great grandfather Bettinger. I also had a little yellow dress with smocking and flowers embroidered across the top that Mother made after I challenged her attitude about my prospects. If your comments about wanting me to marry and have children are substantial it seems that you will make something--anything at all--to go in my hope chest. So she made me a darling little yellow and white dress for a tiny little girl.

When Sam and I were packing to move to our new home this summer, I opened up Grampa Bettinger's trunk and pulled out the baby quilt. One side of it had my embroidered squares. The other was a butterfly pattern superimposed on squares of material that Mother had saved from all the clothing she sewed for us. There's a leftover piece of material from my 8th grade graduation dress; something from the (hideous) bridesmaid dress I wore for my sister's wedding; a couple blouses I had made for myself; and a shirt of Mother's. The black and white gingham was the little scrap left over from the matching dresses Mother had made for herself, my sister and I. As if we didn't stand out enough in matching dresses, she then made my father and two brothers shirts out of it. We all laughed at how we looked: "It looks like we got a run on a bolt!" (of cloth). We made it a point not to wear them all at the same time after that first time because we all looked and felt ridiculous. The quilt was fun to look at because my mind went back to the sewing room at the back of our country house, and I remembered sewing back there for hours, looking out across corn fields, past the freshly laundered clothes hanging outside to dry.

I looked at this quilt for a long time, feeling very sad that it had never been used. Given that I have no children to pass it along to, and my neice and nephew would not appreciate it, I didn't know what to do with it. It is such a sweet quilt that it seemed a waste to merely keep it hidden away in a dusty old trunk.

Then I thought of Nancy. She and I grew up together--the rotten egg thrower, the girl who taught me about country life, and with whom I played for hours as a child. She also married late. She and her husband have adopted three children from Kazakhstan, the youngest one within the last year. I still had not sent her a baby gift.

Nancy sews, crochets, and does a lot of things I grew up doing, so she would appreciate the work that went into this. And no one I know would be a better recipient of this quilt than she because she shared so much of my young life with me. So it was a bittersweet experience to say goodbye to my dreams of motherhood and send it off to her. I cried for a long time, looking at it, turning it over in my hands, and remembering--remembering years of disappointed hope and so many dreams. As it went out in the mail, a chapter of my life ended and another began.

Nancy was moved and delighted to receive my package. I have not missed it and her little girl is delighted with it. Nancy wraps up her children in it and tells them stories from our young lives--all the things we did together, and many little vignettes about my family. It fills me with joy to know that this quilt is giving these beautiful children a sense of belonging and warmth.