{"id":10125,"date":"2015-03-22T20:17:55","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T00:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/?p=10125"},"modified":"2015-03-22T20:17:55","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T00:17:55","slug":"quilts-teapots-and-living-day-by-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/03\/quilts-teapots-and-living-day-by-day.html","title":{"rendered":"quilts, teapots, and living day by day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"wedding<\/a>
wedding quilt
the author’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I often do when I’m worried or beset by whatever, I cleaned out a closet the other day. And rediscovered things I’d forgotten: a quilt my mother made me when I married; a quilt my sister quilted from a quilt top my grandmother made. And because my household is a place of some fragility these days, I took them out — remembering my mother and her love of quilting; my grandmother and her love of piecing quilt tops (she cared a LOT less for quilting them!). \u00a0Now my younger sister sews, quilts, and knits. She is at least the fourth in a line from my great-grandmother on.<\/p>\n

Today, thinking of those women (and my reacquaintance with how ephemeral life can be…), I changed bed linens. Substituting my mother’s red, white, & sky blue the colour of robins’ eggs<\/em>\u00a0quilt for a white crocheted throw, like a ribbon across the white duvet in the guest room. My mother felt very close.<\/p>\n

In the studio, where I have all my beading & paper crafting stored & strewn, I laid the crazy quilt my grandmother pieced over the daybed. When my sister quilted it, she bound the edges w\/ a tiny elephant print. My mother loved elephants — once my father had one trucked to the apartment where we lived for her birthday, a tiny baby of an elephant, long-lashed & utterly adorable. It was the best of birthday antics — she laughed & cried, charmed. And I remembered how I am only the latest bead in a necklace of women. My mother, her mother, her mother before her.<\/p>\n

\"crazy<\/a>
crazy quilt
the author’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That quilt bears pieces from everyday life: each\u00a0scrap a shirt, a dress, a blouse. Maybe a curtain that once hung from the window of Great-Grandma’s house in a small town an hour away from 4\u00a0of her 5 daughters. It bears witness to every day of lives lived a hundred years ago, at least in places.<\/p>\n

I also made tea in my favourite teapot — one given me years ago by women I haven’t seen in 25 years. Wreathed in cottage flowers, it sat happily on a silk brocade placemat I only use rarely; it’s ‘too nice’ for everyday use. And I brewed a pot of the Sunday tea — a pricey China black I can’t justify too often.<\/p>\n

Here’s where this is going: life\u00a0is not stone. It doesn’t last. It can blink out like a candle in a sudden gust. What good are our things — these precious pieces that are the traces of happy times, family, places long behind us — if we don’t see them? Use them? Let their very presence remind us of all that they embody…?<\/p>\n

I’m going to keep on using up my things. Taking out the linens we bought in Hong Kong before my younger son was born. Making a tea cosy out of my mother’s Army\/Navy tablecloth; the one w\/ a big hole in the middle. It’s older than I am, and links me to a mother who won dance contests BK (before kids). Life seems very fragile — even ephemeral — to me these days. So I’m surrounding myself w\/ all I’ve been to help go wherever it is I’m going to end up. And I shall drink from a china teapot, insulated from the chill March breeze by a tea cosy made from my mother’s past. Watch my rescue cats lounge on handmade quilts stitched in every seam with love. And it will all be okay.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I often do when I’m worried or beset by whatever, I cleaned out a closet the other day. And rediscovered things I’d forgotten: a quilt my mother made me when I married; a quilt my sister quilted from a quilt top my grandmother made. 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