The quilted promise
I was going through some old papers from a friends mother and came across this piece that I wanted to share with my family. I don't know where it came from but judging from the paper, it was quite old. Remember, all the quilts you make and give to loved ones have a promise with them as you are giving a part of yourself.
The Quilted Promise
I was 13 years old that winter morning, the same morning that Granny turned ninety. "Open the box!", she shouted, waving her cane in the air. "It's your birthday, child", hurry up now!" Unruffling the tissue paper, I reached in. "A quilt, Granny!" I exclaimed, throwing my arms around her.
The quilt was so graceful and elegant, garnished with colorful flowers that looked so like the garden Granny loyally tended. "This must have taken years!", I said. "What a grand surprise!"
"I hope the quilt will mean to you what my own quilt meant to me", Granny said. "I was given a quilt very similar to this when I turned 13, too.
Lying under my quilt at night, I felt warm and cared for like a love letter in an envelope, as though I had
a guarantee of peaceful whipped dreams. The quilt even had Granny's aroma of lilac and glycerin that
teased my senses and soothed my spirits.
In the years that followed, I found the quilt consoled me when I was sad. It helped to relieve my fears,
cheered me like a faithful companion, pepped me up like a vitamin, soothed me like a spoonful of medicine and turned midnight winter skies into a beautiful pastel meadow.
Composed of bits and pieces of my ancestors' lives; Grandmother's wedding trousseau, Grandfather's neckties, Mother's infant layette. At my fingertips, I held my family roots.
Created with only my grandmother's blessing, and those thousands of tiny fairy stitches that looked like syllables of love, the intermingled fabrics seemed to mark a path for my destination, a promise of my womanhood.
Granny is gone now, covered over with earth's patchwork garden, but the soothing scent of lilac and glycerin is most potent at night, when I miss my Grandmother the most.