Tattered, torn quilt holds a lot of memories

My mother and I stood at the door of the second-floor apartment. Black grime stained the wood around the door handle and a thin maze of cobwebs stretched along the edges of the front window. After rapping three times on the door, we heard footsteps and muffled voices from inside the apartment. The door opened and my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Terry, greeted us with a wide smile and bright eyes. “Hello and welcome,” she exclaimed cheerfully, before embracing us both. She smelled like soap and powder. “Come in! Come in! So glad you’re here!” She was tall and wore a simple green plaid house dress and flat black slip-on shoes. Her wavy brown hair was streaked with strands of gray and was combed neatly off her face. She wore red lipstick. When she spoke, I heard the familiar hint of a North Dakota accent.

We stepped into the apartment and Aunt Terry closed the door. I blinked my eyes several times as sunlight seemed to drift reluctantly through the dusty blinds at the windows, as if hesitant to enter the darkened room. Bits of white thread and red and green yarn were sprinkled here and there on the matted carpet and the smell of cigar smoke hung in the air like a musty, stale cloud. Uncle Bobby sat in a worn blue recliner in front of the television, a fat brown cigar in his mouth. He wore a tight sweater buttoned over a white shirt, his grey beard spread across his chin and neck like a piece of fuzzy old wool. He took the cigar out of his mouth, sat forward in the chair and said hello. My mother replied, saying how nice it was to see them both. He turned back to the television.

The three of us sat at the red Formica kitchen table, sipping coffee and nibbling on store bought chocolate cake. Aunt Terry and my mother chatted about my grandmother and the family for a while before Aunt Terry said she wanted to show us her quilts. We followed her into her bedroom where piles of torn floral sheets, rumpled dresses and aprons, shirts with their sleeves ripped off and pieces of material with frayed edges were stacked haphazardly on the floor, on the dresser and draped over a table where her sewing machine stood. The machine was silver and black and strung with white thread. It looked old and like it was waiting.

Terry disappeared into the dark, cave-like closet and brought out one of her quilts. “This is for you, Sherry,” she said with pride, her face lit up with a big smile as she handed it to me. Squares with thin blue and white stripes, bright red and yellow flowers, green and black plaid, brown paisley, orange and yellow birds on limbs of trees, tiny purple and gold flowers and rows of copper and blue squares danced across the quilt. Every corner of every square was tied tightly with red or green yarn and it was backed with what looked like mattress ticking fabric. Pieces of other people’s lives all sewn together. Maybe a little girl’s outgrown dress, a father’s favorite shirt, bedroom curtains no longer needed, perhaps an apron worn while baking a birthday dinner. Memories all bound together. And she gave it to me. It was big and warm, nothing fancy. It was beautiful. Later, as we drove home, I held the folded quilt on my lap, smoothing the fabric softly with my hands, feeling the memories.

There are boxes of photographs in the armoire where I keep the quilt these days. The mismatched boxes are stacked up among things my children have left behind or things I cannot part with just yet. Occasionally I will open one or two of the boxes and take the photographs out and look through them. I always think I should probably put them in an album or organize them somehow. But I don’t. I look at the faces and the places and try to remember.

There is my father as a child, proudly holding a big fish he just caught. There is my grandfather on a tractor, his face to the sun. There is my brother holding his son’s hand. There is my son holding my hand. There is my daughter at her senior prom. And there is their father hiking up a hill. An uncle who died before I was born. A girl who’s name I can’t remember. Faces I barely remember and faces I never knew. My mother and her sister on the crumbled stone steps of their farmhouse. My mother when she was sick. My sisters and brother and me all dressed the same under the shade of the Japanese Maple in our front yard. A whitewashed barn in the snow. A beach at sunset. My siblings and I at the edge of the Grand Canyon. The family I have now all in a row and the family I had then all in a row. Memories all gathered together. Little bits and pieces of my life and lives that came before me and surround me. All the pieces, all the memories and people piled up, woven and patched together. Like a quilt, the threads are often pulled loose, the fabric torn and frayed. Some pieces are tear stained and some are bright and solid. Some are faded. Some pieces are a mystery as to how they fit, but somehow, they do. All of it bound together and connected.

Aunt Terry’s quilt is a bit tattered and torn now. I keep it folded neatly in the armoire next to the boxes of photographs. I bring it out sometimes, spread it out, feel the knots and smooth fabric, maybe wrap it around me on a chilly day. Some of the yarn has come loose, a few corners are doubled over and hang limply. Thin white thread, like delicate netting, stretches between some of the squares, as if trying to hold them together. Now and then I will put the quilt to my face and try to breathe in the smell of Uncle Bobby’s cigar or Aunt Terry’s cologne. The whites of the fabric are stained and yellowed with age, but I have never washed the quilt and I don’t think I ever will. I don’t want to wash the memories away.