One Word At A Time: Quilt
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 7:00AM MAD21 By Ginny (MAD21)
A long time ago while visiting a friend at her house, I saw a really interesting and pretty quilt she had hanging in her room. It wasn't just any kind of quilt where all the colors matched perfectly, although somehow everything still looked beautiful together. It was obvious someone had spent a lot of time creating it. But there was something that seemed different. I couldn't figure out what it was, so I asked my friend where it came from.
It turns out that quilt was a story, Her Story. My friend explained that it was a quilt her mother had made for her. Every single piece of fabric came from a favorite item of clothing she had worn when she was a baby and young child. Somewhere in the midst of our conversation, her mother came into the room. She grinned, and joined our conversation. She began telling me about all the different pieces of fabric... and the memories that went along with them. I remember there were pieces from the outfit my friend had worn home from the hospital when she was born, pajamas, fancy dresses, and parts of t-shirts from places they liked to visit, among others. There were a few that had stains on them, but they were part of the quilt's design, too. They were part of the memories as much as any other part of the quilt. It was so beautifully made.
Many pieces part of one whole.
It's a fairly easy analogy to compare our lives to a quilt, I believe. We have many, many individual experiences, but they are all still part of one whole. As I've gotten older, I have found myself thinking of experiences I've had in my life and feeling like I had lived it in another lifetime. Things like running into an old friend or co-worker you haven't seen in years, or visiting places from your childhood. So many things have happened, so much time has passed.