My eldest granddaughter came over the other night and was wearing my favorite coat, from 1974, a Wrangler jean jacket on which my mother had embroidered a little girl viking on the back.  That my mother saved it all these years thrilled me, even though I am hardly a sentimental kind of woman, and this grandchild of mine noted that in fact her mother, my daughter, had also worn it, as her name was written in magic marker on the tag.  I often tease my mother for her sentimental ways…I ask her why she bothers to save old things, but seeing my granddaughter wearing my jean jacket gave me goosebumps.  Last summer my Mother sent me a photo of this same child wearing the red dress she had made for my daughter to wear for the first day of kindergarten, and now I have another picture, of her wearing my favorite ever coat…as much as I have given my mother grief over her ways, I can’t thank her enough for her love of family history.

I have a little white dress in my laundry room that has a black and gray kitten embroidered on it…I wore it, my sister wore it, my daughter wore it, and both her  daughters wore it.  Now it just is folded in the laundry room cupboard but it exists, and through no effort really of my own…my mother saved it all those years and now I simply can’t bear to part with it.  I have the first quilt my mother ever made me, before arthritis set in and made her fingers ache and her hands hurt.   I don’t use it anymore but I have it in the blanket chest at the foot of my bed…which actually is my first ever toy box…now repainted and reupholstered and  used to hold bedding I seldom use…I “pick” on my mother for being so sentimental, yet here I am, in possession of my first toy box and the kitten smocked dress…My mother’s poor fingers are so sore with arthritis now that she only does minimal mending and no longer sews or quilts.  Last week she texted me a picture of the girls at her house getting their first lessons at the sewing machine…perhaps the fabric of our lives will just continue to unfold…