Blankets

It’s come a toad-strangler today Ya’ll. It’s pouring out there like piss out of a boot-nothing but pitch forks and hammer handles.

But I digress.

Look at this.

...and this.

Is that not beautiful? It’s yet another piece of Joy’s work.

I’d love to say it’s mine, mine, mine. But it’s not, not, not.

This one is being finished in time for her sister’s birthday in a couple weeks-even though this photo was taken on my picnic table so nine tenths and all that.

It’s craftsmanship though and through. It’s a painstaking attention to detail. It’s a lovingly concocted, tediously planned piece of work and every stitch wrought with love.

Did I mention those stitches are minuscule and the white backing of the quilt is even more beautiful than the front due to that conquering of the needle?

Can you look at that mastery and not call it art?

She does all the time. She bellows...

Oh for God’s sake, it’s just a blanket!

Just a blanket?

My boys both have a smaller version of her work hanging on their walls. The blocks and the colors are tailored to their tastes and she chose stitches and embroidery to customize them. (God forbid, I call it signing her work. I’d be referring to it as art again.)

She hates it that I have them hanging on a wall in the boys’ rooms.

I made them to be used. I did not quilt wall hangings!

Well ain't that just too bad?

I have quilts that are worn to threads. And I wish to God they weren’t.

When the boys grow up, move out, and take their quilts with them they can use them for whatever purpose they choose. For now they hang on the wall.

House rules.

Every time they look at those quilts I want them to remember Joy sitting in the chair watching TV over the top of her reading glasses with a hoop in her lap.

I want them to remember her falling asleep in the floor on movie night with her work-in-progress doubling as comforter.

I want them to remember her sitting at the lake and while I’ve got my head in a book, her needle is flashing in the sun.

I want them to remember her cussing a blue streak because she measured wrong and the strip of fabric came up short or the pencil won’t wash out.

I want them to remember her taking her quilt with her everywhere she went because she had a self-imposed deadline.

I want them to remember the time they saw a quilt half this size hanging in an art gallery with a price tag of $9000.00. (Yes you read that correctly) Little scoffed because the one in his room was much prettier.

They take these ‘blankets’ for granted now because their Joy made them. They’ve never known a time when this woman hasn’t blessed their lives.

I don’t want them to ever lament the tatters.

But…

What if Big’s adorned his bed in the beginning days of his marriage?

What if Little’s first baby was conceived under the darkness of his…and then later patted to sleep on top of it?

What if one is used as a picnic blanket and wine gets accidentally spilled? Will that stain bring back a fond remembrance?

What if someone they love slipped from this life while being warmed and comforted with one?

Joy swears and be damns she won’t make me one until I agree to use it and not hang it.

...hmmm