patchwork quilt
Dec. 28th, 2002 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkA world of family stories have been told to me this week, of which few details will be told in this journal. Doesn't it seem odd that in these journals we reveal so much about so many things, but would never reveal a relative's inmost secrets? It's common courtesy, of course, but it's an intriguing contrast. I've lived the past five days in a sea of family sagas, some joyful, some triumphant, some sad, some positively soap-opera-ish.
I asked my father-in-law if, when he was boy growing up some sixty odd years ago in Kansas City, he often attended the movies. "Every Saturday", he replied, "we could not miss a week as that would mean missing an episode of a serial". I feel a similar need to "stay tuned" from week to week, to pay my nickel at the ticket counter, as family stories unfold and transform. It's like one of those rural quilts being put together by hand, from familiar scraps in disparate shapes and colors. Each holiday weekend weaves a few more squares. One thinks one sees a myriad of patterns emerging, but ultimately, at the end, there is only the quilt, and the quilt is not any one thing, the quilt is everything, and I am knit into the quilt, and I cannot define its pattern. But I know that the pattern exists, and I breathe it every day, stitch by stitch. It's not some pat "How to Make An American Quilt" quilt, but a crazy patchwork. It bears no county fair ribbbons. But it keeps me warm, somehow, and I would not trade it for anything.
I asked my father-in-law if, when he was boy growing up some sixty odd years ago in Kansas City, he often attended the movies. "Every Saturday", he replied, "we could not miss a week as that would mean missing an episode of a serial". I feel a similar need to "stay tuned" from week to week, to pay my nickel at the ticket counter, as family stories unfold and transform. It's like one of those rural quilts being put together by hand, from familiar scraps in disparate shapes and colors. Each holiday weekend weaves a few more squares. One thinks one sees a myriad of patterns emerging, but ultimately, at the end, there is only the quilt, and the quilt is not any one thing, the quilt is everything, and I am knit into the quilt, and I cannot define its pattern. But I know that the pattern exists, and I breathe it every day, stitch by stitch. It's not some pat "How to Make An American Quilt" quilt, but a crazy patchwork. It bears no county fair ribbbons. But it keeps me warm, somehow, and I would not trade it for anything.
