Patterns of Intrinsic Beauty

Patching together dissimilar pieces of loose individual materials from worn out clothing and cloth into patterns of intrinsic beauty that butterflies into a quilt is what my mother has done all my life. One Christmas a few years back she sent to each of my children a quilt she had made uniquely for each one of them. She started working on them after each of them were born years before. As the youngest got to around six and it was pretty obvious that we were “done” having more children, she shipped ‘em our way. Included was a quilt she had put together for me. It was made up of pieces of material she put back in a bag since I was a little boy.

I find myself gazing at the multiplicity of designs on each piece of cloth that make up the members of that pattern. As I scan my eyes back and forth, I find myself zeroing in on a particular pattern here and there that position me back into a different place, setting, and time. Each singularly possessing a unique memory: “Oh – I remember that shirt!”; “Hey… those are my jeans!”; “Wow, I forgot about that table cloth!”; “Is that my old sheet?” Every recognition has attached to it recollections wrapped around a journal of times past with family, friends, and relationships long floated down the streams of my mind.

Every family has its own way weaving and stitching together the treasure and the trash of those memories. Some are extremely precious, others are overtly perilous; some are exuberantly happy, others are extremely and overwhelmingly sad; most we want to remember, a few we would just as soon forget. Patiently with time and wisdom, we forgive and forget, acknowledge and honor – then we sew it into intrinsically beautiful patchwork quilts in our mind.

The Fruit of the Christmas Spirit

As a father, I find myself reliving nostalgically in my mind parallel experiences to what my children are living today. Being a tightly budgeted family of six with limited income we have to be committed to not dousing the spirit of Christmas by worries of affording the season. All four children find themselves most excitedly and with great anticipation shopping at the local Dollar Tree. Each child is assigned to buy a gift from them to the other three siblings and two parents. A grand distribution of $5.00 each ($20.00 total) is divvied out. The joyful hunt is on that doesn’t neglect the whole spirit of giving. It makes Christmas morning package opening a grand round of joyful expectation and satisfied anticipation.

Years ago, back in the day (as my oldest son Joel likes to say), our mom (Evelyn) dropped us off from an older model metalic blue Oldsmobile station wagon at the Whitehaven Plaza to do Christmas shopping with money that my brother saved from his neighborhood paper route. It gave her time to do some other Christmas shopping that needed to be finish up. Mom had given me a little bit of change and a bill or two to spend at what was even an obsolete name back then … the "Five and Dime store". Our sister (Elizabeth Ann) was still too young to go along.

At the local McCrory’s in the plaza we would shop in the downstairs basement. The staircase was right at the front entrance as you stepped through the inside door. It was just fun to run up and down the stairs (this was before malls). I remember looking everywhere making “little kid” suggestions out loud to the almost irritation of my older brother (didn’t want to mess up the whole Christmas spirit thing). We’d go up one aisle and down another.

Though we got a little something for everyone, Mom’s gift was pretty much the priority. She collected salt and pepper shakers of all types, styles and shapes. “Oh look over here!” I’d bellow out in excitement. Big brother (Jimmy) would make a considering short gander for a quick contemplation, but – ultimately (over and over) would say a thoughtful “Umm-naahh! Uh-uh”. After getting nearly to a point of total frustration … finally – as if by divine calling, we both wide eyed a whole aisle (both sides) dedicated to every kind of realistic looking fake plastic fruit you ever saw. This was almost as fun as the toy aisle, but not.

We carefully selected just the right bowl that we thought “fit” mom. We didn’t even verbally agree that this was it, but … this was it! So we collected and threw into this perfect round basin just the right bananas, oranges, green apples, red apples, green grapes, purple grapes with leaves on a vine, a lemon and a lime ... and then the final touch – the coolest looking pineapple (at least I thought so) we’d ever seen. Now to pay for it, Mom was waiting upstairs out in the car.

When we made our way to the counter with our bounty of booty it seems that we were a little short of the cost of our synthetic Christmas surprise for Mom. The cashier, after carefully counting the loose wadded bills and various change we dug out of everyone of our pockets, informed us that we “… didn’t have enough”. It was Christmas time; we were cute; we were sincere; and it was the late 60’s. She reached under the counter and pulled up her purse paying the remainder out of her own money.

With a great deal of humble thank-you’s, we scurried off with our various paper bags to meet Mom upstairs who was waiting in the station wagon with a few Christmas surprises of her own behind the back seat. You know ... Mom kept that bowl of artificial fruit for years and years as a center piece on her kitchen table even after we both got grown. The fruit was fake, but the love that brought it together wasn't.

Merry Christmas!