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.