A Stitch in Time

My mom loves to sew. When she was in third grade, she begged her mom to teach her to use the sewing machine. She sewed all her clothes in high school. She even sewed her own wedding gown, as well as mine and my older sister’s. They were all gorgeous. 

A few years ago when my parents retired and moved from the farm to town, my mom’s favorite hobby became quilting with other women from church. Each year they would make a quilt to be sold at the Mennonite Central Committee’s annual relief sale. Each time they worked tirelessly to piece a beautiful quilt that would bring a lot of money for the charity.

This year my mom especially liked the fabric combinations that they chose for the project. The deep plums and sage greens were offset by natural tones and accented by a spicy salmon. The log cabin pattern was one of her favorites, and this one was called “spinning logs” because it had a twist:  each log cabin block was given a quarter turn, so the overall effect was a whorl, or pinwheel.

“I think it’s the prettiest quilt we’ve ever done,” my mom told me on numerous occasions. I wistfully wished I could buy it for her, but knew that it would be way out of my price range. All of the women from mom’s quilting group were excited to see how much their quilt would sell for.

On the day of the MCC sale, some quilts were bringing thousands of dollars, and one quilt even set an all-time record of $12,000. However, when the one my mom worked on was up for auction, no one bid. One of the women who had worked on the quilt put in a bid to get it started. She ended up with it for $500.

After returning home from the sale later that day, my dad fell and broke his hip. Thoughts of quilts were pushed far from our minds. Dad needed surgery, and spent several weeks recovering in the hospital, then rehab, then a skilled nursing facility. After being married 52 years, Mom and Dad both struggled sleeping apart from each other.

When things finally settled down with my dad and I learned who had bought the quilt at the MCC sale, my mental wheels started turning. Wouldn’t the quilt be comforting for my mom while she was alone at home?The price the quilt had sold for was more than I could afford, but maybe my siblings and I together could buy it from her and give it to Mom for Mother’s Day. I called them, and they agreed. My brother said he would get in touch with the lady who had bought the quilt.

I had a day of panic, thinking that she might have promised the quilt to one of her daughters. I encouraged my brother to call that night. He did, and the lady said she would be willing to sell the quilt to us.

Now I had to wait a month for Mother’s Day. But my sister, who lives in South Dakota, wouldn’t be able to come. So we decided we would wait yet another week, when she would be here for my oldest son’s high school graduation.

We knew Dad would want to included, so we planned to give it to mom at the nursing home where Dad was staying. However, my Dad was responding well to therapy and was released sooner than we expected. 

So when my sister came to Kansas we three siblings gathered at Mom and Dad’s house. We told them we were celebrating Dad’s first day back from the nursing home. Of course, we had something else up our sleeve. When we brought the quilt out and presented it to Mom, she stood speechless.

“Do you recognize that quilt?” my dad asked. 

“Of course, I thought it was the prettiest one we’ve ever made,” Mom said.

“We bought it for you,” I told her. 

“But someone else bought it,” Mom said, disbelieving.

“I know, we bought it from her,” I said. “Happy Mother’s Day!”

I couldn’t hold back the tears as I hugged her tightly. She couldn’t either.

                    

We took the quilt to their room. I was amazed at how the sage green walls of their bedroom matched perfectly with the sage pieces in the quilt.

“Mom, I think if we went to the paint store to pick out a color to coordinate with this quilt, this is the color we would choose,” I told her.

We fixed their bed and made it ready for them to sleep in that night. They would be able to enjoy it together on the first night of Dad’s homecoming.

Like it was meant to be.