Do you ever reach for a blanket on a cold night to keep you warm?
When my wife and I were married nearly twenty-eight years ago, my parents gifted us with a double Wedding Ring quilt. It has kept us warm on many a cold night.
As the temperatures rise as we get closer to summer, I find myself with mixed feelings about taking the quilt off our bed. We no longer need it to keep us warm. By the middle of the night, I’m so warm I’m kicking off the covers and often just sleeping under the sheet.
The quilt keeps me warm in other ways, though. It is a reminder and a connection to my parents who began their climb of the stairway to heaven several years ago no.
A friend of mine expressed her appreciation for the stories I share in my Facebook Lives and added, “Stories connect with our family. They help us know who we are, and where we come from. It is why being an orphan is such a huge ordeal.”
I’d never thought of story quite like that, but it makes sense. It also explains why so many heroes in stories are orphans. From Peter Pan to Cosette in Les Miserables to Harry Potter.
I didn’t recognize the weight of being an orphan before my mother began her ascent to heaven in 2017. Suddenly, I was left without a parent. Dad had made his ascension in 2013. My grandparents had all passed by the time I was eight years old. I don’t even have uncles or aunts.
As the default senior child of my generation, I felt a little adrift.
My three siblings and I are all well into adulthood. Even on the downward slope. Yet there was a feeling somewhat like being without a home. Nobody to call Mom or Dad.
In childhood, I’d often felt adrift from my parents. Especially, my dad, who was always busy with his various responsibilities. That drift was closed when dad began to recover his own passion for life after he retired from work. In his retirement from work, he returned to his passion for art and learning. He was more alive in retirement than he ever was at work.
As my family grew, we would call my parents every weekend to see how they were doing and share our latest developments. They helped us welcome in four children, move many times around the country, and always let us know they loved and cared for us.
I remember Dad helping me open my eyes to the beauty of the world as we stood on a boardwalk along the Puget Sound. Through his artistic eyes, he saw more color and texture in the sunset than I’d ever seen before.
A quilt is a lot like a story. We gather disparate pieces from life, pull them together and stitch them together into a story. As I write memoir, as I write novels, as I write blog posts, I’m often pulling pieces from life, from my experiences, from my observations and stitching them together.
Without phone calls and without visits, I sometimes wrap myself up in the stories I remember from my parents. Just as the Wedding Ring quilt has kept us comfortable throughout the years, I take comfort in the stories I have of my parents.
As long as I hold the stories close, my parents are never too far away.
Now, as I think about the story mosaic I am creating in life, I hope that those I share the stories with find as much comfort in them as I have found in the quilt that has kept us warm throughout the years.
What is the story quilt you are piecing together? What is the feeling you wish to leave for others to be wrapped up in on their cold nights?