Wrapped up in Love

Homemade cotton quilts have a smell – a  mix of dust, smoke from winter fireplaces, hints of grass and soil from summer picnics and the musty fragrance of a cedar chest.

They also tell a story.  The pink dogwood print from a bridesmaid dress.  The blue calico from a pair of short overalls that Mamaw made me to wear at the lake. The brown tweed from the blazer that was my first attempt at sewing.  The cotton print with yellow ducks that was part of a baby quilt.  The peach lace from the Easter dress Papaw drove 20 minutes to buy me.

The story of a family.

Each moment  was stitched together with others until it formed  one beautiful, warm memory that wraps itself around me and transports me to  lovely  times that would have otherwise been forgotten…save for the foresight  of  Mamaw  and the talent of her fingers.  Fingers that were bent with arthritis.  Wrinkled by years of picking cotton.  Nimble from sorting through mail as the postmaster.

Fingers that caressed my cheek when I was a baby and felt for the memory of what I looked like when she was too old to see.  Fingers that I now see on my mom’s beautifully worn hands and the fingers that I’m beginning to see on my own.  Fingers that cut and sewed and pieced fragments and memories into this narrative that I clutch on days when I need to remember how blessed and loved I am.

Fingers that continue to touch me, decades later,  as I hold on to this treasure of love.