Mangaw's Quilt

Everyone has that moment in their lives that etches itself into their memory. Be it good or bad, it is just something that stays with you no matter how old or how forgetful you become. As I get older, some of the memories become fuzzier or I forget the facts, but the underlying remembrance is always there. That is one of the reasons that I take pen to paper. To put down memories that I will likely forget soon.

It was hot outside, of that I can distinctly remember, because otherwise I would have been outside like every other 10-year-old. But in South Louisiana in mid-July, hot means cooking bacon on the sidewalk while taking a shower. How is that? Because even if it is 110 degrees outside the humidity at 90 to 100 percent is like walking into a shower. On this day however, we were inside basking in the blissful air conditioning at my grandmother's trailer. She lived there with her younger sister Stella Mae. Younger is a funny term since they were both in their seventies. Mangaw was 76 and Aunt Stell was 74. They were the quintessential little old ladies. You know the kind, that could put mayonnaise, apples, and raisins together and make it taste delicious. My sister and I stayed with them in the summer during the week while mom and dad worked.

It was on this random, hot Tuesday in the heat of the summer, that my grandmother taught me how to embroider. A John Wayne movie blared on the TV, blazing out gunfights and the how the cowboys were tracking down horse thieves, when my grandmother handed me a piece of cloth, a hoop, a needle, and some thread. “I think that you need to learn how to sew.” She said to me in her strong Southern drawl. She patiently explained to me that every young lady needs to know how to sew and today was going to be the day that I learned. I of course sighed and rolled my eyes at her. “Really? I don’t want to.”

“Well, we all have to do things that we don’t want to and you never know you may like it.” Exceedingly patient, she sat me down along with my older sister, Jennifer, and explained a back stitch. Jennifer picked it up quickly. She was always a natural when it came to sewing or art or anything hands-on. To this day, she sews clothes and costumes and makes beautiful jewelry. I, of course, struggled. I cannot count how many times I pricked my finger or just stabbed the needle into my thumb hidden under the tight cloth that was cinched into the plastic hoop. At one point, I stabbed my finger so bad, Mangaw had to bandage my finger and slipped a thimble over it so I didn’t bleed all over the fabric.

Bessie, or Mangaw, as we called her, was our grandmother on my mother’s side. Her nickname was given to her by my sister who could not say Grandma. She started calling her Mangaw and, well, it just stuck. Mangaw, showed me how to pull the thread through the eye of the needle and then tie a knot in the end. Wrapping it around my index finger and then rolling the thread into a ball and pulling it into a knot. She showed me how to pierce the fabric, pull the thread tight and where to put the needle to make the next stich and follow the pattern. Needless to say, my first attempts were, well, ugly! Uneven stitches and large holes in the fabric where I got mad at a knot, I somehow tied in the middle of the thread, and pulled too hard.

For two weeks that summer when it was so hot you thought the devil had opened the doors to hell for a bit, we stayed inside and learned how to sew. By the end of those weeks, I had what would pass for a grey kitten, strumming a banjo, with pink flowers at its feet. Mangaw was pleased enough with both my attempt and her tutelage to put the little kitten in a little frame in her curio cabinet for everyone to see. The summer cooled and true to our ages, my sister and I raced outside as soon as we got to her trailer. Running amok, climbing trees, and chasing grasshoppers, with the memory of all that Mangaw showed us in the weeks before but a memory dancing through that part of my subconscious that is reserved for the fanciful freedoms of my youth.

Now mind you, my grandmother made some beautiful pieces of art. I call them art because they were all hand made. Beautiful, intricate pillows with all different shades of summer flowers, runners of all shapes and sizes, embroidered with whimsical fairies or captivating patterns, some of which I still have today. For all the things she made there was one very special piece that the entire family loved. It was a quilt, built first by embroidering individual squares that had the outline of one state in the Unites States, along with the state bird, state flower and the year it came into the union. It was beautiful. Set elegantly against a white background and stuffed at the seams to make it pillow-puff fluffy. Everyone loved it and friends and family would comment on how beautiful it was. To her, it was her legacy, something that she would leave behind to her children and grandchildren as a keepsake built from her hands and placed into ours.

When I was 14, I lost that magnificent woman. It was painful as she left, both for us and for her, as she struggled to breath, emphysema racking her small, fragile 80-year-old frame. She passed, with her family at her side and was laid to rest nearby where we could visit her.

My mother and her sister, Mangaw's only two children, went through all her things, handing out keepsakes and pieces of her art to grandchildren and friends, little mementos to remember her. They of course kept things that were important to them, a ring, a necklace that was made of buttons she had sewn together, her pin from Godchaux’s the department store from which she retired. They were all little things, but things that comforted them and reminded them of their mother. The quilt, however, was something both sisters wanted. Neither would acquiesce and there were many arguments about who was more deserving of the quilt. Heated words were exchanged, and barbs were thrown about who was the better daughter. So, it was Stella Mae who finally quelled the arguments with a simple compromise. Each year, the quilt would be traded between the sisters, so each could be comforted by her memory and display the beautiful quilt in their home. For my mother’s part, she did not make it a show piece hanging it on the wall and telling people not to touch it. She wanted her daughters and grandchildren to use it as Mangaw had intended. To wrap up in it, snuggle down, and watch old John Wayne westerns. It became another member of our family, and we would wrap up in its warmth and remember our grandmother wrapping her arms around us. Every other year though, as the compromise was agreed upon by both sisters, the quilt would be lovingly wrapped and boxed to make the trek from our home in Baton Rouge, to Shreveport.

As all lives do, we went on. The quilt made its trip year after year like clockwork. Being displayed at my aunt’s for everyone to see, and being used at our home for comfort and joy. It was in the winter of 2004, when the quilt was at my aunt’s house is Shreveport that tragedy struck again. There was a significant storm that raged for most of two days, sending lightening and howling winds that uprooted trees. My aunt’s house was older and well cared for, but it could not defend itself from the wrath of Mother Nature. The house caught fire after being struck by lightning several times. When the fire broke out, they were home and were able to get help quickly, but the part of the house where the quilt was kept was destroyed. My mother upon hearing the news wept and a little piece of her heart broke. The thing that she most cherished from her mother was lost forever. That weighed on my mom. You could see it every now and again when she thought you weren’t looking, the far off look she got in her eyes when we talked about Mangaw.

It hurt, and it was sad, but again we did what all people do, we moved on. Now we will fast forward to last year and here is where I will say that God does work in mysterious ways. My mom and dad were cleaning out a very cluttered attic hoping to have a garage sale and dispose of some of the massive, borderline hoarder, stuff that my parents had collected over the past 50 years of marriage. Way back in the far corner of the attic there sat Mangaw’s table. It was not anything fancy, just an octagon shaped table with a wreath shaped pull, that she always had beside her rocking chair. It always held a dish with butterscotch candies and her ashtray and in later years her oxygen mask. As my dad pulled it down from the attic, mom was surprised. She did not remember the table being up there or that she had even saved it when they had gone through Mangaw’s things. As they were opening it up, in a dark, aged, waxy TG&Y bag fell out. Thinking that it was nothing of consequence they set it aside and moved the table to the garage to be gone through later. My dad, never one to leave anything just lie, moved the bag to the kitchen table. As they got ready for dinner that evening, mom sat down and started looking through all the things to be sold or thrown away. She opened the bag and started crying. Dad saw this asked her what was wrong and all she did was hold up the bag to him. Inside was a miracle. You see, over the years after the quilt was lost my mom, searched, and searched for the pattern to my grandmother’s quilt. She had gone to antique shows, searched through mounds of quilt patterns online, had even gone so far as to reach out to the now defunct company that had made the pattern. All to no avail. No one had that pattern or even knew of one like it. There in that old bag was the pattern to Mangaw's quilt.

Like an archeologist finding Ramses tomb my mother gently and carefully pulled each piece of the pattern out onto the dining room table. Some pieces were weathered and in need of repair, others were faded, but it was the complete pattern for the quilt. As if on a mission, my dad headed to his computer and began to research how to repair the pattern. After months of trial and error, he miraculously was able to transfer the pattern to cloth. Mom for her part, found old pictures of the quilt and researched all the colors of thread needed for the birds and flowers and they put together a complete guide on how to make Mangaw’s quilt.

So, at this point you are saying to yourself, that is a great story and all but what does any of this have to do with how I relax? How I unwind? Where do I find my inner peace?

For the past year, my sister and I have been recreating our Mangaw's quilt. Piece by piece and strand by strand I sew, bringing back to life the lessons I learned so long ago from my grandmother that summer.

I will admit when I started, the stitches were again uneven and somehow, I still got a mysterious knot in the thread, but the more I stitch the more I fell my grandmother's presence, guiding my hand as I pull the thread through the cloth. As if I were ten years old again, sitting at her knee, as she watches over my shoulder, I sew.

I know that it is not perfect, but as I sew, I unplug from the hectic life I lead, and I am released from the pressures of my life. Six kids, that have friends, school and sports, a full-time, high-pressure job where 8 to 5 is only the opening act, but when I sew, I leave it all behind. Focusing on making my stitches even, getting the right colors, making sure my knots are tight, relaxing into a time that has all but faded from this hectic, constantly connected world. In that time, I am paying homage to my grandmother and giving back to my mother something that she thought was forever lost. No, it is not the quilt that Mangaw made, but it is something special. A quilt made from my own hands, guided by the teachings of my grandmother. A legacy that I can leave for my children and grandchildren. A gift that I can give to my family the same way that she had gifted it to us.

As I sit and pull the needle through the cloth again, I am reminded of that hot summer when I learned how to make something special from a woman that I will never forget. How she taught me something that is timeless, that I can teach to my daughter. She taught me so much about how it does not have to be perfect, just yours. She taught me how to find my own peace in a mad world, one stitch at a time.