Magic Carpet Quilt

What is the point of recording history? For one thing, so we won't forget. Forgetting is so easy to do. And, oddly enough, when we make room for history in our lives somehow we are granted a clarion blueprint for the future. We often take this for granted. I'm ashamed to say I understood this better when I was less smart.

When I was a child, I would take my mom's "friendship"quilt, by that time already an antique, to a corner of the yard and spread it out in the lush St. Augustine in that transitional moment when late afternoon gently retires to early evening. The thick blades of grass would poke up and make the quilt look as though it were afloat, suspended over the earth by a zillion green spikes. The worn, limp fabric was cool and soft. Lying on my belly, in the fading light, I could examine, up close and personal, the tiny stitches and each embroidered signature; names of women lost to history, names from the turn of the century, strange and antique to a child of the fifties - Irma, Bernice, Lida, Effie, Maude, Ada, Erlene. Only with deep concentration, could I imagine the faces that went with these names.
        

As the day slipped away, so imperceptibly it almost seemed as though I had imagined it, I tried to conjure up the lives of the ladies who once, long ago, had lovingly recorded their names, for posterity, with floss and needle on what had become my magic carpet. What were they like? How did they live? Did they dream of distant, exotic places as I did? When they were children, did they pretend they were royalty or artists or ballerinas? When they grew up, did they realize their dreams? Was this quilt all there was left of these people? Did they make a difference by being alive?

I wanted to tell them that I, at least, gave thought to their existence.

I would lie there thinking and listening for the emerging hollow night noises. A dog barking. A screen door slamming. Bugs bugging. Twilight is a magic little space in time; the air denser. Any noise seems muted and remote. It is a place where things have to slow down, listen and be thoughtful; the perfect time for serious ten year old reflections on the human condition.
        

Once the light was completely spent, I'd roll over to my back and wait for the first star to appear. It wasn't something that just happened, first I had to imagine it; to focus on a place where I thought one would eventually be. And when the pinpoint of light suddenly became visible, it was as though it had always been there. And, of course, it had. Cold fact often spoils magic and therefore was not relevant nor welcome in my revere. I never considered, however, that it would be possible to count the stars. For one thing, I've always had the highest esteem for God's universe and the infinity involved. You simply can't count infinity. I surely wanted to go there, though. I wanted in the worst way to be able to take flight and become one with the heavens. To travel unencumbered around the planets. To see the vastness. To understand. I wanted to embrace the universe, to reassure it and thereby be reassured. I delighted in knowing that the women who had made the quilt had looked upon the exact same stars and planets and moon. It was something, besides the quilt, I could share with them, bridging the decades between us. There is comfort in continuity.
        

I still have that quilt, an inheritance. It is now too fragile to use and hangs, like art, in my guest room; a quaint, slowly decaying reminder of all that is folly about trying to leave behind material markers of our presence on this planet. Ultimately, I believe, the only memorial and testimony to our existence should be the other souls we have nurtured and encouraged to carry on with all that is worthwhile about this life.
        

When it is time for me to account for myself, I want to be able to say, I took the time to dream and strive for good more often than bad. I taught the ones who came after me to do the same.