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The Quilt from Gingercake

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This was not just a coincidence. How could something like this be a coincidence? It definitely wasn’t coincidence.

A few months ago I was looking for a quilt for Boo’s room. I looked everywhere: thrift stores, eBay, Etsy.  Nothing caught my eye. Maybe I’m too picky. I don’t like solid patterns, or big patchwork pieces. I had a picture in my head of what I was looking for and the odds were that I would never find it. Then one day, browsing eBay, I found one:

quilt

Seriously it was the first one I’d found that I immediately said: Wow. I put it in my watch list but then forgot about it until the next day and missed the auction. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about. I usually don’t get worked up over things like missed auctions because I probably didn’t need whatever it was in the first place. But this quilt was different. I loved how intricate it was, and I loved the tiny details of all the feedsack and calicos, I loved that it was hand tied and I thought it would look fantastic in photo shoots. So I pursued it. I contacted the seller and asked if I could still buy it if it hadn’t sold. After a little bit of emailing back and forth we agreed on a price and a week later the quilt was mine:

quiltpicture

To top off my excitement of getting such a wonderful quilt, in the box, accompanying it, was a nice handwritten note in the box listed a little bit of history:

“This is a truly unique quilt, handcrafted by the late Beth Schneider of Gingercake, NC. It’s just a small bit of this estate. Beth and her husband Claude collected antiques for 60 years. Claude and I are sorting, storing and selling a little at a time.”

I kept the note because I thought it was interesting to know a little of the history of the quilt. I would research more about it later. I could tell it was old, and that I’d probably stumbled upon something pretty valuable. I don’t know much about quilts in general, I didn’t even know what pattern it was, but I have a good eye for  handcrafted work. It was a conversation piece when friends stopped by. And it hung over the back of a chair in our living room for a few months so we could admire it. I’d never noticed the dark and light stripes until it was viewed from overhead:

Gingercakequiltsquare

*****

Last month, for Mother’s Day, we decided at the last minute to drive up to Linville to visit my mother for the weekend. The next day we drove around and then went to the Hampton Grist Mill for BBQ. As we drove towards the old grist mill store it was still pretty early to eat lunch, and so my mother directed us around Linville proper for a little sightseeing. As we turned onto the first street we saw a sign for a yard sale…and I’m pretty sure the whole car rolled their eyes. I can never pass up a yard sale.

It was an old Linville house and we walked around a while looking over the items. There were a lot of neat little things to look at. I picked out a poetry book, an old drafting tool set and a few other things.  Boo picked out a few small items too. Brett talked to the woman whose sale it was and I could hear them talking about barn wood and places it could be found in western NC.

As we started to head back to the car the woman handed me her card. I looked at it and started to put it away but then I took a second look and something clicked in my head. I’d seen this card before.

Me: Wait a second…I know your name.
Woman: Oh?

And then instantly everything fit together.

Me: I think I bought a quilt from you a while back? Online? It was really old. And you wrote me a letter to accompany the quilt with the history of it.

She looked like she’d seen a ghost. And then suddenly she was in tears. I wasn’t quite sure what had just happened.  It took a few minutes before she could talk again. And then she explained:

“You have no idea the story behind that quilt. The man whose wife made it died just a month ago. And the quilt wasn’t supposed to be sold. It was a family heirloom, and the family has been frantically looking for it, and I wasn’t able to find your information.”

My heart sank a little at first because I knew that meant that they would want it back. And then I began to think about the odds of what had just transpired:

the odds of me keeping the handwritten note and business card that accompanied the quilt.
the odds of me purchasing something off of eBay and running into the seller at yard sale.
the odds of going to the yard sale.
the odds of ever meeting someone from a transaction on eBay!
the odds of the seller looking for me and me showing up at her front door by chance.
the odds of recognizing the business card and making the connection.
the odds of a family looking for a lost quilt and having it show back up again.

This was not just a coincidence. How could something like this be a coincidence? It definitely wasn’t coincidence.

I gave the woman my contact information and told her to just pass it along to the family and that I would work something out with them.

I didn’t hear from the family for a while, but last week I had a voicemail from the granddaughter. When I called her back she told me the story of how the quilt had gone missing and I think she was probably surprised at how quickly my answer was: well, if it’s your family’s quilt then you should have it back.

It was a quick answer because of course I’d had a few weeks to think about it, but really I had known  from the first moment I learned it was lost that I would have to return it. I’d prayed about it the same night and woke up knowing it wasn’t really my quilt anymore. As much as I loved that quilt, as much as I loved its detail, as much as I loved that it had come from a place called Gingercake, and as much as I thought it was the greatest treasure find I’d ever come across…I knew it wasn’t meant to stay with me.  It wasn’t meant to be my quilt.

At first Boo was a little upset about the idea of returning it. And really the same thoughts that went through her head had gone through mine too: I found it and bought it. I’ll never find another one like it. Finders keepers, right? But Boo and I talked about what it would be like for something we cared very much about to go missing. How it was just a thing to us. And how much the family would be comforted to get it back.

When we’d returned from Linville Boo was in the living room when I walked in to pick up the quilt. And when I was carefully folding it up, to set it aside in anticipation of the family eventually contacting us, she said:

I think the quilt should go back to its real family. 

And today it did.

 

 

Because of Your Short Hair

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It’s always going to be there. I keep thinking I can leave it behind.

Last week I told Boo I was going to be at her end of the year party. And she asked me not to. But then she said, “but Daddy can go.” Insert knife to heart. When I asked her why she didn’t want me to go she said:

because of your short hair.

Me: Why does it matter that I have short hair?
Boo: Because the kids ask: why does your mom have short hair?
Me: And what do you tell them?
Boo: Because she had cancer.

She thought my hair was short because of cancer still. As if it didn’t grow anymore. I told her that my hair is short now because I just choose to keep it that way. And then we came up with a handful of answers she could use instead like:

Maybe the same reason you have short hair?

Because she’s lazy.

Oh her? No idea who she is.

But seriously when I thought about it, the truth is that I am lazy. Lazy about hair. I don’t want to spend time doing my hair. I can get ready in 5 minutes flat and no hair dryer needed, ever. But yes sometimes I do wish I had my long, flowing locks, but I’m not sure I’m ready to give up the freedom I have without them yet.

And I realized that there are things that my daughter will forever attach to cancer. Like the loss of my hair. She doesn’t remember about the hospitals, or the surgeries or anything else. But she remembers my hair. And so I’m torn just for that reason on keeping it short.

beforeafter

And then I realized along with the hair that I’d also never really fully recovered physically. So, last week, I took a big step and signed up for Crossfit.  And I signed Brett up too because we can go together first thing in the morning. And we already know 95% of the people there, because it’s a very small town. And yes it’s a little intimidating but I’ll make up my own rules like I always do. The sign that said “no water breaks” on the wall? I broke that rule 5 minutes in. I think it’s going to be really fun…except for snatches. I definitely won’t do a lot of snatches.  I’ll be taking water breaks during snatch time. Yeah, you can’t make me. I’ll throw a silent tantrum. Plus I can’t stop laughing at the word snatch…just like I can’t stop giggling when someone says the word beaver, or balls. I had to say the word penis the other day at the vet and I almost choked trying to hold the laughter in.

Maybe one day I’ll mature. A little. And maybe I’ll grow my hair back out. And maybe I’ll be able to climb up a flight of stairs without being winded.

Speaking of beavers, I tried repeatedly to save 2 baby beavers last week. They kept trying to cross the road. When someone asked me what I was doing on the side of the turn to Deep Creek I told them:

I’m saving baby beavers!

I was even going to make a sign that said: watch out for the baby beavers.

And then they turned out to be groundhogs.

Honest mistake because I swear this sign has a groundhog on it, not a beaver:

beaver

 

Dang. I have no idea how beavers hijacked what was supposed to be a slightly-serious post.

P.S. Let me know if you have any other answers Boo can use. My snark ran out.

 

The Poetry of Earth

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This weekend we spent a lot of time outdoors. Brett teaching Boo about her paddle on Fontana Lake:

paddleboarding2

Bryson City Outdoors (BCO) has paddle boards you can rent right at the Finger Lake.  Brett, tiny Maximus, and one of Brett’s BCO partners Ben and his dog Lager:

paddleboarding

When Brett was about 10 feet away from shore Max jumped in and swam for it with an audience watching from shore. I’d say he’s a brave little guy…but really I think he’s more crazy.

Yesterday we hiked to Andrews Bald. The drive up 441 to get there is pretty amazing in itself (it starts at Clingman’s Dome):

drive up

It’s about a 3.8 mile hike roundtrip. A little rocky in places but a great moderate hike for almost any level if you take your time. I love the balds because you can see for miles and miles, there are no trees obstructing the view. Sometimes I can’t believe places like this exist, pretty much untouched by humans except for the narrow trails we’ve left:

grassybald

Logging the hike in our “nature” journal:

journal

I keep a journal because I’ve found that if I have the intention of writing things down I see more. My mind looks for ways to describe a place to someone else. I love this line from  John Keats:

thepoetryofearth

I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but my own takeaway is that the earth is itself poetry. This place has been pretty much the same for thousands if not millions of years. It will outlive us all a million times over (unless we get sucked into a black hole filled with asteroids.)

Sometimes I’ll pick up a rock or a flower or notice a new tree or animal and wonder: What if I’d never seen this? And it starts a continuous process of looking a second time, and then a third and soon I’m pulling apart a patch of clovers to see what world lives underneath that I may have been missing. And there’s a whole world underneath. 

When I was younger I wanted to be a forest ranger. At some point that dream was shifted and molded into a career path that wasn’t necessarily my own. Not that I want to be a forest ranger now, but isn’t it an odd thing how we shift our innocent, passionate young dreams into what we think will be more acceptable and secure?

All the big people are simple, as simple as the unexplored wilderness. They love the universal things that are free to everybody. Light and air and food and love and some work are enough. In the varying phases of these cheap and common things, the great lives have found their joy…so simple we are, so little we want, we are wise and will get what we want… -Carl Sandburg, in a letter to his wife 

And then today I’m sitting outside with my dogs because I can’t feel good about myself if they are locked inside staring out the window. And there’s the drone of a yellow jacket hovering nearby and I’ve decided to be a little more tolerant because there must be some use for the yellow jacket right?  I can’t think of one but surely there is some important task for the yellow jacket. I’ve slowed my pace of life and I wonder if it’s possible to gain momentum while simultaneously slowing down? I remember learning in school, maybe in physics, that it takes like 25 miles for an aircraft carrier to stop moving because of the force.

Anyway, onto some kind of point here. If you’ve never visited a bald…you need to. Because when you get there you’ll stand above the whole world and I think you’ll get it. And maybe you’ve felt that before. Up in those kinds of high mystical places, or maybe it was on a long stretch of white beach. My friend Jodi calls it a whoosh.  I think it’s where fear and hope and reverence and joy all collide at once.

And sometimes, like poetry, you can even find little galaxies of stars there:

galaxies

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