the quilt

If you've never read "Pearl", a tribute post to my maternal Grandma, it lends a great introduction to this post.

When I was designing and implementing the renovations of this house, the stairway was one area that I felt must be reworked, for a few different reasons.  One was pretty obvious... it had a sloped ceiling that was originally built like a funnel.  Yes, a funnel.  It was wider at the top of the stair and head clearance decreased as you came down the stairs... to the point that I had to duck my head at the bottom of the stair.  Structurally, it was a pretty big challenge to rework the head-banging header at the bottom of the stair to maximize headroom and still adequately support the floor above.  Additionally, the only place for a closet in the bedroom above the foyer, was to extend it (with a stepped floor in the closet) out into the stairwell.  It wasn't easy, but I pulled it off.  It's still a little tighter at the bottom than I would like, and I could probably still bang my head if I were to try hard enough (maybe sprinting down the steps), but you can only do so much with the "bones" of an old house, it's tons better than it was, and the space is comfortable.  The result (hard to photograph) is this.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  I got artsy and curved the foyer ceiling into the sloped portion where the closet above juts out into the stairwell.

The short sloped section is under the closet in the room above

The artsy curve where the foyer ceiling breaks to the sloped ceiling

The second reason was not so obvious.  The home we owned before this one did not have a sloped ceiling in the stairway, and I liked the openness.  The open stairwell was the perfect place, devoid of direct sunlight, to hang an art masterpiece... if I owned a masterpiece, that is.  And... it just so happens that I do own such a masterpiece.  I specifically designed "the Gallery" with this masterpiece in mind, to the point of making sure the electrical plan included an eyeball spotlight highlighting the gallery wall.

So, what is the masterpiece that I had in mind for the Gallery?  Glad you asked... let me show you!

Mom to three, Grandma to six and (although she never met any of them) Great-Grandma to fifteen (if I counted correctly), my Grandma Pearl was a pretty simple, homespun lady.  She mostly wore dresses, nicer ones to church and "house dresses" for everyday, the majority of which she sewed herself.  With her sewing skills, Grandma was also a quilter.  As such, she decided (when I was very young) to make a handmade quilt for each of her grandkids, as an eventual wedding gift.

This was no small undertaking.  No two of these six quilts were alike, and every stitch in them is hand-stitched with love.  My Grandma has hours and hours invested in each quilt.  As she finished them, she stitched a small hand-written note in the corner of the underside, which contained the grandchild's name, her name, the quilt name, and the date finished.  She then stored them away for our future weddings.

She pretty much finished them in birth order.  Just to document how much time she invested in these quilts... I am the second oldest grandchild, and mine, the "bowtie quilt", is marked as "finished 1980"... I was twelve in 1980!

The Bowtie Quilt

The really cool thing for the grandkids is that, although she bought fabric for the "background" color, many of the other squares (the bowties, in my case) are remnants of other sewing projects... many of them the dresses she wore.  The photo below, for example, is the fabric from one of the house dresses I distinctly remember her wearing very often.  I don't think she had any way of knowing how priceless these gifts would become... priceless masterpieces!

Notice the stitching... 100% hand-stitched with love!

The tragic part of this story is that my Grandma lost a valiantly fought battle to cancer in 1985... before she had the opportunity to present any of these wedding gifts.  I was going into my senior year of high school.  She managed to complete five of the six before her death.  The sixth one was partially completed, but sadly, she just ran out of steam before she could get it completed.  My youngest cousin had to enlist the help of a surrogate quilter to honor the memory of my Grandma, by finishing what she began.

So, this morning, I placed the masterpiece in the Gallery... the spot in my home that was specifically designed to display my Grandma's quilt.  I'm pretty sure Grandma would be humbly honored to know that her handiwork is prominently displayed in the Gallery. 

Miss you, Grandma... thanks for the memories!

"The Bowtie Quilt" at home in the Gallery

"The Bowtie Quilt" under lights in the Gallery

Andy

"Dang, Pearl, let's go home." The story of Pearl is not complete, without introducing you to Andy, my maternal Grandpa. At first glance, he might have easily been stereotyped as a typical crotchety old man. But, there was much more below that exterior.

Grandpa was mostly an introverted home-body, who's nerves were easily "jangled", as evidenced by the opening quote. There were times, though, when he would come out of his introverted shell and could be quite a ham. In fact, Andy was not his real name. Years before I ever knew him, he and his brother acted out an Amos and Andy vaudeville act. While nobody ever remembered his brother as Amos, the name "Andy" stuck to my Grandpa for life. It must have been some performance!

Grandpa drove a used, turquoise, American Rambler, with his hands on the wheel at eleven and one o'clock and his thumbs meeting at noon, rarely over 40 MPH, and often with the driver's window cracked to let his pipe smoke escape. I don't think he ever left the state in which he was born, and if he did, it was only as far as one neighboring state. One of my favorite Grandpa memories occurred in this American Rambler during one of the summer weeks my brother and I stayed with them. The four of us rode to "town" (about 20 miles) for groceries. As we drove into an intersection with a stop light, a bright red pickup met us from the opposite direction. My Grandma, making conversation, remarked (about the truck), "that's red". My Grandpa, not noticing the truck and thinking she was talking about the stop light, immediately stopped in the intersection, to verify the color of the light. As horns honked and my brother and I giggled in the back seat, Grandma and Grandpa had a VERY quick discussion of trucks and lights, and Grandpa sheepishly eased the Rambler through the intersection. Once his nerves settled down, I think he found the situation amusing. Several times throughout the day, he would look at my brother and I and say, with his gold tooth twinkling, "well, she said it was red!"

Grandpa couldn't read a note of music, but he played the fiddle by ear. My cousins and I loved listening to him play, and we would often pester him to get the fiddle out. He would pretend like he didn't want to, but I think he just enjoyed being coaxed. After several refusals, we would lay off asking him, only to shortly hear the familiar "ting, ting, ting" as he checked the strings. He would then commence to play Turkey in the Straw, Ragtime Annie, or a number of other fiddle tunes. Grandpa's brother played the banjo and his sister-in-law played the accordion, also both by ear. Occasionally, on summer evenings, they would visit and sit around telling old stories and playing music in the backyard for hours. Great memories.

I never remember Grandpa cussing... unless the words, "dang!", "fiddlesticks!", and " ahh, horse manure!" count.

Grandpa was a creature of habit. He always carried a pocket knife. He always ate corn flakes for breakfast, crunching them up to get more in his bowl. He always had to have bread and butter at meals, often dunking it in his coffee. Grandpa was most often found in his worn chair beside the Warm Morning stove, with one leg up over the overstuffed arm, and the coal bucket handy for emptying his pipe ashes. If not there, he may be on the "davenport" with one leg up on the back. Both postures were known as the "Andy Gump Slump".

Sometimes the smallest things make the best memories, and I will close with two such memories. My grandparents bedroom was very large. It had an extra bed that my brother and I usually used when we stayed at their house. Grandma was always up early, but Grandpa would stay in bed much later, usually long after he was awake, occasionally talking to nobody in particular. (I know, people who talk to themselves are sometimes suspect, but it wasn't weird, it was just Grandpa... and besides, we all talk to ourselves sometimes, right? I mean, I do... what? ...WHAT? You mean NOT everyone talks to themselves?) Anyway, most of the time it was just nonsense stuff, some of which I found amusing. The one thing my brother and I still have not forgotten is the morning he was lying in bed , and out of the blue said, "he said his name was Oodle-Doodle... but it didn't start a big fight!" I'm now forty, but my brother and I still say that and laugh! When Grandpa got up, he would never verbally say "good morning". He would hold up one index finger and wait for you to return the greeting. I still do this to my kids and they return the greeting. Sometimes we pass on the oddest things!

Pearl

"I'm dreaming tonight, of a place I love, even more than I usually do..." I had a nostalgic moment this evening that prompted me to write this post that I have contemplated for a while. The opening quote is the intro line to I'll be Home for Christmas. It seemed an appropriate way to begin, since reading this post is likely to have the same effect for my Mom as hearing that song often has... tears.

This evening, I was working in the side of the house that I am renovating (the remodeling area is separated from our current living area). It was just prior to dusk, there was a new snow falling outside, everything was freshly coated in a blanket of white, and I was listening to a radio station that plays all Christmas music. And, that's when it hit me... the smell of chili. My wife was making chili for dinner, and as the smell wafted over to my side of the house, I was suddenly flooded with memories of my Grandma. I stopped working for a few minutes, and as I stood and watched the snow fall outside, it hit me hard just how much I still, at times, miss her, even though many of these memories are over 25 years old. So, for sake of my own nostalgia, let me introduce you to Pearl, my maternal Grandma.


My grandparents lived about 100 miles from our house, in a very small town in a rural area. I don't know that you could call it a town, really. It was identified by a dot and a name on most road atlases, but it was really just a cluster of 25 or 30 homes, a church, and a general store along a single road, nestled in a valley with a creek flowing through it. And, it used to be one of my favorite places on earth.

We visited my grandparents about once a month. We would leave as soon as Dad got off work on Friday and drive the two hours. Grandma never knew exactly when we would arrive, so on many of these Friday evenings, she kept a big pot of chili simmering on the stove for our arrival. It was especially comforting on a cold night to walk in to hugs and warm chili. This explains why tonight's smell of chili triggered the memories. We would usually stay the weekend and leave sometime Sunday, after we went to church with them.

At first glance, many might use words like humble, modest, meager, or even poor to describe the life of my Grandma. I never really noticed, though. True, she didn't have much in a material sense, but I don't ever remember hearing her complain, and I think she lived a richer life than many who have much more.

My Grandparents lived in an older two-story house, built without central heat or indoor plumbing. Well, I guess it did have central heat... the house was heated by a big, brown, Warm Morning coal and wood stove in the center of the living room. Grandma would rise early, before everyone, and read the Bible, or write, in her chair by the stove, while she stoked the fire to heat the house for others to wake. And, in later years, the house had some indoor plumbing. My Dad plumbed the water from the pump in the cellar to a small hot water heater and a kitchen sink he installed for them, so they could stop carrying water in buckets from the cellar. But that was the extent of it... no bathtub, no shower, and yes, they used an outhouse... even on cold days!

My Grandma loved family. She loved our visits. And, she loved cookouts and holidays. On many summer Saturday evenings, she pulled a very basic turquoise-colored charcoal grill out of the shed for a backyard cookout. I mostly remember hot dogs, beans, potato salad, cucumbers in vinegar, tomato slices, red cool-aid, and red jello with bananas; with cousins playing hide-and-seek or Marco Polo in the big backyard until the skeeters started biting. Thanksgiving dinner always found the adults crowded around the table in the kitchen, the cousins at the "kids table" in the living room, a big platter of fried chicken, mashed potatoes with chicken gravy, and noodles.

But, there was always something special about this time of year for me. I loved to go to Grandma's house for Christmas. Her decorations would not be featured on HGTV, but I wish I had some of them now. I remember an inexpensive plastic sign that consisted of the outline of the words "Merry Christmas" in scrolling red letters. It always hung in the front door window. It had been cracked and repaired with scotch tape... but it was always there. I remember bubble lights on the tree. To this day, I LOVE bubble lights and I bought some a few years ago for my tree. And, I remember when Grandma switched from a real tree to an artificial one. The first time she put it together, there were a few extra limbs in the box. Grandma tied the extra limbs into the tree with string (every year), "to make it look more real". Even as a child, it was never really about the presents at Grandma's house. Oh, there were always presents, but they were usually practical, and nothing extravagant or expensive. It's hard to put a finger on it, but it was more about the feeling of being there. I guess Christmas seemed more real at Grandma's house, because it was more about love than gifts.

For many years, my brother and I had the privilege of spending a whole week of summer vacation at my grandparents house. I always got homesick a few hours after my parents dropped us off, but it didn't last long, and I wouldn't trade those memories for anything. My Grandma loved to take walks, but Grandpa would never go with her. We took a walk nearly every evening during those weeks. We would walk to either end of town, where the road crossed the creek, and throw stones and tree limb "boats" in the creek. Once we walked pretty far into the country on a gravel road and an Amish man offered us a ride in his buggy. Grandma politely refused his offer. When he was out of earshot, my brother and I asked her why she turned down a rare opportunity for us all to ride in an Amish buggy, and she reminded us that "you shouldn't ride with strangers"... to which we responded, "but he was Amish".

Finally, the thought that I originally pondered for this blog is the fact that if Grandma were alive today, I think she would have been a blogger. Many of our modern conveniences, like personal computers and the Internet, would have seemed like science fiction to her. But, she would have loved e-mail and blogging. My Mom and my Grandma wrote letters (snail mail) to each other once a week, faithfully, until Grandma's health failed. My Grandma also wrote her "items" every week. She had a job with the newspaper in the small town about 20 miles away. The paper featured her brief column about events that happened in her even smaller town. I don't want to go so far as to say Grandma was nosey, but I have fond memories of Grandma hanging out the front door, holding the door mostly shut behind her with her foot hooked around it so it didn't let in as much cold for Grandpa to grumble about, and looking up or down the street to see what was going on. Not nosey... just being a good reporter! Grandma submitted her items to the paper and she received a complementary subscription to the paper as compensation. I think her items were the forerunner of modern day blogs, but the word "blog" didn't even exist! I often think of her when I peek through a tilted slat on the miniblinds, to see what's happening outside.

I used to drive by their house to reminisce. I quit doing this several years ago. It was too painful. I'm not sure if it still stands today, but the last time I drove by, it had been neglected and was in severe disrepair, along with much of the town. I think, perhaps, the house was condemned. Although the house is a mere shell without my grandparents there, it holds many fond memories for me. Though it was once among my favorite places on earth, I drove out the lower end of town that day, and vowed I would never return. It would have to suffice to return there in my memories, and that is just what I did on this cold evening in December, with snow and chili in the air.