The Thursdays I Owed My Mother

Hand Quilting

That was the Thursday we started on the baby quilt.

Mom had been saving scraps of the Dresden Plate, blue and yellow wedges from Dad’s work shirts and her own housedresses, folded in a Hy-Vee bag. She meant to make a small quilt for Kayla Dunn’s baby, and she meant to have me stitch it.

“I can’t sew,” I said. “I ripped out every seam I ever made.”

“Then you’ll be good at the ripping,” said my mother, and handed me a needle. She put her hands over mine the way Dad used to, and I thought of the rag and the runner.

“Small. Even. Don’t hurry. The thread tells you how much it wants.”

My first row looked like a drunk had walked across it. I ripped it out. I did it again. The third time Mom studied the row and said, “That one’s honest.”

We did a row every Thursday. Between stitches she told me things nobody ever told me. That she’d held Wanda stiff as a board, afraid to drop her, and held me looser, and had been trying ever since to make up the difference.

“I thought you liked Wanda better,” I said, and could not believe I’d said it aloud at fifty-six.

“I leaned on Wanda. That’s not the same as liking better. You lean on the fence post that’s there.” She pulled a thread through. “You were always already gone, off with your plans. I missed you forty years and called it being proud.”

I put the needle down. I pretended I had dropped it.

One Thursday in August Kayla had a dentist appointment and brought Ellis on the wrong day, and there we were, three women and a baby in a room with one chair. She put him in my arms without asking.

I said, “I’m sorry about the chair. I’m the one who sold it to you.”

“I know who you are, Mrs. Soames.” She sat on the bed beside me. “Your sister paid me back, and brought me a glider from the co-op besides. I’d say we’re even. But I’ll take another apology if you’ve got one.”

I gave her one. She smiled, and Mom, from the rocker, said, “Don’t wake him.”