Grandma’s Quilts on the Clotheslines

Year by Year

It went on like that. A Lone Star from 2001, with curtains from the old kitchen before Grandpa remodeled. A Double Wedding Ring from 2004, the year my cousin got married, pieced from the extra fabric of the bridesmaids’ dresses.

Then there was the Bear’s Paw. She did not say anything for a second when we got to it. The wind lifted it, and the red plaid square from Grandpa’s chore shirt showed in the sun.

“Two thousand nine,” she said. “Harvey died in April. I didn’t know what to do with his shirts. I couldn’t give them away, and I couldn’t look at them in the closet. So I cut them up.”

Nobody said a word. Even the teenagers went still.

“It was the best winter’s work I ever did,” Grandma said. “It got me through.”

The Winter of the Dry Summer

Farther down the second line there was a quilt that looked a little different from the others. The colors were softer, more washed out, and some of the squares had faint printing still showing through.

“Two thousand twelve,” Grandma said. “The dry summer. Harvey was gone and the beans burned up in the field and I didn’t feel like spending a dime on fabric.”

“So what did you use?” asked one of the teenage great-grandkids, a tall boy who had been quiet all morning.

“Feed sacks,” Grandma said. “Old ones, from my mother’s day, out of the attic. And dish towels. Every bit of that quilt is something that was already in this house.”

The boy walked up and looked at it close. “You can still read the mill name on that one,” he said.

“Sure you can,” said Grandma. “That’s how you know it’s honest.”

Lori Comes

It was a little after eleven when I saw Lori’s car turn in at the end of the drive.

She parked out by the road, behind everyone else, and sat in the car a while. Then she got out and walked up the grass, slow. She did not come to the lines. She stopped by the corner of the barn and stood there with her arms crossed.

Stu walked over and stood beside her. He did not say anything that I could see. He just stood there with her.

Grandma saw her. I watched her see her. Grandma did not call out, and she did not wave, and she did not stop telling the story she was in the middle of.

Nobody brought up the sale. Nobody said a word to Lori about the feed sacks or the twenty dollars. I had talked to my mother about it the night before, and we had agreed: today was not about that.

The Choosing

When Grandma had told the story of every single quilt, it was nearly noon. The sun was high and the wind was still steady, and all thirty-one quilts were still lifting and falling on the lines.

“All right,” Grandma said. “Youngest first. Babies get help from their mamas.”

The babies went first, carried down the lines, and their mothers picked for them.