Grandma’s Quilts on the Clotheslines

The Labels

I had brought a stack of muslin squares, about four inches across, and a fabric pen that would not wash out. My plan was for Grandma to sign a label for each quilt as it was chosen, so whoever took it would always know who made it and when.

I had not thought about her hands.

When I brought her the first label, for the smallest baby’s quilt, Grandma took the pen and tried to write on it on her knee, and the muslin slid and the pen shook so badly that the first letter came out a scribble.

She sat there a second with the pen in the air. I saw her face. She was embarrassed, and Grandma is not a woman who gets embarrassed.

Millie had been standing by the chair the whole time. She did not say anything. She just knelt down in the grass beside the lawn chair and held the square of muslin flat on the arm of the chair with both hands, holding each corner down tight.

“There, Great-Grandma,” she said. “Now it can’t go anywhere.”

Grandma looked at her a long moment. Then she bent over the label and wrote, slow as anything, one letter at a time.

Ida Miller. Winter, 2018. Kalona, Iowa.

When she finished, she put her hand on top of Millie’s head and just left it there for a minute. Nobody watching said a word. I had to turn around and look at the barn.

Gabe

After that, Millie held every single label. She would not let anyone else do it. She knelt in the grass beside that chair for over an hour.

The little ones came next, three and four and five years old, who mostly picked by color and could not be talked out of it.

When it came to Gabe, there was no question. He walked straight to the Bear’s Paw and put his hand on Grandpa’s red plaid square.

“Are you sure?” I asked him. “There’s lots of good ones left.”

“I never met him,” Gabe said. “Great-Grandpa. This is the closest I’m going to get.”

Grandma signed that label very slowly. Ida Miller. Winter, 2009. Kalona, Iowa. And underneath, without anyone asking, she wrote one more line. For Harvey.

Gabe folded it himself, the way I had shown him, and carried it to the car and laid it on the back seat like it was made of glass.

Millie

Then it was Millie’s turn.

She walked all three lines twice. She touched almost every quilt. Then she stopped under a bright one on the second line, a Sunshine and Shadow from 2015, all little squares in reds and yellows and blues going out in rings from the middle.

“This one,” she said. “Because it looks like it’s moving even when it’s not.”

Grandma nodded like that was the best reason she had ever heard. Then Millie knelt back down and held her own label flat. Winter, 2015.

The Grown Children

When the last great-grandchild had chosen, nine quilts were left on the lines. Then Grandma’s children took their turns, oldest first.

My mother picked the quilt from 1999, the one with her cherry pie dress in it. My uncles each picked one. Then one more of my uncles asked if he could take a second one, for his daughter who could not make the trip from Colorado, and Grandma said of course.

That left five quilts on the lines.

Grandma turned in her lawn chair and looked over at the barn.

“Lori,” she said, not loud. “Your turn.”