I’m finishing up my last load of laundry. My laundry. In my
busy household, I always seem to be the last one to sneak a load into the washer.
I work from home. Yoga pants or shorts and a comfy t-shirt are as fancy as I
dress most days, so I rarely need first dibs on the washer and dryer. My
teenage girls can’t tell the difference between the clean and dirty clothes on
their floors, so they just throw it ALL in, rushing to launder what they need
for school or more exciting vacations than I’m taking. My husband, a typical
engineer, does his own laundry methodically each and every Sunday, and I don’t
want to mess with a good thing. My mother has a small wardrobe and needs her
laundry done more regularly than I do.
When I finally get a chance to wash my own clothes, I hang
my shirts to dry. It means one less step in the process—not to mention they last
longer when they’re not tossed around in a hot dryer. And though I only manage a
few loads in the space of a month, I still gaze with dismay—and even a little
bit of awe—at the number of well-worn t-shirts hanging in the doorways of my
laundry room, bedroom, and bathroom.
This is a LOT of shirts. I’m venturing a guess they number between
thirty and forty. Wow. Thirty to forty shirts?
And I wouldn’t wear most of them in public beyond a fast chauffeur run or to
walk the dogs in the dark.
Yet, as I contemplate pruning a few for the giveaway pile, I
find myself unable to do it. First, these shirts are worn just right. Second, though
everyone else’s laundry trumps mine, I’ll never have to resort to scratching
splattered spaghetti sauce from the front of a shirt and wearing it one more
time.
But there is nothing special about any one of them.
I admit it. I am that girl. I am the one who struggles to
throw anything away—even worn-out clothing with no sentimental value. I’m not
sure why. Perhaps it’s the result of growing up in a household that struggled
financially. I was buying my own clothing by the time I was 11 or 12 with money
I earned babysitting. It was how I avoided decade-old hand-me-downs from distant
cousins or fashion disasters from the discount racks at Woolworth’s or K-Mart.
Still, I still don’t quite comprehend this often-unreasonable need to hold onto
things.
I pause to catch my breath after shifting so many fresh-smelling
shirts from the doorways to my closet, and then my gaze drops to what lurks in
the corner of the laundry room—the miscellaneous items that don’t quite fit with
the regular loads but never seem to get washed on their own. They simply wait there
for someone to take notice, gathering dust until the pile threatens to topple
over.
The top item in the heap is a small, old-fashioned, pink and blue baby quilt. At first, I’m horrified to see it there. After being buried in
the pile for who knows how many months, apparently, it has finally risen to the
top. It’s ragged and speckled with stains of unknown origin—not to mention
dappled with dryer lint.
Why is it here? Who placed it in the pile? Me? One of my
teenagers? Perhaps my husband moved it here from another pile, not knowing
exactly what to do with it.
I carry it to my bedroom where I lift it up and hold it out
for a gander. Then I look closer. This detail, I knew before, but today, it takes
on new significance.
This baby quilt isn’t just any quilt. It’s old. It’s ripped.
It’s stained.
And inside it is another baby quilt.
Apparently, my grandmother made the original one for my mother
when she was a baby. When it began to wear, Grandma pieced and sewed another.
However, instead of quilting fresh batting into the new cover, she simply
dropped the old quilt down inside, sewed it closed, and tacked it together with
bits of yarn at the corners of the individual pieces.
Why? Maybe that was the norm. The quilt originated, after
all, in the days of “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
Or . . . maybe not.
Maybe, like me, and like so many in my family, my
grandmother was a keeper of things. Maybe she couldn’t bear to part with the
old quilt, made by hand for her baby girl, but couldn’t think of any other
purpose for it, so she hid it inside something new.
I spread the quilt across my bed. I smooth its worn surface
and then reach down inside to run my fingers over the older stitching there. I think
about my family and the way we keep things, and the way we keep passing them
down, even if they are ragged and dusty and don’t seem to serve any purpose beyond
reminding us of earlier days.
And then I think about how we do the same thing with our stories.
Some folks I know don’t seem to have the same repertoire of family lore my
family has. They also have neater and cleaner houses and a lot less junk. When
I mention writing Calling Me Home
based on a bit of family lore, some folks look fascinated, but not particularly
inspired. And when I mention thinking through the new story, they probably
wonder why I don’t leave the many bits of family history that might make their
way into my manuscript safely in the past.
Though I really must
sort through my shirts soon and discard what I don’t need, I suspect my struggle
to let go may be innate. Maybe it has something to do with my DNA, with my
family’s compulsion to keep things—not least of all, the stories, to pass them,
along with a ragged, double-quilted baby blanket, from generation to
generation.
Perhaps some of us were born to be the keepers of things and
the keepers of the stories.
