Traditions, Memories, and Legacy
What are the most vivid memories from your childhood? People, events, experiences? While I have a lot of early memories – riding a train from Missouri to California, meeting my little sister for the first time – many of my memories involve my parents and grandparents and siblings. Traditions, memories, and legacy.
The way Grandpa looked in his overalls and that he could stand on his head. The way Grandma’s kitchen smelled of fried chicken and dinner rolls. Hours spent watching her arthritic hands glide with thread and needle over the quilt frame creating beautiful treasures. Wondering at the secrets held in her big wicker sewing basket.
Mom sitting at the sewing machine making Barbie doll clothes for my doll. The memory of her teaching me how to cut out my own doll clothes and using her sewing machine. I was in kindergarten. We would macramé plant hanger after plant hanger. We had a big hook in the kitchen archway just for that. (Didn’t everyone?) She taught me to sew, to crochet, to hem pants, to embroider, to cook, to macramé, and on and on. It wasn’t anything special. We didn’t call it crafting. It just was.
I guess I was a creator way back then. Experimenting, trying, dreaming.
Creating something from our imaginations.
Constructing forts, building tree houses, digging holes in the garden to see how big I could dig, making caves in the huge snow drifts in our driveway, making tunnels in the haybarn, and so much more. l was building and drawing and sewing and crocheting and creating. Everything was an experiment. Let me try to see what I might create.
Curlers in a line.
The olden days
Many of you will have memories of Grandma or Mom or Aunt Betty quilting, canning summer fruit and vegetables, crocheting those wonderful doilies, and so much more. Those memories created treasures. The quilts, the doilies, the crochet hooks and thimbles, the canning jars. This is what we see and remember. We hold those things dear because of these memories, the time we spent watching and learning. It is their legacy that lives on in our memories. It is the physical part of them that brings their memory to life.
Grandma working her magic with a needle and thread.
For me, it is the action of doing the things that bring back the memories. Taking time to sew, crochet, paint takes me to a place in my past but it also helps me enjoy my present. These are the things we can do to enjoy our time. Maybe we have never done these things before but it is the fun of trying, experimenting. With the cold cold weather and Covid keeping us all isolated and inside, now is the perfect time to try something new.
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