Crazy Quilt

At times I am lazy and self-centered and think all the home-based life skills Robin and I are trying to teach the kids are things we've come to ourselves.

This is nonsense of course. We learned them. At home. From our parents.

One of the things I learned at home, as a very little kid, was to sew. Besides just learning to mend, my mom had each of us (yes the boys too) go shop for a pattern, then cut and sew a complete shirt. They were simple shirts, but they were shirts we wore. Pretty cool.

All these years later, millions of meals later, and I thought the skill my mom would reach for more and more would be cooking. She is a culinary genius of a jazz sort. She clearly has lots of deep fundamental strength and a wonderful sense of improvisation and personal style. She does cook more in a week than most of us do in a couple of months. But that's not really where her creative expression has taken shape.

It seems it's the sewing she's come to. And nicely enough, so has my sister...at the same time. So now they sew. Together and apart.

Lately they're both quilters...of different sorts, and at the same time the same sort...or they sort that out. And we get stuff stuffed with stuff.

So I laid down the law and demanded real quilts. Not quilted stuff, but quilts. One for each of us. My sister got the jump on my mom, mostly 'cause mom's still cooking at the same time. And writing. Dang.

Izzy got his quilt today. He got kinda wrapped up in it first thing. It's crazy and beautiful. Just like my sister and my mom.