Patchwork

Draped across the foot of my guest bed is a patchwork quilt crafted by my Mamaw’s hands. She would roll over in her grave if she knew I won’t let it be actually “used.” For her, there wasn’t much point in having anything that didn’t have a purpose. But, the quilt is too fragile to allow anyone to “waller” around on the bed with it. It holds too many precious memories.

It’s a blue “pinwheel” pattern on a white muslin background; the white muslin was used because it was the cheapest store-bought material available to her. I would guess that the blue calico once was a bag that enveloped flour or cornmeal. I know the yellow calico that backs the quilt once did, for my Mamaw made me a dress from the same fabric when I was seven years old. My grandmother stitched this simple masterpiece of a quilt from scraps and pieces in her “spare time.”

Examining the fine stitching, I marvel that my grandmother’s gnarled hands could stitch something so precisely. Then, comes the swift realization that her hands were probably still young and strong when she made this in the 1940’s. You see, in my memory, Mamaw’s hands are the “old woman hands;” the hands that resemble the ones at the end of my arms now: thick knuckles twisted from arthritis, with fragile blue veins crisscrossing the backs of her hands like a roadmap of Dallas, and with calluses from years of toil.

My Mamaw long ago went on to the reward she knew waited her on “the other side.” But, once, many long years ago, she was a young woman filled with life and laughter.

I pause to ponder what her life must have been like.

She endured sultry summer days in Texas, with no relief from an air conditioner. My mind’s eye sees her daintily dabbing her brow with one of the flowered handkerchiefs she kept tucked into her ample bosom. She didn’t sweat, for “ladies” do not. She “dew”ed. Ladies, especially good Baptist ones, did not “swear”, either. However Mamaw was known to “swan” often. “I swan, it’s a hot day.” The worst curse she could utter was, “Well I’ll be John Brown!” If you heard that, you knew to get out of the way before she cut a switch off the tree outside the kitchen to swat your legs until you squealed like a stuck pig. Her temper was quick, but it subsided rapidly, too, and life went on.

Each day on that farm in east Texas, she was up before the sun to cook a hearty breakfast for the men in her life. It was breakfast “from scratch;” no boxed cereal for her men. She loaded the table with hickory smoked bacon and ham, fried eggs, grits, homemade biscuits (light and fluffy) with a choice of home-churned butter and fruit or thick cream gravy. No one left her table hungry.

When breakfast was ended, the men went outside to work. Mamaw “warshed” dishes in the sink that her man had built especially for her. Because she was short of stature, my Papaw had built low cabinets to accommodate her so she wouldn’t have to stand on a stool to wash the dishes. She “renched” the dishes, and once they were dried and put away, she went on to other chores that cried for her attention.

Always the first thing, she made every bed in the house. She had to empty the “thunder mugs” beneath the beds (the chamber pots that held “night water”). There wasn’t a toilet in the house in those days. Then she swept the ever-present east Texas sand from the floors throughout. Mamaw dragged the rugs out to the clothesline to beat them with her broom every day.

With the house tidy, she could move on to more tasks. She strained the milk, which the men brought in from the barn, through cheesecloth stretched over crockery jars. After the milk was in the icebox, she went out to feed the chickens and gather the eggs.

Then, it was time to draw water to hand wash a load of clothes, run them through the wringer and hang them on the line to dry. By the time all this was done, it was time to prepare the lunch.

Lunch, in the summertime, was the biggest meal of the day, for it was too hot to cook a large meal later in the afternoon. She spent a couple of hours frying chicken in a huge black cast iron skillet, making mashed potatoes with gravy, boiling field peas, corn on the cob, and frying okra. She sliced cantaloupe and fresh tomatoes. There were leftover biscuits and a skillet of fresh cornbread. Maybe there would even be a fresh fruit cobbler if berries were in season.

After that meal, again there were the dishes to tend. It was time to take down the laundry and put it aside to iron the next day. Then, with her bonnet to protect her fair skin, Mamaw went outdoors to work in her garden pulling weeds, watering the plants, and squishing the bugs that threatened her crop. She gathered beans, okra and tomatoes kissed by the sun. Usually she still found time to join her men in the field and toil at their side for a few hours. If not, it was because she was churning butter. But, then the kitchen beckoned.

Supper was easier. Usually there were leftovers. She could slice some more tomatoes and cantaloupe. And, she could put together a bowl of field greens to supplement the meal, along with another skillet of cornbread. Sometimes it was a simple soup that she had simmered all day, or red beans and ham.

After the evening dishes were done, Mamaw often sat with the family on the chairs pulled up on the lawn. Sitting with her feet ankle deep in St. Augustine grass, she hooted and laughed, swapping “yarns” with the family as they snapped beans together, or shaved corn from the cob for her to can the next day.

As darkness fell, the stars popped out, and the fireflies flittered across the sky, she didn’t stay to enjoy the spectacle. It was time to tend to her sewing. Those hands had other work to do. She might be stitching a new dress (created without benefit of a store-bought pattern), or mending a pair of trousers, or piecing together a patchwork quilt; a functional quilt to keep out the bitter chill of the Texas winter which always lurked just around the corner.

My Mamaw’s hands never rested, until they were crossed over her bosom in her coffin. The gnarled and withered hands that I remember once gently held tiny babies and they also strongly gripped an axe to chop wood or a hoe to chop weeds. Those hands milked a cow with ease, stitched exquisite embroidery, and wrung a chicken’s neck with equal grace. Her hands earned every callus and scar and bump in her eighty-some-odd years of living. With those hands, she lovingly stitched together the patchwork of her life.

“A woman’s work is never done,” I sigh, as I rise to do my chores. “I have so many things to do. I must take the clothes out of the dryer and pop a meal in the microwave so I can play a game of mahjongg on the computer.”

Other posts you might enjoy:

1. Wordless Wednesday—Mamaw’s Patchwork Quilt
2. Not Rough As A Cob
3. Garlic Is Indeed A Tuber, But Should It Be In A Tube?
4. Sshh! It’s A Secret!
5. Titillation Part Two

Tagged as: Mamaw, Memories, patchwork quilt