The Fabric of My Life

Inspired by Anne Frank and her dear "Kitty," I started keeping a diary in 6th grade. Anne wrote lofty observations about humanity, I tracked my progress towards getting a bra. ("FD" being my very secret code for "further development.")   

I continued through junior high, chronicling my yearnings for that first kiss and my fury at how Cheri acted at Gayle's bat mitzvah. It kept up through high school, college, and all the years thereafter. The outside of each book reflected every stage and pretention of my life but the inside...well, it always held the most honest of words.

 It was exactly these Most Honest of Words that started to weigh on me in recent years. I had made the grave mistake of reading through bits and pieces of my brother's journals in cleaning out his stuff after his sudden death and I became very worried about my own legacy. Thoughts captured in a rage or hormonal flux could really sting innocent eyes and so, several years ago, I ripped out the worst offenders ...

 and ceremonially fed them to the firepit. Now, this winter, in my general purging of Stuff, I began to feel that 40 years of carting these books around was getting pretty old. I sat with that and yesterday, I decided that I no longer needed them.  Baskets overflowing with endless chronicling of moods, fallings in love and breakings apart, psychic restlessness and question after question after question...ugh.

The pages bored me. They had little to do with who I am now and boy, do they take up room.   Firepit, here we come. Until...

Until I found something incredible.

Tucked between the ramblings were the tenderest of young girl moments...

the Dear John Julie letter, complete with tear stains...

The sage words of my new college roommate, so new that I wasn't sure how to spell her last name...a perfect chronicle of the birth of a 40-year friendship (I SEE YOU CRYING, J) :

The frantic agony of just trying to grow up...

The joy of getting there. 

 I found a heart that was wide open...

And a joi de vivre that I really like.

So, here's what I know. The ramblings still bore me.  But beneath them, I now see the history, the heart, the spirit that is me. Words are the warp and the weft of my life and so these old pages, well, they are like the lacy handkerchiefs and yellowed linens tucked in your grandma's dresser (mine had receipts for gold coins and old Dear Abby columns).  Over at Spirit Cloth, Jude Hill teaches us to look for story in fabric, especially the old ones.  And to make a cloth with meaning.  And so here it is...my latest quilt, made from the fabric of my life.

The story of me. Without the dirty parts.