Love Is All Around

 

Today as I was working on a quilt for a couple celebrating an anniversary I am struck by the memories of love.  How amazing love is between two people, how we all hunger for finding the one and how sacred the bond is.  Each wedding quilt and anniversary quilt I work on blesses me.  New love with all its possibilities.  Everything is waiting for them on the journey of love.  Building a life together, buying a home, creating a family. Celebrated love, the years of dedication and work, the family they’ve built, the bridges they have learned to build and trust between each other.  I try when building their quilts to think of their journeys and weave and stitch blessings and well wishes into each one.  May the always find ways to feel love in a new and exciting way, way they find comfort in each others arms when the world seems to be tumbling all around them, may their children and families be blessed by their love.  May they know a love as deep and real as my parents shared.

My father loved my mother deeply until the day he took his last breath. When my mother passed before him I didn’t honestly believe he could survive without her, but I humbly asked him to stick around a little longer for me, and he did.  I will be eternally grateful for the time I had with him in his last year.  They were a love destined by the stars to find each other.  The first time my father saw my mother he knew she would be his wife and he would love no other.  They were married less then six weeks later.  They had over 50 years together.  They traveled the road all lovers’ travel, with highs and lows but through it all they were joined together in a bond no one could deny.  My parents loved to dance and often people would stand back and give them the floor when they were dancing because they were so beautiful to watch together, flowing and in perfect rhythm with each other, never a missed step. 

My father had a love of poetry and would leave my mother little love notes hidden through out the house where someday she might find them.  In a book she might open or at the bottom of the flour canister because she loved to bake.  Each one dated and each expressing his love.  When he passed away and I was cleaning out their trailer, I found just such a note hidden away in her tea tin.  It was dated several years back but I know the words he wrote to be as true then as they were the day I found them.  I placed those words in a pair of shoes on a desert mountainside the night I spread their ashes on a trail they loved to hike.  As I watched the ashes drift to the top in swirling wisps I could see them dancing together into the heavens.  My mother and father together again and for always, watching out over the family they had created. 

So to each client I have the honor of building a quilt for, to celebrate their love, I place a seed of the love my parents shared in hopes that one day in the far distant future they find themselves dancing into the heavens together as well.