Kittens and Quilting

When we were children, grandparents were those wonderful but unknown people who fed us M&Ms even when Mom said "no." They bought us presents and made Little Smokies for breakfast. As we got older, they taught us how to quilt and how to be patient. They took us for car rides and tractor rides and airplane rides.

Once in a while, something happens that reminds us that our grandparents are mortal. When I was nine, my grandmother and I got in a car accident. We were on our way to a nearby city, and a man in a hurry ran a stop sign going about 45 mph and ran into the drivers' side of the car just behind the front tire. In those days, we only had drivers' side airbags, and my grandmother's deployed. Sitting in the ditch in the car, I couldn't breathe. My lungs were filled with airbag dust. My grandmother told me to open my door, which I did. I was relieved to find that air immediately filled my lungs. In the end, my grandma had a sprained ankle and I had a bruise. Incidents like this remind us that grandparents are human.

This year, the greater part of two decades after that car accident, my aunt and I went to visit my grandparents. We took a video camera and caught on film the stories that have been told in our family forever. What struck me most, though, was not the stories. While the stories are amazing and valuable because they are part of my heritage, my grandparents are even more wonderful.

My grandmother has has been quilting since she was a child. It is wonderful to see how much she enjoys it, and how much a part of her the art has become. There is truly an art and a science to choosing the correct pattern, colors, and fabric to reflect the person that the quilt is intended for. Grandma has made hundreds of quilts in her life. She has one on a guest room bed that appears to be very complicated and looks like it should have taken forever. However, quilting is also about geometry and efficiency. If she sews the seams and cuts the blocks in the correct order, with a perfect amount of precision and attention, the quilt is not frustrating but is a beautiful, relaxing, cathartic expression of love.

My grandfather, on the other hand, adopts pets. Several years ago, he adopted a stray dog named Mac. Mac was wonderful; she woke him from deep sleep when his blood sugar was too low and kept him safe. After Mac died, both of my grandparents swore they would never have another pet. But God had other plans. Last winter, on the coldest day of the year, a cat showed up on their stoop. The cat was so cold that it spent about two hours on the heat vent, my grandather reports. They named the cat Jill, and one litter later, they now have Jill and her kittens, Grey Mouse and J.J. They are indoor-outdoor cats, and they jump and play to their hearts' content. It was so fun this past weekend to see how much my grandfather dotes on those half-grown kittens. When we would have put them out of the house, my grandfather insisted that they wanted to stay inside. He was almost child-like in his enjoyment of them!