Blog Challenge #2 - Best Present Ever
This week's challenge is to write about the best gift you've ever received. As usual, I gotta give a little background before I can tell you what the actual gift was.
When I was 3, my mother sent me from Dallas to Kansas City to live with my grandparents. She was an extremely young mother, and while working three jobs to support us, she was unable to devote any time to actually raising me.
My grandparents were career people, so I ended up spending most of my young life with my great-grandmother, whom I lovingly referred to as "Mommom." We spent every afternoon together - she would greet me as I got off the bus, take care of my afternoon snack, help me with my homework.. our worlds revolved around each other.
In the evenings, she would sit in her white rocking chair and knit or watch television or read, and she had this stash of blankets - you know, like the kind they give you in the hospital, the white ones - that she kept under the cushion. She'd pull them out while she sat and rocked and she'd lay them over her lap to keep the chill away.
My Mommom was married in 1929, so shortly after she was married the Great Depression hit. This influenced how she lived the rest of her life - she was incapable of throwing away food. She used things until they were completely worn out. The same was true with these blankets.
She died when I was 11, and her belongings got scattered from relative to relative. I ended up with quite a few of her trinkets and treasures, and have carried them with me since.
When I was 19 and getting ready to get married (or so I thought), my mother gave me a quilt for Christmas. I was SO excited to get something as special as a handmade quilt from my mother - what a precious, precious gift. As I unfolded it, she explained that she had taken the blankets from under the cushion of my Mommom's chair and used them for stuffing in the quilt. She said that they were completely threadbare - there was absolutely nothing she could do to save them, but she couldn't bear to throw them away, so she put them inside the quilt that she made me.
I used that quilt so much that the seams started tearing within a couple of years. Actual use is really hard on a hand-sewn quilt, I found. Finally, I washed it, folded it, and put it away in my hope chest. I didn't want to destroy it, and hoped that I would be able to pass it down to my grandchildren one day.
When I went into the hospital to have Zion, I took the quilt with me. It had been in my hope chest for two or three years at that point, but I knew I wanted it there with me. I was induced in the morning, and my mom arrived shortly after that. She saw the quilt laying at my feet, and picked it up and examined the torn seams. Excusing herself, she asked if anyone needed anything from the store, and promised to return soon.
When she came back, she had a sewing kit she had purchased. My mom sat in the rocking chair next to my bed and repaired all of the torn seams on my favorite quilt, so it would be in perfect condition with Zion arrived.
After Zion was born, my mom gave me my baby blanket. It was made of t-shirt Jersey material, because when I was born, she worked in a t-shirt factory. My blanket was a quilt of all different Snoopy t-shirts she had sewn together - my Mommom had put the binding around the outside of the blanket and "embellished" it a little.
Those are my two best presents - I lumped them together into one entry, so I cheated. They're of equal importance to me, though, and I hope you enjoyed hearing about them.
When I was 3, my mother sent me from Dallas to Kansas City to live with my grandparents. She was an extremely young mother, and while working three jobs to support us, she was unable to devote any time to actually raising me.
My grandparents were career people, so I ended up spending most of my young life with my great-grandmother, whom I lovingly referred to as "Mommom." We spent every afternoon together - she would greet me as I got off the bus, take care of my afternoon snack, help me with my homework.. our worlds revolved around each other.
In the evenings, she would sit in her white rocking chair and knit or watch television or read, and she had this stash of blankets - you know, like the kind they give you in the hospital, the white ones - that she kept under the cushion. She'd pull them out while she sat and rocked and she'd lay them over her lap to keep the chill away.
My Mommom was married in 1929, so shortly after she was married the Great Depression hit. This influenced how she lived the rest of her life - she was incapable of throwing away food. She used things until they were completely worn out. The same was true with these blankets.
She died when I was 11, and her belongings got scattered from relative to relative. I ended up with quite a few of her trinkets and treasures, and have carried them with me since.
When I was 19 and getting ready to get married (or so I thought), my mother gave me a quilt for Christmas. I was SO excited to get something as special as a handmade quilt from my mother - what a precious, precious gift. As I unfolded it, she explained that she had taken the blankets from under the cushion of my Mommom's chair and used them for stuffing in the quilt. She said that they were completely threadbare - there was absolutely nothing she could do to save them, but she couldn't bear to throw them away, so she put them inside the quilt that she made me.
I used that quilt so much that the seams started tearing within a couple of years. Actual use is really hard on a hand-sewn quilt, I found. Finally, I washed it, folded it, and put it away in my hope chest. I didn't want to destroy it, and hoped that I would be able to pass it down to my grandchildren one day.
When I went into the hospital to have Zion, I took the quilt with me. It had been in my hope chest for two or three years at that point, but I knew I wanted it there with me. I was induced in the morning, and my mom arrived shortly after that. She saw the quilt laying at my feet, and picked it up and examined the torn seams. Excusing herself, she asked if anyone needed anything from the store, and promised to return soon.
When she came back, she had a sewing kit she had purchased. My mom sat in the rocking chair next to my bed and repaired all of the torn seams on my favorite quilt, so it would be in perfect condition with Zion arrived.
After Zion was born, my mom gave me my baby blanket. It was made of t-shirt Jersey material, because when I was born, she worked in a t-shirt factory. My blanket was a quilt of all different Snoopy t-shirts she had sewn together - my Mommom had put the binding around the outside of the blanket and "embellished" it a little.
Those are my two best presents - I lumped them together into one entry, so I cheated. They're of equal importance to me, though, and I hope you enjoyed hearing about them.
posted by SevenHappyScrappers at 10:02 AM
4 Comments:
That's really sweet.
Sara that is so awesome to have a quilt with your mommom's blankets inside! I would cherish a blanket like that forever. I have many quilts and afghans that many of my relatives have made all safely tucked away. But my most cherished momento from my grandma was a Lord's Prayer plate that hung in my grandma's kitchen and that is how I memorized the Lord's Prayer by reading that plate over and over when I was little. Well that is the one thing I wanted from Grandma's house after she died and my mom gave it to me. It hung in my diningroom since I received it 20 years ago. At Christmas time, I take everything off the walls and hang up Christmas decorations. When it was time to put the Christmas decorations up and get out the normal stuff...well I accidentally dropped my grandma's plate on the basement floor! I sat clutching the broken pieces in my hands and cried like it was my grandma that died not a broken plate. I cried for so long that the kids were upset and finally went and got Jeff. He just held me in his arms and let me cry and cry until there were no more tears left in me. This happened after Christmas of 2004. I was so upset that the minute I called my mom to tell her what I'd done well the tears flowed freely again. I cried so hard into the phone I couldn't hardly talk. Mom kept trying to comfort me and tell me it was just a plate but it didn't help. I knew it was a plate but it represented my grandma and so many memories of being in grandma's kitchen with her. Gosh, I'm getting teary eyed now just thinking about my lost plate. Mother's day last year, my mom gave me a plate that was almost exactly but not quite a perfect match to the one that was grandma's. Mom had gone to the antique malls and looked until she found something as close as possible to grandma's plate. Mom was right, after receiving the new plate I realized that the plate is just a plate. Mom's plate had no meaning to me but was special because she tried so hard to mend a broken heart. It wasn't the plate I mourned and missed but my grandma. So the best gift I ever received in my life was the love my grandma showered on me. She taught me to sew, cross stitch, do ceramics, etc...the best gift my grandma gave to me was the love of working with my hands to make beautiful things!
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