Genealogical Artifact
7:41 PM
My grandma kept the quilts in an old armoire in the upstairs
bedroom of the cabin. Our cabin was a teeny little place nestled in a grove of
quaking aspen trees up in the Heber Mountains. It really was too small for all
of our extended family to fit comfortably, but we did it anyway. That upstairs
bedroom was for all of the grandkids to sleep in. We would pull out the quilts from
the armoire and spread them out on the floor to sleep on, because we couldn’t
all fit on the bunk bed.
Sometimes we would pile up all of the quilts, the fluffiest pillows,
and the couch cushions at the bottom of the stairs, and then would take turns
sliding down the stairs on a mattress. We could do that for hours and hours.
Even when the quilts and pillows at the bottom of the stairs didn’t quite
cushion our landing, we would keep climbing back up to take another turn.
It was on these quilts that my cousins and I would read Harry Potter
and the Chamber of Secrets together before bed. If we hung a quilt off the top
bunk of the bunk bed, we had a fort, a ship, a teepee, or whatever our game
called for at the moment. We wrapped up in these quilts while we watched
general conference together as a family on the little old TV up in the corner
above the game table in the cabin’s main room.
We would lie on these quilts and look up at the ceiling
before bedtime. My grandpa had covered the entire vaulted ceiling of that
bedroom with hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars arranged in actual
constellations. He would point a flashlight at each star arrangement and tell
us its name and during which season we would be able to see it.
My grandparents sold the cabin in the spring of 2003. The
number of grandkids was increasing and there just wasn’t room for all of us
anymore. The day we moved out all of the furniture and cleaned the place out, my
grandma told each of the grandkids that they could take one item with them to
help them remember the cabin. If there was one item that could sum up every
family gathering, cousin sleepover, and happy memory at our cabin, it had to be
a quilt.
I went upstairs to that old armoire and picked the blue
floral quilt. It wasn’t the biggest or the most fancy. But it was soft, and it
was my favorite of them all. We drove away from the cabin at the end of that
day, and I hugged that quilt to my chest. I knew that particularly great era of
my childhood was ending.
My grandparents have since divorced, and I only see my cousins
on special occasions. Besides, the cousins who are old enough to remember the
cabin days are grown up and moved on. The quilt I picked from the cabin now
sits folded on my bed in my apartment. As much as I’d like to, I can’t return to
that special time in my life. But I can wrap up in that quilt and, by
extension, the memories.
Artist’s Statement:
This quilt is a metaphor for the memories I made during my
childhood at our cabin. It is a really special place to me. It was a simpler
time in my life, and it was such a magical place to be a kid. I feel like the ties with our extended family were stronger back then than they are now. Quilts in general
are comfort objects to me, but I have a personal connection to this particular
quilt because of the place and people who shared it with me when I was a kid.
Why we have such deep connections with objects will always
fascinate me. We all know that we can’t take things with us after we die, but
still, we as humans tend to feel such strong ties to random things. We associate them to people we love, places
we’ve been, and times in our lives. It really is so interesting that these
items can actually become memories.
This connection to makes me think of horcruxes. Voldemort
picked the objects from his life that were most important to put his soul into.
He didn’t just pick any old item that wouldn’t be recognized. He deliberately
chose items with great personal value to contain the shards of his soul. In a
way, I feel like we do the same thing. We have certain items that are so
important to us, that they figuratively contain pieces of our souls. I have no
doubt that this quilt would be one of my horcruxes.
We read “Ode to Things” by Pablo Neruda during the week.
This poem perfectly illustrates this idea of objects containing parts of us. It
states, “…they were so close/that they were a part/of my being,/they were so
alive with me/that they lived/half my life/and will die half my death.” I
absolutely loved that piece. It stated so beautifully how important objects can
be to a person, even if it means absolutely nothing to the next person.
My older sister read my narrative and gave me feedback. She
has the same experiences with the “cabin era” of our lives, and knows how
important my grandma’s quilts were during that time. She said she could picture
exactly each of the events I talked about and remember the tie to the quilts.
She suggested I change some words around, but she said I captured that time of
our childhood well, and the quilt is a great representation of the memories. I
don’t remember what item she picked to take home from the cabin, but I bet now she
is wishing she had taken a quilt too.
0 comments