Dear Fellow Dreamer,
Because March is Women’s History Month, in this letter I’m focusing on that subject.
So often we can get caught up in the stories of women who are, and were, famous trailblazers—those who bucked a patriarchal system and earned recognition for their contributions. I can be proud of those women and marvel at their achievements. And of course, I’m grateful for them.
Yet I can also marvel at the lives of “ordinary” women who’ve done their best in a system skewed against them.
This poem was inspired by my maternal grandmother whom I called Nana, and an old quilt I inherited from her—one made by the women in her world, circa 1923. Having had the flu (again) this week, I’ve spent many recent hours under it. While I did my best to make an audio for you, you’ll hear a tinge of the lingering cold in my voice.
In the spirit of a poem’s form and content working together, this piece is unconventional (you might even say crazy) in its formatting. On a cell phone or in an email, it’s likely that the spacing and line breaks will be jumbled. To read the actual poem, please open it in Substack on your laptop. Or just listen to the recording.
I’d love for you to share your stories of the extraordinary, ordinary women who’ve made a difference in your life.
Crazy Quilt
Catch stitch— cream and jade-coloured x’s edge the squares of century-old, irregular polygons cut from their clothes, grey patches like fine sandpaper. Running stitch— delicate, held in a chest for decades, thread through crimsons, carmines, purples, navies, blacks, wavery pinstripes on deep vanilla. Arcs— their chatter, women laughing in plain dresses, house sparrows chirping, cavity nesters, making their homes again and again, non-native to this place, nineteenth-century transplants, waves in glass windows. Old cedar chest keeps the green patches fresh, the taupes and browns: russets, ashes, bird-browns, earths, making the jewel tones pop. This crazy array the women’s laughter eyes focused on fingers pulling thread my little Nana, at seven, too young to do handwork kneels beneath pushing the needles up through (her job) keeping the quilt nice in a box for eighty years not letting light get at it All their measurements, the puzzled arrangements, diamond shapes and hidden heart I only noticed weeks after pulling it out— opening the quilt across my bed. I said to my mother, if you give me this, I’ll use it. She said of course. But Nana— maybe having been a tidy person, a Virgo, maybe having wanted only to peek once in a while, cast a glimpse into the chest, recalling a time when she was small enough to crawl beneath the fabric pushing the needles up through feeling their fingers manage sharpness— so deft, so practised— maybe at some point Nana was thinking, after marrying the doctor in her twenties and raising children (her job) all the outfits, curtains, cushions, tablecloths, broken bones and car accidents hairbrush through tangles, stitches, sutures darning and repairs, patching, lengthening, mending (tears) basting, serving, pressing, closing (drives in the country for nerves) a big new house his assistant in her thirties and forties changing patterns, their separate arrangements, ladies golf tournaments, cottaging, curling, cross-stitching, commencements, ripping, edging, sealing, cutting after leaving her marriage at fifty-one (not divorcing, only separating) stepping into the Vauxhaull when she knew he was in surgery, waving to the poodle, turning the key, pushing the pedal, heading south out of Paris, Ontario (to Florida) after the border crossings, all the zig-zags, a stipend for nesting in spare rooms and house-sit suites in her fifties, a small apartment on Olive Tree Road in her sixties, in her seventies, a modest condo over Highway 403 because men died and left her money (first her brother, then her husband, “beloved wife” on their tombstone) in her eighties, tending graves watching the weather channel and Jeopardy in her nineties (too old to tend her son’s grave) televised sports in a care home past a hundred— yes, maybe at some point Nana was thinking it was best not to let the old quilt fade. Just leave it the women’s laughter Keep it nice. Now I lie beneath the fabric. Under the cream-dotted rose and pale-blue-cotton-with-yellow check. Under tiny holes forming in the light of my room seep ghost pansies on deep purple-black. Irregular, measured, hidden, exposed. Invisible ladder—brown birds chittering beyond the glass. Am I dreaming? I say I’m sorry to let you ravel and fray, but it’s the only way that I can feel you. Not the weight of the world, but something sharp, sweet pierces— catches © Robin Blackburn McBride
The quilt and this poem are so special, Robin. Creating something beautiful and practical, in community with others on a regular basis seems to have been lost. But perhaps that is something we will bring back.
Wow! I have read your heartwarming poem and look forward to listening later, Robin. What struck me my immediate perception of 'chest' ... not of the wooden kind, but a dual meaning, from the heart / of the heart. Exquisite! Your poem is timely regarding the twists and turns in life being presented to us now and to remember to remain still as often as possible so we don't make choices that create further craziness in our lives! So much depth to discover... xx