I opened it to find a small quilt, the kind she's been making for years (we hang one up she made for my little guy many Christmases ago every holiday season). This time it was one she made for me.
On one side it's made up of black and white panels depicting scenes from Manhattan, incorporating buildings like the old Woolworth Tower, The Empire State, The Flat Iron Building and The Chrysler Building. All structures I grew to love many years ago as a boy and young man and now are like familiar members of a small circle of old friends.
The other side has patches of different sizes with musical notations going in every direction and musical instruments and bits of the Manhattan cityscape and that symbol (my post-brain-surgery mind can't pull up the old once so familiar term for it) that starts out a bar of music before the notes—all of these black and white too. And here and there among all this cacophony of music signs and symbols and bits of Manhattan architecture is the occasional small square of deep red and black tinier squares, like a mini-checkerboard or the pattern on one of my old flannel shirts when I was a kid.My sister plays the piano, very well. All my siblings and I played instruments. I chose the piano too, because of my big sister Irene (I was the youngest and the one between me and the others passed away as an infant so there was a gap between me and them). Only she played mostly for charity, like at "The Old People's Home" when we were kids, or at church(es) later on, while I pursued it a little more as an artistic statement, etc.
The card that came with it is so loving and matter-of-fact (like about the arthritis in her fingers giving her trouble with the seams) it brought tears to my eyes. Ah life. Full of so many lovely surprises and connections and unfoldings. May it always be so.
7 comments:
Ah, so beautiful!
Love you and your sister Irene.
Jamie
man, that is incredible - and the love that goes into making a quilt, even more so ...
i was seeing the image next to images of your book covers, mmm ...
living in Pa, i've been able to see a pretty wide variety of quilts - but my favorites were some subtle black and earth-tone Amish patchworks from the 50's which bore a striking resemblance to Rothkos' from the same period ...
it even warms my heart from a distance ...
what a lovely sharing...
suzanne
It is such a generous gift from your 'big' sister, Michael and it's sad to read about all your other siblings gone.
One of my sisters sews. Among other things she has made a family pall, which she wants to spread over our coffins each in turn when we die, beginning with my mother, assuming she goes first.
I love the notion of this pall, even if sometimes it feels a little too close to home.
A quilt at least is more for the time being and although it signifies the past it seems to resonate more with life than with death.
Your sister's quilt is very beautiful, at least from what we can see here. I hope you intend to use it, and not just put it on display.
Say Hi to Irene. My brother Pete says hi too.
Thanx everybody. And I am using it. It's on "my" chair from which I read and watch old movies and the news on TV etc. and hold forth in the little poetry workshops I do in the living room of my apartment pretty regularly, etc. And the cool thing is I can turn it over to show the other more sedate side, with patches of city scenes all set in the same direction, and feel like I redecorated the joint.
That's cool!
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