It's never too late for a mother's hug

Quilting connected me to my mom then and now

Things aren’t always what they seem.

They might be so much better than you realize.

In the days before my husband moved out of the house and out of my life, I wandered from room to room releasing items that he loved more than I did.

I didn’t want him to move into an empty apartment and I also didn’t want to keep bumping into parts of him all over the house after he left. Whatever he didn’t want, a company we hired would take it away and distribute it to local non-profits, sell, recycle or dump it.

I lugged his long boxes of old comics down from the attic, took down the painting of his favorite jazz club and removed all the art prints from the bedroom.

It was a painful time. I was numb from the shock of his decision and wanted to release him and everything he owned, his favorite coffee mugs that I loved and the Keurig machine I hated.

I set each item in a pile by the piano to save him time and to save me sorrow.

Sleep vanished the day he announced he was moving out. Weeping kept me awake every night that first week. I slept in a separate room and hugged myself as if to somehow hold the broken parts of me together. I cried to the Universe or God or whoever hears the most desperate prayers, “I just need someone to hug me.”

Then I found my hug.

I have always longed to be loved, longed for a mother’s love. My mom had 11 kids so there was never enough of her to go around. Since I was the 5th child, there was never a time when I had her all to myself. I remember her coming upstairs to my bedroom only twice during my whole childhood. She never tucked us in. Dad tucked us in with the belt if we laughed too long or too loud. Or sent us downstairs to sweep the floor. Or worse, sent us in the locked basement until we “settled down.”

One time my mom came upstairs when I was sick with the flu. She was disappointed I didn’t make it to the bathroom. The other time, she asked the little girl I was to stop singing because it was keeping everyone awake. I still sing when I’m scared.

I felt unloved and motherless until I became a mother. Loving my daughter and being her mother healed my heart. Years of counseling, journaling and recovery meetings also helped.

That lost soul and unwed mother I was at 21 took up quilting to help me piece together a new life and create something beautiful out of unwanted scraps of fabric I scavenged from our house and from the neighbors who sewed. Quilting kept me focused on the moment in front of me while a new uncertain future unfolded.

I made four quilts back then. A baby block quilt that looks three dimensional, a quilt of stars, a log-cabin quilt of brown and orange, and an applique quilt I designed for my mom with a square dedicated to each of her 11 children.

I told the story of my mom’s life in that quilt. I sewed a square with her name and birthdate under a megaphone for her cheerleading days, my dad’s name and birthday under an airplane because he was a tail gunner, a hot water bottle, because she was a nurse’s aide and he was a patient and she “accidentally” burned him with a hot water bottle to keep him there and get to know him.

Then I sewed a square for each child she had with baby items in between. The last square was dedicated to my daughter, who made them grandparents.

I even added embroidery, stitching the names of each sibling and their birthdates under little applique images of boys and girls. I finished the top, basted it to the batting and a sheet underneath, but never finished the edging.

I gave it to her as a gift, but she never put it on their bed, never actually received it, never finished the edging. She gave it back to me years later, and said, ‘I want you to have this, you put so much work into it.’

My heart sank. I felt so rejected. Was it ugly? Was it silly? I put the quilt in a plastic tub where it sat for decades. I moved it from house to house and from attic to the back room where the tub grew dusty.

That quilt called to me the week my husband left. As I gathered things to donate, I wondered, Should I just throw that quilt out? I couldn’t give it away. It was too personal, too private. Yet my own mom didn’t even want it. Ouch. Was it time to release that mother lode of pain?

It turns out that quilt was my mom tugging on my heart.

After my husband moved out, I invited a dear friend who is an energy intuitive to sage the house and bless it. She went from room to room gauging the energy in each space. For some reason, I opened the tub and showed her that quilt.

Do I keep it? I told her how it felt like a rejection, yet I didn’t want to reject the woman I was at 21 who made it.

Her eyes started to blink rapidly. She calmly and slowly told me, “Your mother is here…I feel her presence…She said she could never receive the quilt…because she didn’t feel deserving of it.”

Oh my.

She said, “She would love for you to finish it, put it on the bed upstairs and wrap it around you whenever you need a hug…and to know she is hugging you through that quilt.”

I had never told my friend about that desperate night upstairs when I called out to the Universe for a hug.

Oh my.

The next day, my friend told me that she later asked for a sign to validate that it was in fact my mom speaking through her. She had heard the name Mary, but wasn’t sure she heard correctly and couldn’t remember my mom’s name. Then she felt nudged to open a little drawer in her bedroom. There she found a little bag with crystals, sage and two holy cards.

One of them was the memorial card from my mom’s funeral, with her name on it, Mary Brett.

Oh my.

Days later, on the night of the lunar eclipse, I sat under the moon for an hour with my mom, just the two of us, wrapped up in that unfinished quilt. It hugged us both.

I plan to complete it but also know that unfinished things can bless us, too, just as they are. Even when it seems frayed and unfinished, the fabric of life is always strong enough to hold us together.

That’s me in the dress, getting the closest I could to a mother’s hug.