For some reason, this afternoon I am thinking about the trek west from New England and all of the hardships along the way, via wagon train. When I traveled west, fresh out of the university, I flew out of Boston and landed in L.A., best as I can remember. It was different in the 1800s, as you know. Folks ventured out in wagon trains, leaving behind their family, not knowing if they would ever see them again, and many did not have that opportunity.
No matter how hard humans try to have a successful life, unexpected events happen. They are so predictable, perhaps many of these events are not as unexpected as we might think. People we love die suddenly, or die a lingering death. Either way, they exit our lives forever, leaving only a memory of them.
The news each night on television is pretty amazing. To see the suffering of the children of Haiti: the burn victims, the amputees… It is remarkable that these children are already adapting to their new found disabilities. Perhaps the adults have a more difficult time. On the minds of all is one word, “survival.”
Most of us feel immune to tragedy, until it happens. Somewhere, deep inside each of us, is a resource that we can draw upon when times get rough or confusing. One name for this element is “courage.”
I enjoy a Bill Staines’ song in which he sings, “With children on our shoulders, we’ll face another day…” The question is this, “Are we holding up the children, or are they holding us up?” They are the future. Soon. we shall be “the past.” Meanwhile, the smiles of children help us to cope.
We do not have to look beyond our own neighborhoods to find poverty, old age, and suffering. We don’t have to try hard to find someone for whom we could make a quilt, or some organization that is now using quilting as a major income source to raise needed funds. Everywhere we turn, there are quilts in hospitals, in clinics, on the web, in antique stores, in fine art galleries: made for the “well-heeled,” and for the “low brows.”
Quilts as a comfort measure have become part of our survival kit for the 21st century, whether we are making a quilt to donate, to be part of a raffle for public television, Alzheimer’s research, or some other worthy cause, or just to hang on our own walls as artifacts that are aesthetically-pleasing and representative of our own tastes.
No matter what happens, the quilting tradition is so ingrained in our culture, I do not predict that the love of quilts or quilting will go away anytime soon. Instead, I believe that, like the undaunted human spirit itself, quilts shall endure.
Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications
