Depression-Era Quilt

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When my first child, Sean, was nine months-old, I regarded myself as a failure at motherhood. My husband, Frank, would come in from work each day to find me at the kitchen table, sobbing. I would explain it all again: I am miserable. I am no good at this. I do not know how to be a mother.

I needed to know I could do something right. A quilt seemed like a worthy project. Systematic. Sequential. One square after another.

In the trunk of leftover fabric scraps and old clothing kept for sentimental reasons, I discovered the plaid shirt Frank wore on our first date; I had teased that it made him look like a farmer. There, too, was my grandmother’s fancy Italian tablecloth, each pink rose the right size to fill just one square, and the striped cotton I had used to make crib bumpers. Deep down in the pile was the sarong that covered a bikini I fit into for exactly one month the summer Frank proposed.

One day Frank arrived home to find me at the sewing machine, with Sean rifling through fabric scraps.

“What are my two favorite people up to?” he asked.

“I don’t know, nothing,” I mumbled. “Looks like something to me,” he said. I did not know how quilters cut perfect squares, so I improvised a plastic template and cut six thicknesses at a time, not always neatly. I set out to gather more fabric and wound up with an eclectic and comforting assortment, fragments of old and odd things—clothing, curtains, one bathing suit and two horse blankets. My mother-in-law’s old gardening apron. Aunt Mary’s bureau scarves. A cloth napkin snitched from a room-service tray. Outgrown baby clothes. The pillow from the old, orange-flowered couch, now in a neglected corner of the basement, but once the centerpiece of a long-ago apartment where Frank and I first made love.

Somewhere along the way I learned that what I was doing (though crudely) was making a memory quilt. Mine is a 380-square hodgepodge of competing patterns and clashing colors—a mish-mash, with identical squares sometimes touching, and assembled without regard for matching or repeats. It would give a serious quilter a major migraine.

At my basement sewing table, nearly 14 years ago, I allowed Sean to pick which square to sew next. Months passed, a year, two. We practiced our colors, pointing to flowered or striped squares. We practiced our numbers, counting the squares. Sean pushed his little foot on the pedal to make the machine whirr.

I didn’t stop each time the quilt grew to a suitable size—to fit a twin bed, a double, a queen. Luckily, Frank and I sleep in a king. Sometimes, the quilt lay forgotten for weeks or months, but I always found my way back to it. When I chose the final square, Sean was seven and his brother Paul was in preschool.

Along the way, I also stitched together a version of motherhood, like my quilt, tailored only to me, pieced together from fragments that seemed to fit. Like setting out to sew a simple little quilt, only to watch it grow to a king-sized project, I stumbled and persevered through motherhood. Like sewing, I just kept going, noticing all the many ways I could enlarge it and do it the way that felt right. The further along I got, the better I liked the still-unfolding results of both projects.

Mine is a lightweight quilt, soft now from many washings. It is where we all sprawl on lazy summer mornings and where my boys want to snuggle when they are sick. Just recently, I caught them fighting over the right to fold it when the quilt appeared in the laundry basket.

“Is that the one from your Noni’s apron?” Paul asks me, pointing to a square. “This one is from the curtains when we were babies!” Sean says authoritatively. From time to time, both ask me to tell them about other squares. I point to the bandana I once wore to a Texas barbecue where I tried rattle-snake meat or the fabric from the chairs around their great-grandmother’s table where I learned to play checkers. And I keep searching for a square, which must be there somewhere, that marks my recovery, not only from post-partum depression, but from that naïve time in my life when I thought that the universe was withholding absolute answers.

Lately, both sons have been lobbying for new quilts, one each, twin-sized blankets of new memories. I picture myself cutting up sport jerseys, Scout ties and dress shirts. But there is no need for a depression-be-damned project now. Instead, there is work, birthday parties, basketball practice and aging parents. It is full, this life, overflowing.

And yet. I was at the sewing machine recently when Paul wandered by, and asked what I was doing.

“I’m starting new quilts, for you and Sean.” I pointed to the fabric pile and tossed him the old warped and pinpricked template. “Pick what you like and start cutting.”

“How will I know if I’m doing it right?” Paul asked.

“You won’t. Just dig in.”

Lisa Romeo has written for The New York Times, O The Oprah Magazine, Tango and many other media in print and online. She is a frequent contributor to essay collections, teaches creative nonfiction, and is at work on a memoir. Lisa holds an MFA in nonfiction and a BS in journalism. She lives in New Jersey with her family.