Ode to Mom

You were on my mind rather a lot yesterday and again today.

Yesterday evening CJE and I set up the quilt frame. Your quilt frame. The only quilt frame I have any experience with at all.

It fits rather nicely in our great room. The new stapler Karen got you, and subsequently let me take as part of the whole quilting package, is a dream. So much easier to operate than the old one. So easy, in fact, I was able to get Jessica’s quilt on the frame mostly by myself.

Which is both a good and a bad thing.

Putting this first quilt on what is now my frame was definitely a bittersweet operation. Gosh, I miss you, Mom. I miss both your expertise and the haphazard way you used to approach this:
    “We’re not building a piano.”
My anal-retentive personality quirks are not doing me any favors. Without you here to balance me out, I am likely to get out the tape measure to make sure everything is square instead of trusting my eye as you always did.

In the spring when Willa, Karen, Carolyn and Nolda (and hopefully Sheri) are all here to help with the big quilts you left behind, I hope I can control my urge for perfection and just enjoy the time with them doing something you and Karen and I did so many times and had such fun doing.

I never realized or appreciated how much our different personality types complemented one another when it came to these projects we cooked up. There were many, many times your casual, good-enough attitude drove me crazy. I strive for perfection, apparently to the point that, that too, makes me crazy. I can see now how my type-A perfectionism probably made you want to run screaming from the room at times.

I’m sorry about that.

Ideally a mix of the two is incredibly helpful. I can certainly see that now.

I am just praying that I can channel you over Spring Break. You have to be here with me, Mom, so I can not be quite so picky and anal and make everyone want to go home. After all:
    “We are not building a piano.”