Threads of Time...

     When my bed is made, there is a special Teddy bear that sits atop an array of pillows in a place of honor. Despite her rumpled and worn appearance, she is Royalty, a Queen, with a long family history.
     Nearly eighty years ago, when my mother, Louise, was just a young child, she accompanied her mother, my Grandma Edna, on a trip back to Omaha, Nebraska, from their home in Southern California. There they visited Edna's mother, Margaret.
     My Great-Grandmother Margaret's home had a huge screened-in porch, as was common in the Midwest. It was on that porch, cooled by the summer evening breezes, that the neighbor ladies gathered round a large quilting frame, chatting and telling stories, while they worked together on the final phase of quilt construction. Encircling the frame, each woman used her own fine needle to make the tiny lines of quilting stitches that only an accomplished seamstress can create. The quilt they worked on those evenings was adorned with red and blue and green "geese" triangles flying in their triangular formations across a natural muslin "sky."
     Edna joined the ladies in their communal stitching. Though her stitches were not as tight and straight as theirs, she had a steady hand and sharp eyes. Being mostly a circle of grandmothers, the ladies took pleasure in introducing young Louise to the womanly art of quilting. And despite the clumsy nature of her stitches, they left Mom's threads alongside their own, for as every traditional quilter knows, each quilt is unique and must incorporate a mistake or two for good luck. The quilt was finished, the last stitch in place, before the visiting Californians were to depart. Great-Grandmother Margaret made the Flying Geese quilt a gift to her daughter, so it traveled home with them.
     Grandma Edna used that quilt for years; I remember it lying across the end of the bed in her room when I was little. She and I would sit together on her blue-and-white bedspread, propped up on pillows, while she read stories aloud to me... nursery rhymes and fairy tales mostly.
      For years, the quilt was used as a picnic blanket, as a cover for us girls on long car trips, as a lap-blanket at football games, and for building "forts" with the sofa cushions. Washed to the point where the bold colors had faded to mere pastels of themselves, the once beautiful quilt was worn threadbare around the edges and along the seams, with stuffing peeking out all over.
     Twenty years ago, I rediscovered the tattered quilt in an old trunk in Mom's garage and decided it was too precious to discard. Turning thin paper Teddy bear pattern pieces this way and that, after a time, I was able to find just enough usable material left in the disintegrating quilt. Carefully, I stitched the pieces together, body, arms and legs, head and ears. Even more carefully, I stuffed the new bear with cotton batting, sewed on button eyes and a smooth nose of satin stitches, and tied a matching satin ribbon round her neck.
     What a beauty Queen Teddy is. Reborn, resurrected, with a new lease on life, Queen Teddy connects four generations of women. She sports threads stitched by us all... Great-Grandmother Margaret, Grandma Edna, my mother Louise, and me... each of us left our mark and, having done so, are joined by threads across time and space. Great-Grandma Margaret died before I was born, and Grandma Edna passed away while I was in high school. Queen Teddy keeps each of them alive, holding their stories in her threads and joining us all in a quaint version of "string theory."