The Once-Upon-A-Time Quilt

                Once upon a time, a life time or two ago, a young woman made a quilt for a man she thought might just be her Prince Charming.

                She was a rather silly young woman who was full of fanciful dreams and fairytale hopes.  She was working in the city, for the summer, as a file clerk.  Come fall, she was headed off to the State University. 

                One day, she met a man, in the coffee shop where she occasionally treated herself to lunch.  The man invited her to dinner and she accepted.  He wasn’t like all the high school boys in her neighborhood.  He was sophisticated and charming.  They went to dinner on several occasions, and to the movies, too.  He even took her golfing once.

                They kept in touch some, while she was away at school.  The visited when she came home.  When Christmas came that year, she wanted to do something magnificent for him.  She was a poor girl who didn’t have the money magnificent gifts cost.  She had nothing to give him.

                Her Grannie arrived for a visit with a bag of polyester scraps and a solution.  They’d make him a patchwork blanket.  The girl hated polyester fabric.  She felt discouraged.   She didn’t trust her Grannie’s wisdom.  She felt she needed a miracle.  What she got was a lesson in patchworking, fabric grains, cutting, sewing, and matching seams.  The end result was, she thought, a hideous quilt. Grannie had great hopes for the results the quilt would bring.  The young woman had great doubts.  This was not a gift worthy of giving to Prince Charming.  What would he think?  What would he say?  The man seemed to appreciate the gift at the time, but he was a gentleman, after all, so perhaps he was just being polite.

                Time passed and life led the two down different paths.  Seasons would come, when their paths would cross, and run parallel for a time.  He would always remember to her, the quilt and that Christmas when she gave it to him.

                It wasn’t until they were old, not quite as old as Grannie had been, but getting close, and the woman, had now grown up some and was teaching young girls the miracle working power Grannie had given her that Christmas long ago, that she began to think again of the man and the quilt, she’d made once upon a time.

                She asked if he might send her a picture of the quilt, so she could share it with her students.  When she saw the pictures her heart swelled with a mix of emotions, joy in seeing her first quilt again, after so many years, memories of Grannie and all the wisdom she’d shared, amazement that the quilt was still around after so many years.  When she really looked, she began to see the quilt through different eyes.  It no longer seemed hideous, she could see patterns, and colors and skills she didn’t even know she’d possessed.   She saw the time and love she’d invested.  She saw Grannie’s wisdom, that she couldn’t see through younger eyes.  She realized that the man had kept the quilt with him all those years.  To some degree, he really had cherished the gift (which Grannie had never doubted he would).

Once upon a time, a silly, young woman heeded, with much skepticism the wisdom of her Grannie.   She turned the bag of polyester scraps into a patchwork quilt.  When she had nothing to give, she gave of what she had.  In time, the investment matured, and returned immeasurably the blessing of wisdom and knowledge that she had, after all, given a treasure, worthy of the Prince.

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