Stripped Down to the Basics

With Magpie Tales, we’re given a photo and we must tell some story connected to the photo. Above is this week’s prompt. Visit more interpretations of the photo here.

My mother speaks this tale. She is losing her grip on what we call reality but she holds on to what she is: daughter, sister, walker with quilts.

My full life is stripped down to a cane, a sewing table, and an old cedar chest.

I have been an imperfect woman, and many other people along the way: a daughter, sister, wife, mother, lifeguard, meat cutter, cooker of bread and beans in the lean years, business owner, unhappy widow, grandmother, gardener, worker bee.

I have raged, sung hymns, slapped my daughter, loved my husband. I have put my shoulder to the plow all my life long.

I have witnessed the birth of my great-grandsons and I have walked mountains. I have bowed before the giant sequoia. I have bowed before the altar of my Maker, and I have repented.

I have watched my sons grow up to be men. I have sweat and swept and wept. I have lived my life in blue jeans.

Now my life is pared down to this: I seek my way among confusing halls and lost rooms with my cane. I have sent the sewing machine away but kept the slim table my father made. My mother’s cedar chest still rests, as always, at the foot of my bed.

I no longer know the man in the photo on the nightstand. It was all so long ago, and he is so young. I claim nothing anymore.

My mother’s quilt, colorful cotton patches, hand-stitched by arthritic hands, is what I carry now. I take it with me on my journeys through the hallways that spin and wander through my life, and I hold it like a child holds a favorite blanket. I know my mother made this quilt. I know little else.

I know you when you come to me in dreams. I am a girl, walking with my sister through the leaves on our way to school. I see my brother, teaching me to dance. I see your happy eyes.

I know that My Redeemer Liveth. And though I cannot sing, I know the words, and I will know His face, when he comes for me.

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