Sometimes the best things happen by accident. I have just a short tale to tell about three blankets.
Recently, our little Texas family came for a short visit. My (very old, but lovely) baby bed had, by now, been retrieved from the dusty attic, nearly 30 years later, and was sitting in the bedroom near the window…waiting for 2-year-old Santiago. He would soon be sleeping there. His mother, Lorena, was concerned about him being cold so I found a blanket, one that belonged to my mother, and she cuddled him up. She was also concerned about the morning light waking him up prematurely so, unbeknownst to me, on her own, she found two more random ‘coverings’ to suspend over the rails of the baby bed to enclose him in semi-darkness.
I didn’t really ‘get it’ until the day after they left, and I went into the bedroom to tidy up a bit. Without knowing, Lorena had selected 3 generations of blankets/quilts from a couple of different locations in the bedroom to block out the daylight. The first one in the picture is an Afghan straight out of the 70s and was for my mother, Nell, the second was handmade by my paternal grandmother, Mae Farris, and the third one, the quilt, was made by my great-grandmother, Hattie, and the baby bed was mine…
So here's the accidental ancestral trail…Santiago’s grandmother’s bed, his great-grandmother’s Afghan, his great–great grandmother’s crocheted covering, and his great – great – great grandmother’s handmade quilt from, of course, Texas…and as a bonus, the framed picture on the nearby wall is the Holy Communion certificate for his great–great maternal grandmother Maya Daire.
I feel Santiago has been lovingly embraced by the love and protection of all these women…
It is a cute story with a spiritual message…love never leaves.
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