All of you who know me and my husband, know that we celebrate the anniversary of our first date on Thanksgiving Eve. I've given considerable attention to this holiday in multiple blog posts here, here, here, and here. Last year was our 40th first-date anniversary. I wrote my post early in the day and we had planned to spend the evening preparing for Thanksgiving in a much pared-down version of the usual night before Thanksgiving because our house was under renovations and everything was amiss.
Everything was amiss, including a blown-glass serving bowl that had shifted and broken in the bottom cupboard of the china cabinet during the above-mentioned renovations, and when I opened the cabinet door and reached inside, the jagged pieces of the bowl came falling out, and I instinctively reached to grab them. Impressive reflexes, I realize. So, it was a good thing that I'd posted my ode to our 40th first-date anniversary earlier in the day because it ended at the Emergency Room, where I was one of the first Thanksgiving casualties of 2021. David kindly drove me there, sat at my side while they stitched up my disgusting right-hand ring finger, took me to Chick-fil-A for a shake to cheer me up, and then drove me home. It wasn't the evening we had planned, but it made the 40th memorable, for sure.
I can't really believe that it has been a whole year since that happened. I haven't worn a ring on my right-hand ring finger ever since. It makes me cringe just to think about sliding something up over my knuckle. Part of my finger is still tingly/numb. A nice scar exists now, squelching all future hopes of hand modeling. (That was a joke for my children.) But for all intents and purposes, my finger has healed and I can type with it and grip with it and it does its fingerly job almost the same as it did before. It also predicts oncoming humidity as well as my naturally curly hair, so that would be a plus if I reported the weather for a living, but I digress. This post is not about last year's stitches.
This post is about this year's stitches.
Several years ago, I decided that I wanted to give David a quilt for Christmas. I have made him many quilts through the years, so I wanted this one to be the quilt he wanted - one he chose. So I did what any good wife would do, and I made him a gift certificate for a quilt.
My husband has received many gift certificates for Christmas through the years; most of them from our children when they were little. He's a bit skeptical about the fruition of the promised gift. It's a reasonable response. So, a couple of months later, when he waved the gift certificate in front of me, I knew what it was, but I asked anyway.
"What's that?"
"You know what it is. Do I need to keep this? Is it ever happening?"
"Yes. It's in the queue, but we need to go looking so you can point to what you like and don't like."
"I need to go to the fabric store with you?"
He hates fabric stores.
"That is where finished quilts are generally displayed, yes."
"I suppose I could," he said. "If you really need me there."
"Honey," I explained, "I need you there because I don't know what you want. Do you want a quilt big enough for our bed? Or a small one to use when you're watching TV in winter? One to keep in your truck for picnics?"
David paused to give my question serious thought, and his seriousness made me pause, too. He looked me straight in the eye and said to me, "I want a quilt that's big enough, that if you go first, I can wrap my entire body in it, and know you made it just for me."
A shroud, I thought. If David goes first, I want to disappear inside a shroud, too.
I had to hug him for that. Then I had to cry. Then I had to remind him of our pact to die at exactly the same time so neither of us would be left behind alone. (We don't know how that will work, really. We just anticipate that when we're terribly old and the grim reaper appears for one, we'll explain we're a two-for-one deal. Old crotchety people usually get their way.)
But just in case things didn't go as planned, I now had this quilt to make. David still hadn't picked anything out when a worldwide pandemic closed all the crafty places on the planet and I had to order fabric online and use pieces from my stash at home. Some of those pieces were from my mother's fabric stash that I couldn't get rid of when she passed away. I began to sew with what I had. Things kept going wrong. Fabrics didn't stretch the same way, or work together like new fabric would, and heart parts became misshapen. The whole abstract-watercolor-heart motif I was going for turned out far more abstract than I envisioned. I had to make adjustments here and take tucks there and make alterations over and over.
And then I realized that this imperfect heart told a story. Our story. Of naïve young love that had to adjust and correct and redirect as it grew. A love that has been through much. A love that has been pieced back together a hundred times. A love that has endured much heartache and now carries the scars of a long, beautiful life.
It is a mended heart.
We were juniors in high school when we had our first Thanksgiving Eve date. After that night, when we communicated (cell phones didn't yet exist) we passed notes written on notebook paper. On every note David gave me, he signed it "Eternally, David," with a tiny cartoon drawing of the Idaho Falls Temple. We both knew what that temple meant. It was a big sentiment for a handsome high school boy, but he meant it. We were married there 5 years later.
So, in the stitches of the quilt that I made just for him, there is a message. "My heart is yours. Eternally, Jana." He will have to look for the message, but once he finds it, he'll know it's always there, and it's just for him.
I'm still counting on us going together, of course. But if I do go first, he can wrap up in this quilt, and remember the life that has stitched our hearts into one grandly messy mended heart that I wouldn't trade for all the perfection in the world.
Happy 41st Thanksgiving Eve, David. My heart is yours.
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