Just about a shirt sleeve day out. The first thing on my list this morning was to hit the sewing studio and get two quilts wrapped and packaged up for the mail. Both quilts headed out to two of Orlin’s nieces. One is in Wisconsin and the second in southeastern Minnesota.
Orlin’s brother Eugene and his family were having a tough time with children that were his, hers and theirs. Carrie and Kevin were mere toddlers and our family would grow over the summer months. Evelyn was about nine and Joyce was thirteen. There were challenges to say the least. It brought us face to face with working hard to understand what the girls were going through at their age with the home environment they were accustomed to as we were working through going from diapers to training pants and getting our kids to sleep in something other than cribs.
We made it through and the best part was there are more soft memories than harsh ones at this time in our lives. Orlin has been gone a bit more than ten years and the girls have my email address and they use it when a bit more support is needed in their lives. The scrappy happy quilts made me happy to make and then send on. I have always told the girls to save the best and leave the rest. They are now wives, mothers and grandmothers. It doesn’t seem that long ago that Joyce and I would have serious conversations about make-up and pierced ears. What did I know of such things at that time. Nothing as far as Joyce was concerned, but we did find compromises.
After the quilts were wrapped this morning, I headed out into that warm weather and the two-mile walk melted away as I thought about those summers when Orlin and I were barely aware of what babies needed let alone troubled family members.