This is a tough one for me because for the last six years, I’ve purged a lot of things from my life. When you live in New York and you don’t have a consistent or dependable income, you learn to live with less. I’ve said goodbye to too many books to count, clothes that I now wish I’d kept, a dresser that was in my dad’s home that I took with me to New York, and on and on. I even had to say goodbye to my childhood house right before the pandemic hit - so a lot of things that lived in the attic, or in various rooms, were tossed. I filled up one large rubbermaid tub and my sister said she’d keep it in their crawl space until I had space for it.

When I moved back to the South, I picked up that tub. It’s full of pictures and keepsakes from high school and college. The one thing that I thought i’d lost was a quilt that my MeeMaw made before she passed. She made a lot of quilts before she died because she planned on dying for about a decade before she actually did. MeeMaw was a little ridiculous in the fact that she loved attention. I’m sure there’s a story as to why but I won’t bore you with my assumptions. She brought loads of quilts to our family reunions and said for us to take which one we liked because she wouldn’t be around for much longer. Now again, before you get to thinking that’s very sweet, this was at least seven or eight years before she passed. That same reunion she brought out a birthday cake for herself (she told everyone she wanted to get it) and in icing read Happy Birthday to Me.

She was a character indeed. Not really a nice grandma until the end. But, she did make beautiful quilts. The one I selected was bright orange with varying shades of dark greens and yellow with hints of blue. It’s bright and doesn’t exactly match much. It feels unique though and that’s what I love. That quilt now sits on my bed here in Atlanta. I guess deep down I knew not to take it with me to New York. It would’ve gotten lost or stayed filthy. I’m known to lean a little toward the sentimental. I love trinkets and books with notes written to me on the page inside.. People will always be what I come back to most. I try not to get too attached to things on this side of Heaven. It is nice to come back to some familiarity though and for that, i’m grateful.