My mother has given me many gifts throughout my life, but I think one of the most valuable was the gift of knowledge, most specifically of female friendships.
I was raised seeing the rich tapestry women weave amongst themselves and with each other. My mother had many kinds of friends, almost all were artistic or creatively motivated. One friend designed her whole house from things she found on walks, one went on mini road trips with my mom to pluck quills from roadkill porcupines to make jewelry. She had a friend who didn't like children, and who spoke to us as adults so as to trick herself into believing we weren't children. She had friends with whom she smoked, with whom she drank, and on one occasion, with whom she skinny dipped.
Many of my childhood memories are of my mother laughing, sitting at our table in what we called the breakfast nook, surrounded at all sides by windows that used to cast our kitchen in an ethereal glow in the late afternoon. Sometimes, she was on the phone while she laughed, but often she was sharing stories with her friends or her sisters, and it was enormously satisfying to see the fulfillment they brought to her life, when I knew that her marriage to my dad was floundering.
From this, I began at an early age to find my own identity wrapped like ivy around my own friends. I often attempted to adapt things from them- their handwriting, their fashion choices, their mannerisms. I allowed myself to become a chameleon of sorts, and often struggled with my own identity as some friends cast me aside or let me down. In high school, I found girls who saw past the shades of my chameleon skin, who loved me for, and not despite, my idiosyncrasies. In college, I lost my way. My tapestry began to fray, and the female friendships I made were the antithesis of what my mother had taught me through experience. I saw a movie called "How to Make an American Quilt", which in its simplest summary would be described as a love story, but when properly dissected would actually be more about the love between women and less about romantic love. The women in the story would create quilts together, and bond, sometimes silently, in their losses and their achievements, and the stitches were a metaphor for how they kept each other from fraying, as I felt myself doing those days in Arizona. When I began to have children, and met other mothers, I finally found myself making my American quilt. I've described it as this:
Each female companion I've met has represented a square in a quilt, quite different from the square adjacent, but equally lovely. The squares take a while to construct, and may evolve over time, and sometimes take a different shape. But the ultimate end to the project is having a luxurious quilt with which to wrap around myself to keep me warm. To keep me safe. To keep me surrounded by beauty.
I myself have evolved. It may be my age, or experiences that have taught me those life lessons to which we are so blind in our youth. I've once again embraced the females in my life who are not expecting something from me that takes too much sacrifice to give, the females who do not boast or denigrate other women for self-serving purpose. I've begun once again to hold dear the women who do not seek shallow acquaintance, and who see the woman who occasionally lies dormant beneath my public visage. I've learned to cherish the women who will be the proverbial village to raise my children. I'm learning to not remove the squares from my quilt who have left me cold, or who are only half completed, knowing that no quilt can be perfect. That sometimes the flaw in things is what makes them most appealing. But the squares that have been stitched with the unequivocal timelessness and beauty that my mother taught me so long ago, those are the ones I keep closest to my heart, to my head, to my hands. I hope that my daughters will this life of friendships I have built, and someday realize that life is too much a multifaceted event to experience alone. And as I age, I will expect to see my quilt grow and thicken until I will one day be able to look behind and see that it trails all the way behind me to connect with the tapestry that once was my mother's.
I was raised seeing the rich tapestry women weave amongst themselves and with each other. My mother had many kinds of friends, almost all were artistic or creatively motivated. One friend designed her whole house from things she found on walks, one went on mini road trips with my mom to pluck quills from roadkill porcupines to make jewelry. She had a friend who didn't like children, and who spoke to us as adults so as to trick herself into believing we weren't children. She had friends with whom she smoked, with whom she drank, and on one occasion, with whom she skinny dipped.
Many of my childhood memories are of my mother laughing, sitting at our table in what we called the breakfast nook, surrounded at all sides by windows that used to cast our kitchen in an ethereal glow in the late afternoon. Sometimes, she was on the phone while she laughed, but often she was sharing stories with her friends or her sisters, and it was enormously satisfying to see the fulfillment they brought to her life, when I knew that her marriage to my dad was floundering.
From this, I began at an early age to find my own identity wrapped like ivy around my own friends. I often attempted to adapt things from them- their handwriting, their fashion choices, their mannerisms. I allowed myself to become a chameleon of sorts, and often struggled with my own identity as some friends cast me aside or let me down. In high school, I found girls who saw past the shades of my chameleon skin, who loved me for, and not despite, my idiosyncrasies. In college, I lost my way. My tapestry began to fray, and the female friendships I made were the antithesis of what my mother had taught me through experience. I saw a movie called "How to Make an American Quilt", which in its simplest summary would be described as a love story, but when properly dissected would actually be more about the love between women and less about romantic love. The women in the story would create quilts together, and bond, sometimes silently, in their losses and their achievements, and the stitches were a metaphor for how they kept each other from fraying, as I felt myself doing those days in Arizona. When I began to have children, and met other mothers, I finally found myself making my American quilt. I've described it as this:
Each female companion I've met has represented a square in a quilt, quite different from the square adjacent, but equally lovely. The squares take a while to construct, and may evolve over time, and sometimes take a different shape. But the ultimate end to the project is having a luxurious quilt with which to wrap around myself to keep me warm. To keep me safe. To keep me surrounded by beauty.
I myself have evolved. It may be my age, or experiences that have taught me those life lessons to which we are so blind in our youth. I've once again embraced the females in my life who are not expecting something from me that takes too much sacrifice to give, the females who do not boast or denigrate other women for self-serving purpose. I've begun once again to hold dear the women who do not seek shallow acquaintance, and who see the woman who occasionally lies dormant beneath my public visage. I've learned to cherish the women who will be the proverbial village to raise my children. I'm learning to not remove the squares from my quilt who have left me cold, or who are only half completed, knowing that no quilt can be perfect. That sometimes the flaw in things is what makes them most appealing. But the squares that have been stitched with the unequivocal timelessness and beauty that my mother taught me so long ago, those are the ones I keep closest to my heart, to my head, to my hands. I hope that my daughters will this life of friendships I have built, and someday realize that life is too much a multifaceted event to experience alone. And as I age, I will expect to see my quilt grow and thicken until I will one day be able to look behind and see that it trails all the way behind me to connect with the tapestry that once was my mother's.
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