REMEMBER

Photo by Pearl Yee Wong of the Michigan State University Museum

Last year I wrote:

I’ll be spending today quietly, thinking and doing “normal” things. That’s always the contrast isn’t it, what had been normal and this instant where the world becomes something else, something unknown until now. Something perhaps unimaginable but now sitting quite real in the world, alongside us.

This year I think there is more contrast and need for more reflection and I’m glad to be home for the day, trying to do normal things again.

In 2001, I’d been up visiting my parents at Brant Lake for a few days. I was considering a big life change and had gone to get away and think about it and to make a decision and plan. I’d brought my quilting – our guild’s challenge for that year, due later in the month. After the meeting I blogged:

This year’s challenge was to make something that involved a ninepatch block. And to tie it somehow to a famous line, bit of poem, title, song verse etc. We had lots of entries this year, from very traditional to not. I won second place in the unfinished category for my amish nine patch. My theme was “Order from Chaos.”

I was making a quilt based on an Amish crib quilt seen in the Esprit collection. I decided to make the nine patches with one inch squares and had them almost done when I got to the lake. Mom and I had fun sewing together and I made a lot of progress. On September 10th, I sewed the central section together and I was quite pleased with the effect.

The next morning we were waiting for our quilting friend Joan and her family to come for a visit when my brother called with the news of what had happened in New York City.

Many years later I took out the quilting I had started and requilted the whole thing, ending up as Summer Seen From September, 2001.