The Land of
Counterpane
That’s the
name of one of my favorite Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems from A Child’s Garden of
Verses.
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.
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It is also a
place I would go every time I laid upon my mother’s quilt on her and Dad’s bed
when I was a very small child.
The Double
Wedding Ring Quilt.
I so loved
to dream of my future life – of whom and what I would become - as I laid back
on their bed.
I refused
naps and so Mom settled for me having quiet time on her bed –
IF – if I
promised not to jump up and down on it.
Their bed
was one of those beds a kid just HAS to jump up and down on!
And of
course I was the kid that would wait until Mom was out hanging clothes up on
the line to make my move.
First, I
would sneak and check out the kitchen window on the east side of the house and
make sure she was really out there hanging clothes up.
Then, I
would run as fast as my tiny little feet and legs could go back to her bedroom
on the west side of the house and take a vaulting box- like leap over the foot
board and swing my body up onto the mattress atop that beautiful Double Wedding
Ring Quilt!
Drunk with
just the preliminary thoughts of my sin of JUMPING ON MOM AND DAD’S BED, I
would get my arms started in a wind milling motion first – thinking that would give me
more upward thrust in my quest to touch the ceiling.
Then I would
give a few leg thrusts downward into the mattress – because
EVERYONE
knows that’s how cats get ready to jump… and I was a cat.
(At four or
five years old you can be whomever or whatever you desire…)
Next, I
would execute the initial leap.
It had to be
good, for like a rocket, if your trajectory was wrong you could go spiraling
out of control and in Mom and Dad’s small room that meant blasting your head
off the wall, or worse, crashing into the corner of the upright chest of
drawers – I had done that plenty of times!
If I started
the jump sequence just right I could get in several huge bounding leaps from
top to bottom and back again before losing control and aborting the repeated
launching of my body- rocket by landing on my back in the middle of the bed.
If I heard
the slam of the screen door on the other side of the house that meant I had
mere seconds to stop the sequence and straighten the Double Wedding Ring Quilt
before Mom came in from hanging laundry on the line.
I became an
expert at recovery mode.
After the
crash landing on my back I would start singing to myself as if I had been doing
that the entire time she was working out at the line (silence was a dead
giveaway in the Johnson household that there were some serious misdeeds going
on somewhere!)
I would
immediately sit Indian Style in the middle of the bed and reach in front of me
and straighten the corners at the foot of the bed.
Then I would
stretch out and reach behind me and straighten the corners at the head of the
bed.
All the
while singing to keep up the charade of my practicing nursery rhymes or songs
from the radio and sitting in quiet time like I was told.
The times
that I actually did sit quietly in quiet time I would play upon the quilt lost
in a world of my own making.
The Double
Wedding Ring Pattern always looked like a road or pathway to me.
Kind of like
the Yellow Brick Road, but with the faded, beautiful colors and styles of the
1930’s clothes that it was pieced from.
Over the
years I walked my fingers down the rounded pathways to foreign lands, over mountain
ranges I hoped to climb, through the caverns and valleys I planned to delve
into with my pick and shovel to find fossils and treasures, and the bridges I
would traverse across the mighty rivers of the world - but always my journeys
ended with walking my fingers from my make believe land onto Garrison Creek
Road, down our drive way across Garrison Creek that bounded our farm like a
royal mote, up our driveway, and into our farm yard back home where it was safe
and warm.
I spent many
an hour studying that Double Wedding Ring Quilt.
Entrenched
in my memory are the colors, the designs, the stitches that were so unique to
that particular quilt.
I knew that
someday I wanted to know how to do that.
I knew I
never wanted to forget those images.
They were
loving, warm images from my early childhood.
The ones
that make life seem like a paradise made just for you.
When our old
farm house burned and all the family heirlooms were gone with it, I thought I
would only have those images to remember that quilt by.
Yesterday,
at the John Miller Community Center in Roberts Park, I rounded a quilt display
and was instantly brought back to jumping on Mom and Dad’s bed, to walking my
fingers on the path to make believe journeys, to dreaming of making my future
quilts for my someday family, to curling under the quilt with my mom and
reading before bedtime as she waited for Dad to come home from the second shift
at D&M.
It was like
seeing an old childhood friend after 40 years.
It was not
Mom’s quilt.
That one had
burned in a fire around 1998.
This quilt
was quilted and finished in 2008 from a top that was bought at a yard sale in
Liberty Indiana.
The Quilt
Show information tag said it was 1930’s fabrics.
I could
NEVER forget those fabrics.
I could
NEVER forget those designs.
I could
NEVER forget those colors.
They were my
land of counterpane.
They were
once again right before my eyes in a quilt.
In The
Double Wedding Ring Quilt that Sandy Brown completed and owns today.
I must take
my mother to the John Miller Community Center to see that quilt before the show
closes.
I have so
many questions to ask.
My mother
lived in Liberty for a short while when she was a child.
Where did
HER quilt come from?
Who quilted
it?
How old was
it?
And to think
that I was tempted to skip the Conner Quilters Quilt Show because I was tired.
Not only
would I have missed the Quilt Show, but also the Still Life Art Competition,
the Flower Show, the Woodcarvers Demonstration, and the Shawnee Valley
Dulcimers Historical Concert.
I would have
missed the chance to be a kid again jumping on Mom and Dad’s bed in the Indiana
summer time enjoying the simple thrills that life can bring to us.
