COTTON
Our oldest daughter was born on my Grandma's 70th Birthday.
In this picture we are celebrating their 23rd and 93rd Birthdays.
Cotton. fluffy, white, raw cotton
Five foot sack draped over a five-year-old shoulder.
Five-year-old hands grasping hard bolls, tugging out raw fibers. Texas sun scorching, endless rows
of cotton.
Thirsty, painful, dirty.
Pickin' cotton.
Cotton. Simple, colorful, thrifty cotton.
In the patchwork of my life, my Grandma is cotton.
Soft cotton dresses.
Embroidered cotton hankies.
Faded cotton aprons.
Cotton. Versatile, durable, comforting cotton.
In all my growing up years, I never saw my Grandma wear anything except dresses. Stitched with skill on an old Singer sewing machine, her dresses had plain, high necklines, modest sleeves, and long hems. Attending church, shopping, gardening, housekeeping, cooking or camping, my Grandma wore a dress. With the advent of double knits and other more modern fabrics, not all of her dresses continued as cotton, but I remember that even as a child, I thought the cotton ones were the prettiest and most comfortable for snuggling. One of my favorite dresses of hers had a black background, covered with delicate pink roses. She wore it often to church and special occasions. With the passing of time, the colors faded to a softer hue and it was relegated to a "house dress". On the day that my beloved Grandpa, the light and hero of my Grandma's life, went Home, my Grandma was wearing this dress. Throughout the day, my Grandpa regained consciousness several times and commented on different things. One of the last things he said to my Grandma, with the look of young love in his eyes, was "I've always thought you looked so beautiful in that dress." It seems that Grandpa and I shared a love and appreciation for cotton.
One piece of cotton, that I do not think my Grandma was ever without was her hankie. Tiny scraps of beauty tucked into purses and apron pockets or safety pinned just inside the neckline of her dress. With her handkerchief, my Grandma was prepared for anything. A dirty face when you were headed shopping? Out came the hankie, add a little spit to the corner, and your face was as good as new! Gardening in the hot Kansas sun? Soak a hankie in the water hose, hold it against your throat for instant cool. Canning vegetables in an un-air conditioned kitchen? Out came the hankie to mop the sweat off your forehead. Find a delicate robin egg that had fallen from a nest? Gently wrap it in a hankie and save it to show the little ones so they can learn to appreciate God's beautiful world. When I was little, if I behaved myself, I could sit with Grandma in church. She knew all kinds of tricks to keep a small child well-behaved during an old fashioned Holiness meetin' . My favorite was when she would take out her handkerchief, fold it into a triangle, roll both ends to the middle, fold it over and pull. Out would come two tiny "babies in a cradle". This never ceased to fascinate me as I gently rocked the cradle and put the babies to sleep. Eventually, during church, she taught me how to roll the handkerchief myself and make my own. It is amazing how much I learned about God and His Word and His Love while I was playing with my Grandma's hankie. I wish ladies still carried hankies.
But my favorite cotton of all was her apron. She had quite a variety that she hung on a hook on the back of the bathroom door. My grandma's apron was not simply for protecting her dresses from spills and splatters. Gathered up on the corners, it was a basket for freshly picked produce straight from the garden or quickly snatched laundry off the line before a summer storm. When flapped wildly, it chased away those nasty "stinkin' starlings" that stripped the berries off her bushes! The pockets were a treasure trove of safety pins, peppermints, paper clips, seed packets and the ever present hankie. They were also handy for bringing in a few eggs from the chicken coop. I have often seen my Grandma swaddling a rescued bird or baby squirrel in her apron as she patiently fed it and nursed it back to health until it could survive on it's own. When I was small enough that I had to sit on phonebooks to reach the holiday table, one of my Grandma's aprons tied firmly around my neck acted as a bib to protect my new Christmas dress. As I grew, I was enveloped in an extra large apron to keep me from soaking my clothes as I stood alongside my Grandma and "helped" her wash dishes.
My most precious memory of Grandma's apron is when I was learning to tie a bow. I was (and am) one of those few incredible people who just happen to be left-handed. While being a leftie made perfect sense to me, it tended to confuse all the right-handed people in my life! My family was fairly open-minded about my left-handedness for that day and age when schools were just starting to accept the normalcy of children who used the "wrong" hand. My mom actually taught me to write before I went to Kindergarten. She simply adjusted the paper to the other side and let me do my thing. (and by the way, I do not write "upside down"! :) ) But when it came to teaching me to tie my shoes, everyone was stumped. I COULD NOT get the fox to chase the rabbit around the tree to save my life. Those pesky, slippery shoestrings WOULD NOT go over the river and through the woods and into the empty log or over the waterfall or any other direction I needed them to go. Although determined, my tying attempts began to end in tears of hopelessness. One day, my Grandma said to me,
"Come here, Deedle-Dawn." (Because Grandmas can call you that and get away with it!) "Today we are going to learn to tie a bow."
She untied her apron strings from behind her back, pulled them around to the front of her and drew me in close, within the circle of her arms and those soft, wrinkled strings. For the next while, she patiently worked with me, her capable hands engulfing my clumsy ones, guiding them through the steps with her apron strings until I mastered the illusive skill of tying. From there, it was an easy step to my shoestrings. Now, in the remembering, I see that the most important things tied together that day were two hearts bound by love, across time, one leading the way for another.
Due to a family tragedy, I am unable to physically own any of my Grandma's aprons, hankies or dresses. This makes me sad. However, I am continually aware that I have in my possession something infinitely more priceless, because amid the rich tapestries of velvets, satins and brocades, the sturdy denims, polyesters and knits, the coarse burlap of my life, I find that the most valuable patches, those woven into the very fiber of my being, are cotton.
Comforting, Enduring, Timeless Cotton.
