The Promise Quilt

“Sixty years.  Has it really been that long,” I asked?

“Yes, it has been sixty years,” I answered myself out loud, as I unfolded, then smoothed the Promise Quilt over the antique four-poster bed.

 Each time I see a four-poster bed my mind pulls me back to the time as a five year old skinny kid I met my mother on a hot summer evening in 1945.  I remember every detail as if it happened yesterday, because buried deep inside me, that scared little kid still asks why did it happen?

Inside an old clapboard house with a tin roof, so many years ago, the soft quiet of a moon-lit summer evening was shattered.  My big, blue-eyed, and pink-cheeked Auntie lifted me up with her familiar farm-weathered hands and strong arms.  She stood me on top of the Promise Quilt that covered my big four-poster bed.  Then, without a word, she turned and walked away ...forever. 

With fear and fascination, I saw an unfamiliar woman sitting at the foot of my bed. She was dressed in store-bought finery with pearls around her neck.  A twinkling sea-horse shaped brooch was pinned to the jacket of her linen suit.  Her chestnut brown hair was softly combed back away from her face, a face that reflected something familiar to me.  Petite, pretty, and with the fragrance of Auntie’s flower garden, she sat quietly, staring at me and gently smiling.  Slowly, she reached over, and took my left hand in her right hand.

“Don’t be afraid.  I have not seen you since you were born.  I’m your mother.  Your daddy and I have come to take you home.”

Take me? Take me where, I thought.  Panic rushed up through me and I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t move.

“You’re not my mother, you’re not my Auntie,” I managed to stammer. 

Confused, I pulled my hand away from her.  Out of a frightened child’s confusion and with a breaking heart, suddenly it came to me: Auntie was giving me away.

With panic in my eyes, I turned to look for Auntie to ask her why she was giving me away.  Had I been bad?  Did she no longer love me?  What had I done?  But Auntie wasn’t in the room. I called out to her as tears ran down my cheeks, but there was no answer. 

I always will remember the lonely sound made that night by our old kitchen screen door banging shut.  It was an old clapper-style door and Auntie had placed a hairpin through the wire fabric to scare off flies.  A door badly in need of paint that opened on to a big back porch filled with rocking chairs, buckets, and toys and where my big collie dog would sit with me for hours. When the banging sound stopped, so did the world I knew.  The world I knew was gone forever. 

In 1945, my world was a farm somewhere in Bowie County, Texas.  It was dirt roads, camp meetings, and Prince Albert tobacco tins.  It was my big, blue-eyed Auntie driving a ‘38 Dodge truck with the windows rolled down and singing so loud people in the next county could hear her.  It was me and my sister singing along with Auntie while bouncing along in that old truck as we headed off on one adventure or another.

Whenever we went somewhere it was our habit to sing and the louder the better.  My sister and I learned to measure distance by the number of verses we would sing while Auntie would drive from one place to another.  We knew, for example, our farm was two verses from Mr. And Mrs. Avery’s farm or ten verses from the Gospel Lighthouse Church.  We knew we were more than twenty versus from Texarkana, the nearest town to our farm big enough to have anything more than a post office and a filling station. 

On one particular day, in 1945, we went fishing at the Willow pond.  To get there, we only went about five verses down a narrow dirt road.  It wasn’t a real road though, it was more like the wide path a tractor sometimes makes. 

A gritty ribbon of dust followed us through a cornfield to a blue-black oasis shaded on one side by half a dozen old Willow trees.  Auntie eased off the gas pedal and let the truck roll to a stop.  She allowed for the dust to settle a minute, then wiped her face with an old towel.  She plopped on her big straw hat, then pulled the bead on the string up to her chin. Her hat on, she stepped down out of the truck and gave us the biggest grin in the whole state of Texas, maybe even the whole United States.  Auntie was our comfort.  She was our home.

“Now, Miss June Bug, this is a special day. You and Sis are going to catch old Charlie.  Yessiree, today you catch old Charlie and tonight you two are going to get a big surprise.”

Sis and I wore ear-to-ear grins anticipating a big surprise.  I poked Sis, then pointed toward Auntie.  We watched her take a clean rag from one of the pockets on her flowered cotton dress. She wiped the beads of sweat that filled her twinkling eyes and made rivulets on her cheeks.

While surveying the pond, Auntie slipped her Prince Albert tobacco tin from her pocket.  Holding the tobacco tin in one hand, she flipped open the lid with a single motion of her thumb.  Inspecting the contents of the tin, she stuck in her index finger and dragged out two slippery night crawlers.  She took our hooks, slid on those critters, then flicked the dust from her lap, stood straight up, and in a graceful swing of her arm, she tossed our worm-laden lines into the water to meet their fate.  They sank right down and made our bobbers a dip.

Sis and I sat side by side, cane poles in our hands, with our hair done up in braided pig-tails.  Barefoot, wearing matching flower-sack shorts, we couldn’t take our eyes off our bobbers.  Listening to the cicadas sing their ratchitty-sounding summer songs, we waited for old Charlie and wondered at all the marvels around us as little country girls would often do.

“A surprise, what surprise” said Sis suddenly?

I looked at her without surprise, because Sis always has had a habit of saying things right out loud when she was turning them over in her mind. 

“Well, I’ll tell you this much,” Auntie slowly answered, “Your daddy is home on leave and he is coming to visit and bringing a surprise.” 

“Daddy is coming?  Is mommy coming too?  She got sick and had to go away a long time ago, ” Sis blurted out with excitement, but Auntie did not answer.   Auntie just started humming words from her favorite hymn, “What A Friend We Have In Jesus.”

“Mommy?” I asked.

 “Mommy got sick when you was born”, Sis added.

“Mommy?” I repeated, but then I left it alone.

Sis and I waited for Auntie to give away more of the surprise, but it was hot, the hooks were baited, and the corks bobbed lazily in the still water.  It was time for that black oasis to deliver up old Charlie.

Sixty years ago and miles and miles away in some corner of my memory, my Auntie, Sis, and I still sit by a pond trying to catch old Charlie.  Life has taken me on so many turns traveling thousands of miles, but sometimes, just the smallest thing takes me right back to that special time.

Woodbridge, Virginia, is full of antiques.  Old people and old things side by side in an old town.  In my antique shop, I stand staring at the four-poster bed I bought at the auction over in Fairfax last Tuesday night.  I made it up with the Promise Quilt I picked up this past summer somewhere in the Vermont countryside.  Just for an instant, I can see a five year old child standing on that quilt, laughing, innocent and happy.

“Was it sweat or tears I saw in those big blue eyes so many years ago at that little spit of a pond in some corn field in Texas,” I caught myself saying out loud.

Closing up the shop for the night, as I walked to the front door, I turned back one more time to look at the old four-poster bed covered with a Promise Quilt.  Standing outside on the sidewalk, while pulling the door shut and turning the key in the lock, I suddenly heard in the distance a familiar voice singing.

“Tra la la, tweedle-y dee, dee, it gives me a thrill to wake up in the morning on Mockingbird Hill.”  I turned and looked up and down the street.  Nothing.  No one.

Promise Quilt I walked across the sidewalk, then I saw where the singing must have come.  I blinked and rubbed my eyes to try to see more clearly.  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I swear I saw the tail lights of an old ‘38 Dodge truck.  As fast as I could, I turned to look down the street to get a better look, but it was gone.  Was it ever there, I thought, or was it just a wishful vision?

I pressed the electric key pad to unlock the doors on my truck, opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel.  Gripping the steering wheel, staring out the windshield, I wondered where that old ‘38 Dodge truck was going, and where it had been all these years. I wondered how many verses of some song it took the driver to get there.  My child’s mind wondered if it possibly could be the same truck that took me and Sis up and down dirt roads, full of love and laughter and song.  Most of all, I guess I wanted to see the driver just one more time.  I wanted to crawl up onto that big lap and sit in the shelter of those strong arms and I realized the child in me was still crying after all these years.  Still wanting to know why it all had to end on that hot summer evening so many miles away and so many years ago in 1945?  A sadness that never dies.