I sleep under a quilt made by my mom’s mom. She sewed hundreds of small, perfect yellow and white squares together on an old Singer. She then sat with the Quilting Bees in Alma, Kansas, and finished it with a zillion tiny basting stitches. It was for my “marriage bed,” a gift for my future role as wife and mother. I kept it in plastic for nearly 60 years. It was too precious for a dog or cat to sleep upon, too big and too fragile to move from dorm rooms to cabins, state to state, and too small for a queen bed once I did the right thing and got married. But now, finally, in my 76th year, I’m sleeping in a single bed, and it’s a perfect companion. And I want to tell her the memories and gratitude her quilt has evoked.

“Dear Grandma Lena, It makes me cry a little, cringe even more, to realize you were never properly thanked by me. Not only for this quilt but also for shakily written $5.00 checks for our birthdays. Mom made me write a blandly inadequate, ‘Thanks, Grandma,’ never registering that you cleaned houses for over an hour to earn it. But now, decades later, I’d so love to visit with you. You died about my same age now. I’d ask you about the move from Germany to Kansas, in 1900, when you were three. Was it exciting to be on that big boat? Ghastly? Did you have brothers and sisters? How come I don’t know this? What drove your parents to come so far to live on a small farm in the middle of America? I know you were poor: “We ate every part of the pig but the tail and the oink.” I marvel now at gorgeous pickles made from everything, including watermelon rinds, nothing ever wasted. I keep coming up with other mysteries. After grandad died, you barely 60, where did you work, to be able to keep the two-story house in Topeka where your three girls were born, the last one in 1928? You were alone for twenty years, no formal education, no career. I remember the dank basement with cockroaches on our obligatory visits “back home,” but was oblivious to the memories tucked into the attic, glass cases of knickknacks, and kitchen cabinets. I hope you had a right-sized life, only one of three daughters stayed nearby. Your baby girl fled with her new husband to California after the War, so I was born far away from you, and couldn’t know what I was missing. We only had vsits in Kansas, or you in California about every three years. But I can feel the memory of sitting safely by your knee when I was four. You came out for my sister’s birth, to care for me as well, and helped me with my first embroidery: a clown printed on a child-sized hoop of gauze. I stitched it to my skirt, and begged you to cut my dress and not those loopy threads. What was it like to take the train by yourself to visit, crossing half the country alone? You didn’t get to see your daughter and granddaughters very often, and you sacrificed money and comfort to do so. Thank you for that. On one of those visits, during my early teens, you taught me how to make tiny white French knots that formed the coat of the lamb for a “Mary had a little...” theme on two pillow cases. I was thrilled with your “mile-a-minute” crocheted edging in rainbow thread. I wished that I had called you years later, to share the sadness when I left the last pillow case in Kotzebue, Alaska. I can see now that you became excellent at hand crafts as a result of piecing together scraps of cloth and thread that others didn’t cherish. You made dozens of quilts, tea towels, pillow cases, doilies… and gave them all away, to me and other grandchildren. Were they as oblivious of your talents and sacrifices as was I? You’ll never answer these questions. But you need to know how much I cherish this quilt, finally able to accept the love stitched inside each square. I love you Grandma.”

Writing this, I recall other bits of her wisdom: “If you make something sour, add a pinch of sweet, and vice versa.” And so I put lemon in my cherry pies. And in German, the realest truth of all: Wir sind zu früh alt, und zu spät klug We are too soon old, and too late smart.

Whom did you overlook in your youth? What grandparent, teacher, parent-type-person did you take for granted? We waste enormous emotional energy, and diminish our self-worthiness (ty Brene Brown), when we hold back loving feelings and thoughts. Especially toxic is guilt and shame for unexpressed gratitude and admiration. Even if they be long gone, it can help you feel more whole, the relationships more complete, if you write to them from your grown-up appreciation of their love and gifts. It’s never too late to remember their kindness.

It relieved me to learn that it’s natural, normal, and necessary to feel less than wonderful about our child\sh behaviors, so painfully self-centered when re-viewed as an adult. Now, with a heartfelt perspective of what is important, you can do something that would make them smile. Perhaps a donation of money or time, or a reach out to another who would so appreciate such interest and generosity. Even speaking of them, or better, writing to them as I have with my grandma Lena, will help you feel connected.

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It's Never Too Late to Say Thank You & I Love You