“I’m supposed to start making my wedding quilt,” Flicka says one day in November.
She spends time in the secret place each day and learns new things there. This is definitely one of them.
I consider two realities missing from my twenty four year old’s life: impending nuptials and a current boyfriend. But I know how callings and faith work: solid ground always rises to meet each step into seeming nothingness.
“You better get to it then,” I say.
She comes into agreement, calling what is not as though it were, and orders wool roving from Amazon. This won’t be a fabric-squares-stitched-together type of blanket but a felted wool covering meant to hang first from the altar on their day before God and man, then come to rest on their bed (or wall of their first apartment.)
Excitement mounts. Will my firstborn’s husband enter her life as soon as the quilt is complete? Is this an “if you build it, they will come” scenario? And more importantly, is Flicka even aware of that movie reference?
The holidays happen, distractions beckon, and my girl appears to forget her assignment. Santa remembers, though, and she finds a gift card from Knit & Bolt in her stocking on Christmas morning. Still, no more movement on the quilt.
“Look, do you want me to keep you accountable?” I say as 2023 ends. “Because I will.”
She says something about the new year, about the strategy she forms even now for The Quilt.
One Saturday in early January, I swirl my toilet brush around the insides of porcelain bowls in the house, and maybe my activity ignites productivity because Flicka lugs bags of supplies into the living room. She draws out yarn on spectrums of cream and gray.
“Oh, good,” I say, touching the dark gray wool. “This is accurate. Like the storm clouds of marriage.”
She lays out a swath of bubble wrap, layers the wool roving on it so the fibers are perpendicular and alternating, sprays hot soapy water onto the wool, and overlays it with mesh netting. She rubs the surface, agitating it, then rolls it in the bubble wrap and mesh, squeezing and peeking now and then to see if the fibers have bonded.
But this is tedious work—much harder than she expects. She decides a boiled wool product is preferable to wet felting and relaxes into a chair with her knitting needles.
In mid-January, a family friend—unaware of Flicka’s project and in the thick of Swedish Death Cleaning—messages my girl to say she has lots of yarn, and would she like to have it?
This is a divine you’ll-need-more-yarn-than-you’ve-got contribution to the project, and our knitter drives to Hudson, Wisconsin, in mid-February to fetch the donated skeins. If one zooms out far enough to see the picture from heaven’s vantage point, one soon sees that our friend purchased the material specifically for Flicka. And it’s perfect.
During the “knit one, purl two” of her days, my girl and I talk about the man coming behind the quilt. The whole family discusses how this might go. We throw out some names. We consider options that seem plausible, some more exciting than others. I feel like Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, a tiresome and gossipy character consumed by the desire to see her daughters married. Yikes. I pull back and choose to trust instead.
After all, if she knits it, he will come.
*****
Curious about Part 2? So am I. Come back at some point in the future to discover the ending of this story; it won’t be next week.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.