Labour of Love — A Gift from my Mother
It took me a while to break the news to my mother that we were going cruising. I knew she would ask all those questions to which we had no answers and I knew she would worry — that’s what mother’s do!
Once my Mom got over her initial sadness, and stopped imagining us slamming into waves the size of whales and stopped picturing the keel of Summer Love being ripped off by a partly submerged container and realized that we’d sooner get run over by a taxi in Cape Town, she set to work and made us this beautiful quilt.
Starting with the mariner’s compass my mother carefully cut out around the pattern pieces and sewed them together. She pieced together the stars, the planets and the sunbursts before adding the rows of flying geese — her subtle way of suggesting that we too fly south during the long, cold winters.
We have returned, only twice in the past four years, but delight in this gift every day.
Note to self: Perhaps we should take the hint!
[Top photograph: Quilt on Summer Love
Middle photograph: Quilt on Lily B]
