A pretty patchwork quilt
Originally posted Monday, January 10, 2005.
I look at my little apartment, my little life in a box, and it has so much to say. It perhaps says more about me than I know what to say myself. These observations at a time when the old question, “Who am I?” rings anew, and a bit painfully, given the circumstances under which I lost the answer to that question.
So what do I see? Lots of white. Bare white walls, two white bookshelves, a white wardrobe with a white stuffed bear on top, a bedstand, two white lamps, an immaculate white kitchen, and a sheer nylon curtain over the main window. But interspersed are patches of color. Red and green pillow-cushions on the floor, a black-brown desk of modest style, a black stereo, blue flannel sheets, a sunset-colored quilt made by Mom, the rainbow of titles on my shelves. In the kitchen my Swiss Family Robinson plant dominates the place a table should be, a bottle of red whine, a red spice candle and a bowl of apples and cherries sits on top of my white stackable shelves. If they were oranges I would think of Cezanne.
Apart from color, I notice the variety of books. They speak volumes, so to speak. A whole shelf of philosophy, followed by art, religion, music, literature, a little poetry, pulp fiction, biography, physical and natural sciences, health and beauty guides, comic books, English and French dictionaries, field guides, an aircraft reference manual, a myriad of folders containing notes, papers, and materials from past classes, and their accompanying textbooks. On the shelf above my stereo are framed pictures of family and friends – Karen, Samee, Rushdia, Mom, Dad, Paul and Grandma and Grandpa. My one precious but worthless fossil lies wrapped in an old pink handtowel in front of the portraits. My trusty blue and white porcelain piggy bank stands ready, but empty, alongside. On the shelf above, poorly arranged, are various gifts and trinkets. The Italian candlesticks Rose gave me. The Israeli egg holders from Karen when she was in Iraq. The wooden puzzle-piece pleisiosaur. Three Grotto candles. My plastic RA box of foreign coins, old coins, coins I keep for silly sentimental reasons, and odd bits I keep in there out of habit-turned-tradition – the Route 66 keychain from the Bob Dylan concert with Sarah, the eraser I meant to return but never did, the keys to the trout lab that I forgot to give back. And finally a jar with a rainbow lightbulb in it.
On my bedside table is the statuette of Mary from Grandma on a doily I’ve had for as long as I can remember. Next to her are a rosary from Grandpa’s funeral, earplugs, a clip-on desk lamp, Atlas Shrugged, and a tiny book of sayings from the Dali Lama. On the shelves below are, no surprise, more books: my rosary prayer book, the prayer book from Notre Dame, a Rachmaninoff biography, the text for my vertebrate paleontology class, two journals, a book of Jane Austen quotes, and “100 Ways to Keep Your Soul Alive,” from Heather. On top of the wardrobe is my old clock radio, tuned to the classical channel, currently piping out a symphonic work I don’t recognize, along with a white lotus bowl of dried red rose buds, and my little potpourri jar bubbling away with the last of Mom’s orange-cinnamon-clove mix. Wedged between the wardrobe and the window are my old sketch notebooks. My beautiful, black, though under-used bike leans against the curtained window, tires flat.
On the bed are my silly penguin flannel sheets (topsheet upside down, fuzzy side in), a wool blanket, Mom’s quilt, a comforter, a sheet, and not-Joe, the elk hide Dad lent me that wasn’t from his four-pointer (Joe) whose rack protrudes from our livingroom wall. A lone calendar is pinned to the wall, above the radiator. January shows the silhouette of a helicopter pilot on the flightline, the pale evening sky and purple clouds nearly shrouding the chopper behind him.
What made me originally take note of this was a series of mental-photographs my mind captured while making dinner tonight. I looked in the reflective glass of the kitchen window and saw my hair doing a ‘50s-style wave and curl with a side part, my black librarian glasses making me look either old or sophisticated, depending on my mood, my lips with berry-colored lipliner still holding fast. My black wool shirt and cardigan almost looked like a sweater-set, but were topped by my frumpy gray hooded sweatshirt from the Gap. Then there were Dad’s old army green fatigues from Officer Training School 30 years ago, and the teal and navy bushkins Mom crocheted for me (“bushkin” a la C.S. Lewis’s “Prince Caspian”, which was my bedtime story in the 2nd grade). So there was this 50’s inspired, intellectual-looking, fatigue-wearing girl of indiscernible age, resolutely kneading dough on two square feet of counterspace and heating spaghetti sauce on the stove. Clean, precise, efficient, my kitchen was a stylish little laboratory of domestic beauty, created by a girl perfectly content to survive on cold cereal. I uncorked a bottle of red wine and added some to the spaghetti sauce, popped the biscuits in the oven, and shortly thereafter I sat down with a nice hot meal, classical music playing all the while. That is, I sat down at my desk in front of my computer, with my spaghetti and biscuit on a blue plastic plate and a cup of cold, over-brewed tea that I promptly spilled all over my pile of financial documents.
Such is the collage of analyzable objects, symbols and habits that make up my life. Somewhere here is the answer to the question, “Who am I?” but I am skeptical that a rigorous analysis of all this would encapsulate me. I suppose it’s a lot like my mom’s quilt; the scraps of fabric and miles of thread say little on their own, but when stitched together into a chosen pattern, transported with me through life events, mended here and there, and acquiring a history and personality of its own through time, the essence of the quilt becomes more than the patches that comprise it.
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