Quilt Therapy

1. I am country, to the core.
2. I dislike living in town.  I dislike driving in town.  I dislike most towns.
3. Unless they have a quilt shop.
4. I was born in 1964.
5. My parents had six children.
6. The baby of the family, Jamie, died of SIDs when he was three months old.
7. My mother had mental issues.
8. My dad worked a lot.
9. I was not a favorite child of my parents.
10. Neither was my brother Tom.
11. The other three were favorites.
12. This isn’t a guess and it isn’t unfair to say.  It was the truth and most who knew my folks back then knew it, too.
13. My parents were both abusive alcoholics.
14. My mom had a broken leg and at least one concussion, throughout some of my childhood (the parts that I remember) that were suspicious.
15. Back then, it wasn’t taboo to be a wife beater.
16. Or a drunk.
17. My maternal grandmother was my Gramma from Tramma.  I was her favorite (out of 40+ grandchildren), and she didn’t hesitate to tell anyone, either.
18. I believe it was Gramma’s love that saved me from the world.
19. I was orphaned as a child.
20. My father died of a brain aneurysm on Feb. 29, 1976.
21. He had been in the hospital since Sept. 1975 so we had already learned how to live without him.
22. I was 11 years-old.
23. I did not see my father’s body in his casket.  Thank the Lord for my mother having enough sense to know this was best.
24. My mother abandoned myself and my four siblings the day before the last day of school, in May after my dad died.  I was in the sixth grade.
25. She had just received a large insurance check, survivor benefits.
26. Regardless of the stories that my family tells, my mother was backed into a corner by my dad’s family.  She did what they wanted, not what she wanted.  She gave her children to them.
27. My four siblings went to live with various relatives from my dad’s side of the family.
28. I went to foster home after foster home.
29. I look like my mom.
30. She committed suicide a year later.
31. I saw her one time before she died.
32. She wanted to get myself and my sister back, but I was threatened by my first foster mother.
33. She pulled out a gun on me.
34. She told me my mother was a nothing, that I didn’t want to go back to live with her.
35. I believed her.
36. I believed the gun.
37. I was living in a foster home, my third, when mom overdosed.
38. I walked right by the apartment she died in, every single day while walking home from school.
39. I did not know she lived there.
40. She was living with a man who had five children of his own.
41. This childhood didn’t hit me as “bad” until I was an adult.
42. Which is good as whatever damage was done, it was repairable.  With therapy.
43. As an adult, I took up quilting.
44. Quilt therapy is the best ever at learning to live with life.
45. THE BEST THERAPY EVER!
46. No matter how my life has changed through the years, my childhood is a huge part of my life. 
47. It has bearing on what I came from and has a part in where I’m going. 
48. I cannot escape it, only embrace it and learn to grow with it.
49. I spent 10 years getting my life together, getting to know the brothers that I had been separated from, learning to live and love again.
50. I met the man I would marry in a smoky den of iniquity, in Mizzou country.
51. He was getting his Ph.D. in an ag-related field.
52. I was honky-tonking around, working as a bartender in a large dance hall.
53. I met many country stars while working in this bar.
54. Many stories, only some that I share.
55. He had a girl on his arm when we were introduced.
56. I had actually seen him about a year before this, but nothing came of it.
57. I was eating a Snickers when he came up to my bar for last call. 
58. He didn’t understand the significance of chocolate and endomorphins, so I explained that I preferred to go home alone … with chocolate as my friend.
59. The next time he came into the bar, he was alone and brought me the biggest chocolate bar you’ve ever seen.
60. We danced on I-70 that night, west of Columbia, MO.
61. That was all she wrote. 
62. We dated, he worked on his degree, we got married.
63. We enjoyed three years of togetherness before starting our family.
64. I loved being a wife, but not in the wifey-wifey sort of way … I do cook but I’m not a great cleaner and don’t do well reading minds.
65. Specificity is the key to effective communication.
66. Should I repeat? 
67. Specificity is the key to effective communication.
68. This little saying keeps us married.
69. We will soon be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary.
70. I’m delighted that I’ve stayed married this long, despite the odds in life.
71. He’s still in training, though.
72. He’ll never complete his training.
73. Our first daughter was born in 1995.
74. My older brother and I became very close, after I moved to Missouri in 1989.
75. We created a brother-sister relationship like I never knew existed.
76. He and his wife were there for the birth of our first child.
77. He heard a tape recording of the heartbeat of our second child, as I played it for him over the phone.
78. He died the next day.
79. He died of a brain aneurysm.
80. He died on Father’s Day, 1997.
81. He died never getting to be a father.
82. His death broke my heart.
83. I still miss him, every single day.
84. My two younger brothers are still around.
85. One suffers, as my mom did.
86. The other one is still trying to find his way in life.
87. We have a nephew (son of one brother) in MO.
88. We have a niece (daughter of other brother) in MO.
89. My husband has one sister.
90. She has two children, so we have a niece and nephew in TX, too.
91. We now have four children.
92. That’s enough, thank you.
93. Quilt therapy means more now than ever before.
94. I work from home and have since before our first daughter was born in 1995.
95. I cannot ever imagine having to go to an office to work again. 
96. Never.
97. Quilting is my passion, that I soon hope to turn into a business.
98. I eat, sleep and drink quilting.
99. When the kids aren’t taking my full attention, that is.
100. Quilt therapy is the life for me!

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