parenting – Cindy Hval

Baffled, we stared at our dining room table.

With the leaves, it seats 12. Without the leaves, it seats six. Now, there are just two of us.

“Where are we going to sit?” I asked my husband.

He shrugged.

Our places at the table changed over time as our family grew and then shrank. For several years, it’s just been Derek, me and our youngest son. In September, Sam accepted a teaching position at Odessa College in Texas. We hadn’t thought about the practical adjustments empty-nesters must make – like where to sit at mealtimes.

“We can’t sit next to each other. That’s just weird,” I said.

With a full plate in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, Derek nodded toward the door.

“Let’s eat on the deck,”

Crisis averted, we enjoyed our meal in the September sun and discussed where our new spots at the table should be.

“I don’t care where we sit as long as we’re not eating off TV trays,” he said.

I shuddered.

“Do they even still make those?”

In the weeks that followed we slowly found our new normal. While we miss our Baby Boy, we’re finding lots to love about our empty nest – like nuts. Sam has a severe peanut/nut allergy. We haven’t had a dish of cashews or peanuts in our home in 22 years. Now, we enjoy small dishes of mixed nuts as an appetizer or late-night snack. Also, our grocery bill has diminished considerably!

e aren’t the only ones adjusting to Sam’s absence. Our cats Thor and Walter have had to adapt as well – especially Walter. He’s a creature of habit, and his habit is to tag along after me all day long. Most mornings my tabby entourage escorts me to my basement office. Then he plunks himself on our old BarcaLounger near my desk in front of Sam’s TV.

Sam took the TV and the recliner with him when he moved. With no place to plunk, Walter took to napping at my feet. This proved to be a workplace hazard for both of us. I’d forget he was there and step on his tail, or he’d dart in front of me causing me to trip.

I explained the situation during a phone call with Sam.

“Maybe I should buy him a cat bed and put it next to my desk,” I said.

My son had a better idea.

“Why spend money on a cat bed he won’t use? Just buy a clothes basket. He loves them.”

There’s a reason we call him Smarty Pants Sam.

I bought a $4 basket; put an old afghan in it and now Walter has a safe place to nap when he comes to work with me.

Though I’ve found lots to enjoy about our first few months as empty-nesters, I have to confess to feeling a bit blue as I did my Thanksgiving shopping. It’s our first holiday without our youngest son. We’ll have seven family members at the table – I doubt I’ll need to extend it with a leaf.But when reaching for the serving platters behind my Christmas china, I rediscovered my thankful spirit.Sam will come home for Christmas and his place at the table will be ready.

Columns

Saying Grace

July 24, 2022 Cindy Hval

There’s hungry and then there’s waiting-for-your-father-to-say-the-blessing-over-dinner-hungry.

I grew up in a family that said grace before every meal – even breakfast. My father usually led the family prayer and he was from Arkansas. There’s a reason they call it a Southern drawl.

Basically, it means what most of us say in one or two syllables becomes three or four when pronounced by someone from the South. Also, my parents were Pentecostal and supported many missionaries. Support included mentioning them by name in prayer at every opportunity – often before a meal.

While our Cream of Wheat solidified, our PBJ sandwiches calcified and our meatloaf cooled, my father prayed.

Often, we kids were expected to pick up the mantle. My brother Jon famously balked when asked to pray over dinner. At age 3, he crossed his arms over his chest and scowled.

“I payed (prayed) at noon!”

This became an oft-used mantra when my siblings and I were expected to offer the blessing. It rarely held sway.

When Derek and I raised our four sons, we rarely breakfasted or lunched together, but family dinner was sacrosanct and included saying grace.

We held hands and took turns saying the prayer, which almost always ended with “and bless the hands that prepared it.”

Those hands were always mine and whoever prayed that evening often followed their father’s example and lifted my hand to their lips and kissed it. It’s one of the sweetest memories of all my boys at the table.

My sister reminded me that our brothers were less sweet and often got in trouble for amending that phrase to “Bless the hands that repaired it.”

Also, less sweet were the prayers my boys brought home from church camp.

Alex returned after one excursion and prayed, “Thanks for the meat. Now let’s eat!”

I was unimpressed.

His brother Zach upped (or downed?) the ante the following year, by bellowing “Jeeesuus! AMEN!”

I asked Facebook friends to recall blessings they said before meals.

Mary Roy’s family topped my dad’s invocation frequency.

“As a child, we would invite Jesus to our table to begin with prayer, then ended our meals with, ‘Oh, give thanks unto the Lord for he is good and his mercy endureth forever! Amen.’ We were a two-prayer-a-meal family.”

Joe Butler’s family was more concise: “God’s neat, let’s eat.”

When Ellen Peters’ kids were young they said a traditional blessing. “Bless us, O Lord. And these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Gene Brake’s less-reverent blessing didn’t amuse his grandmother: “Good bread, good meat, good gosh, let’s eat!”

Nina Culver said when her family was feeling goofy they’d pray, “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub.”

My sister reminded me our oldest brother David finished that prayer with a rousing, “Yay! God!”

That seems tame compared to Cecile Charles’ dad. He mortified her mom when company came to dinner and he prayed, “Bless the meat, damn the skin, pin back your ears and cram it in!”

Norma Weber’s family prayer focused on counting blessings. “There’s a roof up above me. I’ve a good place to sleep, there’s food on my table and shoes on my feet. You gave me your love, Lord and a fine family. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings on me.”

And when a teenage Miriam Robbins worked summers at the Salvation Army Camp Gifford at Deer Lake, they sang this grace: “Be present at our table, Lord. Be here and everywhere adored. These mercies bless and grant that we may live to love and serve but thee.”

The simple act of pausing to express thanks before a meal may seem antiquated, but it still has value to me. In a world where many families eat in front of the television or with their eyes glued to their phones, something precious, perhaps sacred is lost.

Recently, Derek, Sam and I enjoyed a lovely dinner on our deck and I was reminded of an older prayer.

“For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.”

That evening, my eyes filled with tears. However slowly my father prayed, his heart was pointed in the right direction – gratitude. No matter the state of the world, if you have food on your table and people you love to share it with, there is always, always something to be thankful for.

Cindy Hval can be reached at dchval@juno.com. Hval is the author of “War Bonds: Love Stories from the Greatest Generation” (Casemate Publishers, 2015) available on Amazon and in bookstores nationwide.

All Write

Turning Tables

November 13, 2021 Cindy Hval

It’s always a bit surreal to be the interviewee instead of the interviewer, but I had fun chatting with Hara Allison on her podcast “See Beneath Your Beautiful.”

See Beneath Your Beautiful podcast is raw and intimate, sometimes funny and always entertaining. With new episodes every Saturday, Hara explores our loves, fears and hopes with a delicious combination of depth and lightness.

We chatteed about writing, parenting, grandparenting and lots of stuff in between.

You can click here https://bit.ly/3okAtTe to listen to the episode, or find it on any podcast streaming service.

*Disclaimer* I utter the 3 forbidden “p” words!

Columns

Word Trouble: I don’t think that means what you think it means

January 21, 2020 Cindy Hval

I’ve been told I have a way with words.

After all, I’ve spent many years making a living writing them. But this summer I learned I’d apparently lost my way – at least when it comes to contemporary euphemisms.

Each year I host a gathering of friends in our backyard gazebo. The Great Gazebo Girlfriend Gathering provides a way for me to bring friends from varying parts of my life together to reflect, reminisce and laugh.

It’s also quite an educational event.

My friend, Judi, told us about her stay at a cute bed-and-breakfast with interesting room names.

“I saw that on Facebook!” I said. “I thought it was cool that your room was ‘Netflix and chill.’ ”

A brief silence fell.

Then someone giggled. Someone else tittered. Judi’s eyes got big.

“What?” I asked.

“Cindy, don’t you know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means?” my friend Sarah asked.

Puzzled, I gazed at her.

“Of course, I do,” I replied. “It means you’re going to watch a movie and relax.”

I’m pretty sure the resulting howls of laughter could be heard for miles.

Apparently, somehow, when I wasn’t looking, that innocently descriptive phrase has morphed into meaning something entirely different.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition: Netflix and chill, as a distinct phrase, means to watch Netflix with a romantic prospect with the eventual expectation of sexual activity.

And that’s the most family-friendly definition.

Reader, I beg of you, do not look this up in the Urban Dictionary.

Horrified, I gazed at my laughing friends.

A blush spread over my face and deepened to a reddish hue as I recalled my response when a much younger colleague asked what Derek and I had planned for the weekend.

“Oh, we’re going to Netflix and chill all weekend long. I can’t wait!” I replied.

He grinned.

“Good for you!” he said.

Then I remembered how I’d told the grocery store cashier the same thing. He paused in the midst of scanning my items, smiled and winked at me.

“Awesome,” he said.

I endured my friends’ good-natured ribbing for the rest of the party, but honestly, I hoped they were pulling my leg (definition: to make someone believe something that is not true as a joke, which I looked up to be sure that meaning hadn’t changed).

When they left, I turned to my trusted youngest son.

“Sam, what does ‘Netflix and chill’ mean?”

Peering at me, he cautiously replied. “What do you think it means?”

That’s how I knew my friends were telling the truth, and I was mortified all over again.

I hoped this was something only teenagers, young adults and their parents knew, but recently that hope was dashed.

When we met my friend Jill and her husband for dinner, the subject of my embarrassment came up again. (Honestly, I’ll be 70 before I live this down.)

To prove the phrase wasn’t known to merely the younger set, Jill asked our server, “Do you know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means?”

“Yes,” she replied. “And I only do that with my husband.”

Lesson learned. The next time someone asks what my plans are for the evening I will reply, “My husband and I are going to watch a movie via an online streaming service and relax.”

Or, because truthfulness is important to me, I might just smile and say, “We’re going to Netflix and chill.”

Columns

With 20/20 clarity, I see change ahead

January 7, 2020 Cindy Hval

I don’t remember ever having 20/20 vision. I got my first pair of glasses in fourth grade, my first pair of contacts at 15, and my eyesight continues to decline.

That’s why I’m really looking forward to this new year – I can finally see 2020! And every time I glimpse the date in my new calendars and planners, I smile. There’s just something exciting about turning a page.

2019 brought change to our household. In the fall, our third son moved into his own place, and we’re officially down to just one kid at home. That kid will graduate from college in the spring, and while he’ll likely stay with us while pursuing a second degree – our empty nest years are looming.

So far, meal planning has been the most challenging thing about our shrinking household. Because Sam works mainly evenings, I foresaw a lot of cooking for two in my future. As usual, my vision was faulty, because at least once a week there are five at my table.

When Zach moved out, I told him I hoped he’d join us for a weekly family meal. Our oldest son also lives nearby, and if I’m cooking for four, it’s certainly no stretch to make dinner for five.

The result? I now get to have my three in-town sons around my table on a regular basis, and nothing makes this mama’s heart happier. Besides, I haven’t yet mastered the art of cooking for three, let alone two.

The holidays revealed more opportunities for adapting. In recent years, our two youngest sons have been in charge of tree decorating. My penchant for holiday décor seems to grow each year, so it’s nice to leave the Christmas tree in their capable hands. However, this year, varying work schedules proved problematic.

I’m all about problem solving, so for the first time in at least 25 years, Derek and I trimmed the tree by ourselves. What might have been melancholy became delightful. We took a lovely, romantic stroll down memory lane as we hung ornaments and remembered Christmases past.

Then came the cookie-decorating conflict.

In 2011, Sam made us a book featuring his treasured Christmas memories. In it he wrote, “I love making and decorating Christmas cookies with you.”

That was then.

This is now.

As usual, I baked dozens of sugar cookies, and then checked with our sons to see when they’d be available to frost and decorate them. Sam seemed ambivalent and told me to check with Zach.

I’ve never wanted to try to squeeze my sons into traditions that no longer fit, so I texted Zach, “How strongly do you feel about decorating Christmas cookies? I can leave them out for you guys to do when you come over Wednesday, or Dad and I can just do them tonight.”

He replied, “I don’t feel strongly either way.”

So for the first time in our 33-year marriage, Derek got to be part of the Christmas cookie fun. He’s artistically inclined, so our cookies looked fabulous. And honestly, I don’t much miss the Cyclops angels or graphically anatomically correct snowmen that our sons were inclined to include. IMG_20191216_194208217

Derek and I further simplified our holidays by skipping stuffing stockings for each other. Less shopping equaled less stress and more fun.

As someone who cherishes the familiar, and relishes ritual and tradition, I’ve been surprised at how readily I’ve adapted to this new season of our lives, and how eagerly I’m anticipating the unknowns that await.

Because whatever 2020 brings, the one thing I can clearly see ahead is change. And instead of dreading it, I’m choosing to embrace it.

Columns

Don’t Blink: Summer and Childhood Vanish

September 13, 2019September 13, 2019 Cindy Hval

They marched out of the old Orchard Prairie schoolhouse, eyes alight with excitement.

“Are they done yet?” asked the oldest.

The three boys had been waiting for their mom, the school’s PTO president, to finish an afternoon meeting that I’d just left.

I’d paused to take a picture of the historic schoolhouse when the boys bounded into view.

They’d been busy while they waited.

“We catched a spider!” shouted the littlest boy. “A GINORMOUS spider!”

The middle brother shouldered him out of the way.

“We put it in a Gatorade bottle that I found,” he said.

His older brother held the spider aloft, soldiering on in search of their mother, while the youngest stayed behind, eager to explain his role in the capture.

“I founded it first!” he said. “Back there!”

He pointed behind the building, bouncing with excitement.

“It’s GINORMOUS!”

Then he hurried to catch up with his brothers.

That encounter brightened a long Monday and memories of my sons tumbled through my mind.

Once upon a time, I had four little boys whose summer adventures frequently included capturing creepy crawlies.

For the record, I’m not a fan of creepy crawlies, but I am a fan of boys and boundless curiosity.

Summer often seems endless when you’re an at-home mom. Endless can equal excruciating when bored boys fight over video games. I worked hard to balance planned activities while leaving room for unstructured play. Anything to keep my busy boys away from electronic devices and spontaneous wrestling matches.

One summer, I grew tired of my Tupperware being used to re-home spiders and insects, so I bought the boys a bug-catching kit. It came with a net, a magnifying glass, tweezers and a plastic container to house their captures.

They spent hours turning over rocks, crawling under decks, and digging through dirt to find new specimens.

We checked out bug books from the library to help identify their finds and to recognize spiders they should avoid.

I realized that backfired when I overheard my middle son saying to his younger brother, “Nope. That’s not a black widow. Keep looking.”

In retrospect, it’s amazing that no one got bit or stung.

I wished I’d been more patient when they careened through the house, shrieking with excitement, holding a newly captured specimen aloft.

Instead, I often feigned interest and wearily reminded them of the “no bugs in the house” rule. In my defense, you can only rave about the coolness of pill bugs a finite number of times.

I just didn’t realize how quickly those summers would pass. Older friends tried to warn me.

“Slow down, enjoy these days, it all goes too fast,” they said.

Sometimes I did slow down enough to savor the sight of four little boys crouching in the driveway, watching a row of ants march across the gravel.

I wish I had a picture of that. But when my sons were small, cellphones didn’t come with cool cameras. Capturing memories meant running back inside the house, trying to unearth a camera.

Summer can seem endless, but it isn’t. You blink and suddenly there’s a chill in the night air and the leaves start to turn.

As I watched the three little boys run across the Orchard Prairie schoolyard with their ginormous spider, I wished I’d taken their photo.

I would have sent it to their mother.

A snapshot of a boyhood that will disappear in the blink of an eye.

Columns

The Green, Green Grass of Home

July 19, 2019 Cindy Hval

Confession: I haven’t mowed a lawn since 2001, and the only time I mowed the lawn prior to that was when my husband was doing his annual training with the Washington Army National Guard.

The summer our oldest son turned 11, he took over lawn-mowing duties. As each of our three younger sons came of age, lawn-mowing was added to their weekly chore list, and my husband had one less thing to worry about.

“I shouldn’t have to mow the lawn again, until I’m almost 60,” Derek calculated, as he watched our capable sons work.

Derek turned 56 this summer. Our third son is getting ready to move out again, and our youngest probably won’t be long behind him.

Suddenly, Derek isn’t so fond of our large, grassy front yard.

When a homeowner in our neighborhood ripped out his entire lawn and replaced it with bark, rocks and plants, Derek nodded in approval.

“That’s the way to do it,” he said. “Low maintenance. Nothing to mow or water.”

It’s called xeriscaping; a landscaping philosophy that uses native, drought-resistant plants and arranges them in efficient, water-saving ways.

I eyed the neighbor’s yard.

“It looks like the entrance to an office building,” I said. “There’s no place to play!”

Derek shook his head.

“How long has it been since anyone played in our front yard?” he asked.

Then last week, Shawn Vestal wrote a column about how much he hates his lawn.

“See?” Derek said, shaking out the newspaper. “All the columnists want to rip out their lawns.”

Talk about your fake news.

Because this columnist loves to look out her front window and see a lush, green lawn.

Yes, I know it’s probably irresponsible water-usage and rampant consumerism or rampant water usage and irresponsible consumerism, and I’m not the one mowing it, but I’ve already given up our backyard to the cause.

Slowly, but steadily, the grass back there is disappearing. First came the construction of the Shed Mahal, then the Great Gazebo, followed by the Delightful Deck and Derek’s Glorious Garden.

There’s barely enough grass left for me to run through the sprinklers on a hot day. Well, I don’t really run. I romp and sometimes I skip, and if my neighbors are out mowing their backyards, they get free entertainment.

Now, Derek’s eyeing my last green space.

Here’s a list of things you can’t do on a xeriscaped yard: play bocce, croquet, or lawn darts. You can’t do somersaults or cartwheels, or spin in circles until you get dizzy and fall down. You can’t play tag, Red Light Green Light, Mother May I or Red Rover. You can’t lie on your back and look at the clouds, and you can’t spread out a blanket and have a picnic.

All of those things happened in our front yard more times than I could possibly count – just not recently.

Perhaps that’s part of my reluctance to let go of grass and embrace wood-chip mulch.

Last night, I sat on our front steps in the cool of the evening as the sprinklers shushed back and forth over the green expanse.

This lawn holds the imprint of chubby baby feet, sweaty soccer cleats and teenage footsteps that always seem to lead away.

It’s cradled me, while I cradled my boys, as we pored over stacks of picture books. It held us as we stretched out and named cloud shapes, and whispered wishes and counted stars.

Others may see our lawn as a wasteful indulgence, but to me it’s a memory-strewn magic carpet, that holds precious memories of the boys who grew to men, while mowing its contours.

And it shines like a green light to beckon those boys home again.

Columns

Sometimes parenting isn’t so thankless after all

July 8, 2019 Cindy Hval

Let’s face it. Parenting can be a thankless job.

But as I sat next to our two youngest sons in the Moore Theatre in Seattle on June 23, I only felt thankful.

Our hardworking, youngest son, Sam, 19, had bought me, Derek and Zach tickets to the Josh Ritter concert.

One of his professors at EWU had played a cover of a Ritter song during a class. Sam was intrigued enough to do some research, and discovered the album “So Runs the World Away,” and he was hooked.

He began buying every recording he could find, and when he heard Ritter’s “Fever Breaks” tour was coming to the Northwest, he was thrilled.

“Want to go to the Seattle show with me?” he asked. “I’m buying.”

When your kid is passionate enough about something that he wants to share it, what parent could say no?

Derek offered to spring for a hotel room, Zach actually scheduled a day off from work, and we wrote the date on our family calendar.

Of course, the week after Sam bought the tickets, Ritter added a show in Spokane.

“Never mind,” I told him. “We’re due for a family road trip.”

In the weeks leading up to the concert, Sam shared Ritter’s albums with us. Zach, a musician himself, was already on board with the artist.

And no wonder. Zach loves folk music, and Ritter is known for his Americana style and narrative lyrics. In 2006, Ritter was named one of the “100 Greatest Living Songwriters” by Paste magazine.

A native of Moscow, Idaho, the prolific songwriter’s vocal stylings sound a bit Bob Dylan-esque with a dose of Tom Waits.

We got more excited about seeing him in person as the date grew closer. And then disaster struck.

Vocal issues prompted a string of canceled dates including shows in Boise, Vancouver and Spokane.

“Boy, I’m glad I didn’t buy tickets for his Spokane show!” Sam said.

He anxiously followed Ritter’s social media feed.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “If the concert is canceled, we’ll just spend a day on the waterfront.”

But the show went on and it was Ritter’s first performance after his doctor-ordered vocal rest.

He didn’t disappoint.

From the upbeat “Getting Ready to Get Down” to the plaintive “Wings,” which features references to Coeur d’Alene, Harrison and Wallace, Idaho, each song was a wonderful blend of lyrical narrative and masterful musicianship.

Take the lyrics to “Old Black Magic,” for example:

“True love to true love

And rust to rust

I let the others cast stones

While I drew in the dust

I tried to be a good man.”

Even the opening act, Penny & Sparrow proved delightful.

“We know,” intoned Andy Baxter, half of the Texas duo. “We’re all that stands between you and Josh Ritter.”

While the duo was enjoyable enough for me to purchase their CD at the break, Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band owned the show.

Ritter’s aching acoustic rendition of “All Some Kind of Dream” proved a fitting finale.

“I saw my brother in a stranger’s face

I saw my sister in a smile

My mother’s laughter in a far off place

My father’s footsteps in each mile

I thought I knew who my neighbor was

We didn’t need to be redeemed

Oh, what could I have been thinking of?

Was it all some kind of dream?”

If and when he reschedules his Spokane appearance, you won’t be disappointed if you go.

“Thanks for a magical evening,” Ritter said as he left the stage.

And it really was.

Thanks in large part to a son with a generous heart who wanted to share something he loves with his family.

Columns

Quilts and the ties that bind

April 22, 2019 Cindy Hval

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Newly retired, Dad waited by the front door to take my mom grocery shopping.

“Tom, you can’t wear that,” Mom exclaimed.

“Why? Don’t I match?” he asked.

A fair question, since Dad was notoriously color-challenged.

But that wasn’t the problem. He’d donned a sport coat and a snazzy red tie with multicolored stripes.

“Sweetheart, you’re retired. You don’t have to wear a tie every day anymore, especially not to the grocery store,” Mom explained.

Disappointed, he removed the tie, but kept the jacket.

Dad loved his neckties.

He grew up picking cotton in Arkansas. As he labored in the sweltering heat, he dreamed of a different life – one that involved a desk job and wearing suits and ties.

His career in the United States Air Force, followed by a career with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, allowed him to achieve his dreams.

When he died in 1995, he’d amassed an amazing collection of neckties. My husband kept a couple, and most of them were donated to a local thrift shop. But I couldn’t part with all of them. I set aside a few dozen and gave them to some dear friends who incorporated them in a beautiful quilt. That quilt hung in my Mom’s bedroom until two years ago when she moved to a retirement facility.

Now, it’s draped over our living room sofa where I can see it every day and think about how blessed I was to have a dad like mine.

It’s also a daily reminder of the friends who took the time to create such a sweet remembrance.

I love quilts, like my dad loved ties. The beauty, artistry and stories behind the patterns fascinate me. Sadly, when it comes to sewing, I’m all thumbs and totally lacking in skill or patience.

Thankfully, I have friends who work magic with fabric, needle and thread.

The necktie quilt isn’t my only memory-filled patchwork. Eleven years ago, our oldest son was struggling through adolescence. His actions and attitudes grieved me. I worried. I fretted. I prayed.

A friend made a lap quilt for me to curl up in when I felt overwhelmed. Because I’d often referred to our firstborn as our “golden child,” she incorporated big golden hearts throughout the design. The border features the worlds of one of my favorite hymns, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

That quilt kept me mindful of my son’s true nature. Every time I wrapped myself in it, I felt cocooned in the comfort of my friend’s love and prayers, evident in each tiny stitch.

My husband has his own special quilt. A diagnosis of osteoarthritis in both hips a few years ago rocked him. A strong, active man, he struggled with the reality of a degenerative disease at a relatively young age.

Bonnie, my sister-in-law, knows that pain all too well. So, she went into her sewing room and crafted a cat-covered quilt for Derek. Using masculine colors for the backing and border, the counterpane delighted both of us – especially when we spotted the cat curled up in a basket that looks just like our Thor.

And recently, a new quilt arrived in the mail, made by an extremely talented, prolific quilter.

Its vibrant colors brighten our bedroom, adding homespun cheer, and the accompanying note warmed my heart.

“Thank you, dear friend, for all your glorious words which help so many,” she wrote.

You can spend hundreds of dollars on beautifully pieced quilts, but the quilts in my home are priceless. Each one is threaded with memories, and has been stitched with prayer and bound with love.