Just monkeying around

Roman's nursery is decorated in bugs... bugs, ladybugs, butterflies, flowers, frogs - anything you'd find in a garden. I chose a gender-neutral theme because I did not find out the gender of my baby during my pregnancy. Of course, I secretly hoped it was a little boy....and as it turned out I was right. My aunt Ali predicted it was going to be a girl and said that this baby girl would heal wounds within our family and bring out the love in all of our hearts....after all ... who doesnt love a baby, right?

So, in this garden themed nursery, there is a quilt (of questionable construction) that I made the summer I was 21. I handpicked all the cotton calico fabrics with bugs and butterflies and I was determined to make this baby quilt. I had always been interested in quilting, because my mom and my grandmother were pretty handy and definitely creative with a needle and thread. Later, after Roman was born and I had bouts of postpardum depression, my doctor brought me into her office from the exam room to show me pictures of the quilts she had made for her son - one each year, given to him on his birthday. She sat with me over her lunch break showing me pictures -- each year her son getting older and the quilts getting larger in size. She told me that I should get back into quilting as a way of working through my difficult labor and delivery experience. I was thinking that it was a good suggestion, but I didn't make any promises. A quilt a year seemed like quite a big promise for someone who hadn't washed her hair in 4 days.

If you've ever been on Etsy.com, you've probably spent hours e-browsing at all the handmade items. My recent search for "baby boy quilt" turned up like 285 pages. But, as it turned out on page 70-something (2 hours of e-browsing later), I found a quilt for Roman. Sock monkeys!!! Yay!....and lots of them speckled onto yellow and light blue fabric, made with love by Donna of The Quilted Lion. Now, I didn't really have the money, but I bought that quilt and wrote Donna a note. The note said "my grandmother is a quilter, but because of recent tension within the family, she probably won't be making a quilt for my newborn son. I love this quilt and my son will snuggle with it for years to come". I didn't expect Donna, the quilter, to write back, but she did. She simply said, "time is precious". She told me that her grandmother, Etta, was her number 1 favorite person in the world -- but she never sewed a stitch, and lost a lengthy battle with cancer last year at age 91.

Now, I never met Etta, but man, I felt Donna's loss in reading her email. I was picturing Etta as the smells-like-powder, makes-you-biscuits-and-gravy, leaves-lipstick-kisses-on-your cheek kind of grandma. Man, I really missed her. I missed her like I missed my dad's mom - who used to wrap toilet paper around her red hair each night and also take the crusts from her toast at breakfast and twirl them into a "cinnamon roll" for me. Then I was kind of sad because - in contrast- my mom's mom (the quilter) was more of a hang-up-the-phone-on-you, no-i-dont-want-to-hold-your-baby, didnt-go-to your-baby-shower, take-your-pictures-down and say the f-word kind of grandma (if there are others like her...enough to classify them into a "kind").

So, as it turns out, there are people who don't love babies (aunt Ali was wrong on more than one account). But, Roman's not old enough right now to know any different. He's long forgot that sweaty car trip up to Roseville...to visit his only greatgrandmother, who didn't even want to hold him.