Birthday Quilt

Rosemary turned one almost a month ago. I am still reliving her birth, especially with the blooming of the gardenias as those were the flowers my cousin brought which sat beside my hospital bed and filled the room with God's most perfect perfume. 

First Birthday!!! I can hardly believe it's come and gone. The difference between Rosemary at almost one, frightened to stand, still eating mostly baby food, and Rosemary at almost 13 months is pretty amazing to me. She is almost walking, babbling constantly, expressing a mind of her own in a myriad ways...which reminds me that my mother told me once that she was always trying to make suggestions during play time when I was an infant and I was simply not going to do what she wanted.  My nana also told me that I once told her "I need my pwivacy," when she asked if I needed help in the bathroom. Let's just say Rosemary did not fall far from the tree. In-de-pen-dent! 

What can a mom do to adequately commemorate for the first time the right of passage of a birthday for her daughter, but also, remember and acknowledge all the days of her and her husband's own growth, adjustment, life change, weeping and joy, sleeplessness, and love that occurred over the last year? There isn't really anything that can capture all of the upheaval and renewal and rejoicing, but making a quilt helped me feel I had communicated something in concrete and not just in words and thoughts. Sewing is a time honored, historically necessary skill. It's a way to remember thoughts and feelings during the time of the crafting, like having one's thoughts interwoven, stitched down. It's like that silly book Like Water for Chocolate, that my 11th grade teacher made me write my first "long" paper on. The poor protagonist is in love with a man who marries her sister. And she, being a cook, has the singular ability to put her emotions into her baking, literally as an ingredient, by experiencing those emotions in the presence of the food being prepared. With a quilt, I had time to think of Rosemary and all the changes in my life for months, beginning last fall, purchasing fabrics and browsing online for the perfect free pattern, which incidentally is here. Anna Maria Horner to the rescue, of course. My cousin, Jane (blog here), inspired and made possible any of my sewing. She swooped down from Atlanta like a mother hen while I was in labor with Rosemary. And in the coming days, she took care of all of us. Her parting gift was dragging out my sewing machine from the unopened box, teaching me to thread it (so daunting for some reason!) and then giving me a few pointers along with sending a box of fabric scraps for a present months later! My neighbor, Melissa also inspired me (see?). She gave me a few classes years ago and then made a quilt for her son, born a few weeks before Rosemary, for Christmas. With my cousin and my neighbor quilting away, I felt I had to have in on this club. 

Here are some pictures of the results: 

Some of the fabrics are actually from scraps around the house. There are bits from our bedroom curtain fabric and bits from her birthday dress fabric. Mostly, I am one of those new fangled quilters who buys the funky quilting fabric instead of making a quilt from used and loved clothing. But don't you just love the turquoise feather fabric and the letter fabric with the P for Peterson? And who can resist red poppies? 

 Back detail. I used a thick teal-colored thread to do the actual quilting and embroidering. 

Fun! Now, to get my daughter as she's waking from her nap and put her on it. It makes playtime outside much more enjoyable! And I can already tell she thinks it's great, too. :)

Pruning and Branches

I think I'm being pruned. By God. I have little desire to be pruned. But neither do I want to look like a nasty, mangle-y plant. 

Kort and I have planted two cherry blossom trees now since we've been married: one at the home we rented when we were first married and one at our current residence. It's not that cherry blossom trees are my favorite, but they are a Macon tradition. I love to see Macon looking like a bride's veil in the spring time with the delicate blossoms sprinkling the landscape. And I want my home to be a contribution to the beauty. So we planted the cherry trees. The tree at the rented place was doing so well when suddenly, the leaves turned brown and no amount of water revived it. We didn't worry about it since we weren't living there permanently. We just uprooted it. But I was really in love with the tree we planted at our current home. It had balanced, graceful limbs. It was a gift from Kort, as a surprise. It was flourishing and lasted much longer than the other tree. I was sure we were out of danger. It turns out that a peach tree borer got it. The leaves turned brown just as with the previous tree. I felt maybe I hadn't been watering it adequately. So we got out the sprinkler and tried with all our might to water that sapling back to health. It just continued to decay at a rapid rate. I went to inspect the bark after two days of its wilting. Surely enough, there was a huge hard blob of sap on the side where the borer had attacked it. Everything above that was completely dead. Just one limb at the bottom is still green and happy looking. 

I want to uproot the whole thing. Who wants a mostly dead cherry tree stump in one's front yard with one remaining good limb? We may still uproot it and start over. But it made me think about God's pruning in his children's lives. I really don't understand God or his ways. They are so much higher than our ways. When I face loss and hurt and disappointment, I don't want to understand his ways. I just want to criticize. It's amazing and a little frightening how upset with God I can get. I have to remind myself who he says he is. I reread Job. Who can compare their suffering to Job? I haven't met anyone yet. And I more hard-hearted than Job with much less provocation. So it makes me ashamed and awed to read the last chapters where God says Who are you to question me? Do you know who I am? Were you there at the beginning, at the laying of the foundations of the universe? Do you control the Leviathan and the waters of the deep? 

For some reason, the reason of revealing his glory to others, God created this world and created it with free will and the possibility of sin. To him, our sin looks worse than one dead cherry tree in a front yard. I really don't understand why he chooses to continue with the whole project of the universe and mankind in light of the fact that to him, our sin has marred things to such a disgusting degree but he does persevere and in fact, redeem. And the only reason this creation and plan of his doesn't seem like a cruel joke or cast him as a megalomaniac egotistical dictator is because of Jesus. Jesus is his special revelation, The Word, his son, his most precious perfect relationship, severed on the cross and restored in resurrection for us. God enters in to the suffering in Jesus. Every time suffering comes, and his pruning and maturing along with it, I feel like I'm a tree with GBTS at its trunk with a saw. I want to cry out that this plan of cutting off the entirety of my tree trunk rotted with sin, leaving only a little sprout of green that he enabled to grow, is unfair, cruel, and results in an ugly, mangled picture. But God sacrificed his son so that the pruning could be possible, so that the Holy Spirit could seal me for the day of redemption, for my future hope and perfection and union with Him and others. He has a vision for his garden and I'm in it. Even right now with one limb sticking out of a half dead trunk. I'm very glad he has a plan to renew and remake me, too, though so I'm not stuck in this state forever. 

Speaking of branches, we are grateful for our little branch, Rosemary. Our immediate family went to the beach with my dad over Memorial Day. We enjoyed being with the multiple generations of "branches" of the family. Here are some sweet pictures of Rosemary with my grandparents and enjoying the pool and beach generally.

Granddaddy taught Rosemary how to make dribble castles. I cried a little seeing Granddaddy getting down at her level, scooping the wet sand to drip it into form. It reminded me so much of my mother showing me how to do this when I was little. Look at how Rosemary is captivated by him. :)

And here is Rosemary playing with the sea shells we collected and placed by the pool. She had a blast pushing them off the edge of the wall onto the grass. 

Here is Daddy trying to prevent her from pushing them all off, making good use of his long arms. Don't you love the strawberry hat? And cute butt ruffles? Who can resist?