Star Quilts and Fire

The month began with a phone call informing us our storage unit had burned down. Picking through the remnants, I found the star quilt my grandmother had made for me when I graduated from high school. I had spent hours in college, wrapped in it to protect me from the cold New England forests far from our homeland in the Great Plains. 

Star Quilt in similar colors to mine (MSU Museum)

Later, when my grandmother came to my graduation, she fretted about not being able to see the horizon And so, we climbed Bartlett Tower but when we got to the top hoping to see more, the trees still owned the vistas, and all we gained from our perch was a view of the unending canopy with an occasional white spire poking through. We said nothing. I recall a bit of a catch in her breath as we gazed, the only expression of an oddly bitter disappointment we both felt. It was then that I realized we are big sky people. People of the Plains, we have long been accustomed to sending our spirits out in all the directions almost as a prayer or even, an extension of ourselves. Hemmed in by the dark green we were only able to send our spirits up to a tiny patch of blue. It felt we like we could not breathe. 

But just as I prefer to remember my grandmother as she was then, still alive, her curiosity about the world a companion to my own, and, despite the story above, she was generally a cheerful person, I prefer my memories of the blanket as it was whole. Standing in that burned out unit, I found myself unwilling to take a brightly colored scrap of triangles smelling of smoke and blackened around the edges even as the man who worked there badgered us to take the things we wanted before they cleaned it out. 

Lakota grandmother hand quilting a star quilt. (Co-nnect.Me)

As a child, one of my earliest memories is of climbing the steep stairs to her workroom where she kept a large wooden frame she used to stretch out her quilts and hand stitch them. As a child as I emerged at the top of the stairs which smelled strongly of the hard industrial rubber that covered it to prevent slipping and combined with the smells of my grandmother's cooking wafting up from the kitchen below,  I wobbled amazed at my discovery of this magical place. A place that in my childish mind was one of mystery and power with star quilts in many colors draped and in various states of completion. 

But I know fire can be purifying and can carry our prayers. When I was executive director of the California Indian Basketweavers Association, I learned how the tribes there used to burn the forest to keep it healthy and giving the roots and shoots necessary for basketweaving a chance to grow. So, I felt inclined to give up these material possessions to the fire and hope for new shoots. 

In my heart, the blanket is with my kuŋ´ŝi now in heaven where her laughter can be heard over the camp circle of our ancestors' tipis enjoying a sly joke with her relatives. My mother used to describe her mother-in-law’s laughter sounding like the “tinkling of bells.” So I find myself when I think of the bit of star quilt left in this world, stopping and listening for her laughter and feeling fortunate to be her granddaughter.