My Greatest Achievements

I have three beautiful, empathetic and loving children. I suppose that I might claim that they are my greatest achievements but I don’t think that that claim is truly legitimate. I have made many mistakes in parenting. I have told my kids that they did not come with manuals and even if they had, that manual would have likely gone into a file with all of the other unread manuals. I know that I have not been a perfect mother and I have made mistakes but all of those mistakes were made with love. So, I feel that I cannot claim my children as my greatest achievements. They have grown into beautiful adults in spite of me!

I suppose that what I feel is my greatest achievement that I can claim has been starting The Family Quilt.


                                        


The Family Quilt has been around now since Jan 20, 2013. It began as an idea in the mind of a person who was totally unfamiliar with computers and quite content to stay that way. It began a few years prior to its actual debut as the result of the 2009 Good Friday tornado that ripped through my parents’ neighborhood in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. That tornado totally destroyed a detached garage and my parents’ vehicles. It wiped out nearly every tree in their yard, and their yard had many trees. The 2-3 trees that did survive were hickory trees. I imagine you have heard of the strength of hickory…..well, believe it.

A gaping wound was left on the house where the attached garage had been and a beam had been blown through their living room ceiling, but except for that damage, the house pretty much remained in good shape. Thanks God that my parents and my niece were unharmed!

How did this lead to the Family Quilt? Well, my parents moved out of their house into an apartment after the tornado hit. We packed their entire house up and moved it into a storage pod in their driveway. We did this so that their home could be fixed and my husband could oversee some renovations that they had been wanting to make.

So, as I said, we packed their entire house up, and while doing that packing, we came upon the myriad photos they had collected over the years. When we came upon those photos, the horror dawned upon me of how close we had come to losing them forever.

Of course, I couldn’t resist looking at some of those photos as we packed. Many of the folks I recognized, but a few I could not place. I asked Mom and Dad for their identities. Sometimes they could provide the answer and other times they were unsure. As we were packing those photos, I told Mom and Dad, that I knew that there was some way to scan those pics and store them on the computer. I did not own a computer, I did not own a scanner and I certainly did not know how to use them. I had to have one of my kids show me how to turn my laptop on when I first got it! That is how tech-challenged I was…..and I haven’t progressed a whole lot since then.

So I took Mom and Dad’s photos home with me. I eventually got a laptop and a scanner. I got folks, usually my brother-in-law, to show me how to use them enough to scan and store those pics. I began scanning them and editing those scans…..album after album, storage box after storage box. It was a rather long and arduous process, at least for someone who really didn’t know what she was doing. It wasn’t easy, but it was a labor of love, and that made it impossible for me to give up!

Of course, it was impossible for me to just scan these photos without looking at them. Of course, looking at these photos made me pretty maudlin. I would see a pic of Grandpa Smith with a twinkle in his eyes and a mischievous grin on his face and I would remember how he told me that he had a giant friend that lived in the hills. He told me that when I saw mist in the hills, his giant friend was smoking his pipe. I’d see a pic of Grandma Smith and remember her shuffling barefoot around the kitchen as she cooked up some simple yet delicious fare. I’d see a photo of my Grandma Rachel Nolen who died when my Mom was nine. I’d see that photo of the Grandma that I never met and I wondered about her. I longed to know her. I yearned to learn about the life of that tall slender lady in the photo. I’d see an unidentified photo and really feel a kind of sickness that this person, most likely kin to me, could no longer be identified by family.

Looking through these pics made me long to see more photos and to know more about the people in those photos. Seeing these photos made me wish that my own children could’ve known Grandma and Grandpa Smith. It made me wish that I could know about my Grandma Nolen who I never met, and to know more about Grandpa Nolen also. Seeing those pics just filled me with a yearning that I suppose was like an itch. I just had to scratch! But, just like you have that itch right in that place on your back that you just cannot reach, I needed help.

I thought about having some kind of reunion where everyone could bring their pics together. I figured that each family would probably have a few pics and if we could put all of those fews together, we could end up with a lot! I also figured that those unknown folks might be identified. One family member may not have been acquainted with the unidentified family member, but another may have gone to visit them all of the time! And while everyone was together, I could scan them all so they could be preserved somehow.

But who was I kidding! The logistics of all of us actually getting together was daunting, if even possible. So I kept thinking about what would be the best way to accomplish the same goal without having to get everybody physically together. This was an idea that was ever present, even if in the back of my mind. I came to the reluctant conclusion that the best way to do this was somehow using the internet. I say reluctant, because I am the person who had just recently learned to turn on my laptop! But I knew that folks could be “together” virtually when being together physically might prove impossible. So I began to explain my idea to computer-savvy family members and I asked what they thought would be the best means to accomplish this. I asked if there was some kind of program or any other way to accomplish this. I even had a name for my project, the Family Quilt. Several family members told me that they thought a Facebook group might be the best way to go.

Now, I had heard about Facebook. I did not have an account, because frankly, I had heard some very negative things about it, but I had heard about it. I was reluctant to go that route and I continued to ask folks how my goals might be accomplished. It had to be a way that a nearly computer illiterate person could handle.

So I kept trying to find the best way. I asked folks at the reunion about it. I continued to ask other folks who knew computers. I continued to search…..and in the meantime, I was losing family members. I was not only losing them, but I was losing their ability to participate and contribute their stories, straight from the horses’ mouths to our Family Quilt. I didn’t yet know how the Quilt would come to be, but I was determined that it would indeed be!

We lost Aunt Hortense Smith Allen only 10 days after that tornado. Dad was not even able to go to her funeral because he was busy trying to, not only handle the aftermath of the tornado, but also the realization that we are never completely in control of our lives. We lost Uncle Gayle Smith. We lost Aunt Davilee Smith Sutherland Clark. When we lost Uncle Johnnie Nolen, it was like a kick in the pants! I knew that something less than perfect was better than waiting for a possibly nonexistent perfect. I decided that I was going to get an account on Facebook and start a group called the Family Quilt.

So, I waited until my daughter Roxanna could help me. She sat up the account for me and she set up the group the Family Quilt for me. She helped me make the initial post explaining the purpose of the Quilt and we added a few people to it. I cannot remember how many folks we initially added, but it was probably about a handful. That was on Jan 20, 2013. On January 20, 2021, it will be eight years since the Family Quilt was formed. Now, we have 257 members and we are still growing. Some of these family members I have not had the pleasure to meet in person. I haven’t actually met them, but I am happy to get to know them a little through our Quilt.

So that is the story of how my greatest achievement came to be. Mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers… in my family have made beautiful quilts over the centuries. Those quilts were collections of bits of fabric which were beautiful on their own, but when stitched together were infinitely more beautiful and provided warmth and comfort.

Our Family Quilt is a patchwork quilt of family memories, memories which are beautiful on their own, but when "stitched" together become even more so, and provide warmth and comfort to all who share. The memory might be one of the past, or one made today. Perhaps it is a word or two, a paragraph, or a story that comes to mind when a particular person is thought of. I wanted everyone to just take a moment to share memories and photos. If all of my family members did this, then we would have a thing of beauty and warmth that will help to keep the ones we love in our memories. It will bring a sense of connection to family members who may not have the opportunity to really know each other. It will connect the past with the present, and as we continued to add new memories, the present to the future. I was hoping that we would have a "living" quilt of memories that we would continuously add to, a patch at a time. I hoped that every family member would contribute so that the Family Quilt becomes such a thing of beauty that it becomes a legacy that our descendants will one day treasure.

Over the years, participation has not been like I had hoped it would be but a few folks have added some memories and some have added photos. We have even been able to identify some of those “unknown” folks. Several family members have been able to see photos and faces that they had never seen before. I reckon that it has been somewhat of a success. I am still hoping that folks will begin to share their memories and stories more. Hmmmmm…I wonder if we can have a virtual quilting bee!

So starting the Family Quilt is one of my greatest achievements but recently I have been very happy to recognize another.

My three-year-old granddaughter Jooniebug loves to look at photos on our phones. I have quite a few old family photos on mine. She will crawl up into my lap and ask to look at pictures and we will go through the photos and I will tell her that one photo is of her great-great-great-aunt Alta. Another photo is of her great-great grandma Rachel and another is her great-great-great grandpa Joe. She has started crawling up into my lap and asking to look at her greats!

This morning, my daughter called me and asked me if we had a great-great… grandpa Joe. I told her that my great-grandpa was Joe. Then Roxanna told me that Jooniebug had drawn a picture and told her that one spot was great-great… grandpa Joe. Another was Rachel and another was a great-great… auntie Mary. I didn’t remember showing her a photo of Mary, but she does have a great-great-great aunt Mary. So I am so hoping that I have achieved instilling an interest in her family and her family history in Jooniebug. If that continues, that achievement may become my greatest!


                                            
Jooniebug's picture of some of her greats; All of the different colors tell me that at the tender age of three, she already knows that we all mutts!