Threads that Connect Us

I had to wait until I’d been married 35 years to finally have a real, grown-up dining room set of my own that I love. It wasn’t that my husband hates me and won’t let me have nice things, or that I had something against eating at a table with other people.

Years earlier, we’d gotten our first computer and wanted to set it up in a visible part of the house for when the kids used it. The only place that made sense for our house was the dining room, so we turned the dining room into a family computer area, and just never changed it back to a dining room…

Enter Pier 1 and its Going-Out-Of-Business sale earlier this year.

I’d had my eye on their dining sets for years. When I found out they were going out of business as a brick and mortar retailer, I was incredibly sad. I had only discovered this awesome store is a few years earlier, and felt just a little time cheated with them going out of business NOW.

I mean, we hadn’t been together long at all.

But they did go out of business, much to my dismay.

One Sunday afternoon, my daughter texted me saying that she was at Pier 1 right then, and they had a ton of dining sets left on big time sale, but I’d better hurry if I still wanted one.

Grab your checkbook and/or charge cards, we’re going to Pier 1!

Long story a little less long, I found and bought the perfect (for me) dining set and got the whole thing for about what I would have normally paid for a similar table at Pottery Barn.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2020.

Our state’s strong recommendation for Thanksgiving this year, with the COVID-19 virus spiking again, was to only celebrate and gather with those who already live in your house. Don’t travel, don’t mix households, don’t do your usual holiday extended family gatherings.

So, as hard and weird as it was, my husband and I had our socially distant, just the two of us, Thanksgiving feast sitting at our new dining room set on Thanksgiving. And even though it was just the two of us, I wanted to fancy things up a bit and make the table all Thanksgiving-y.

I mean it WAS the new table’s inaugural holiday meal.

The table runner, center piece and serving dishes all looked nice and autumnal, all matchy-matchy, but I didn’t have any placemats that were the right color…

And need I remind you that I couldn’t just run out to Pier 1 and buy the perfect table linens anymore because PIER 1 LEFT ME.

I thought about just going without place mats. I mean, it was just me and Tom that day, and it’s not that big a deal. But, even though the new table is rustic wood and is supposed to look distressed, so a spill or two would only add to its character, I want to take good care of it.

Ok then, the sky blue, summer-y placemats would have to do.

But then – I remembered.

I remembered that I still have the placemats my grandmother had crocheted years and years ago, before I had even married. She crocheted them for “someday.” My grandma knew she wouldn’t live forever, and wanted to make sure she made me special treasures for later, just like she had for all my siblings. I hadn’t used the placemats in years past (ever – ??) because I didn’t want to ruin them, didn’t want them to wear out. Grandma had passed away back in the 1980s, and this was the only set I would EVER have from her. To be honest, these placemats (or any placemats, really) weren’t really my style, even though I loved her thoughtfulness at making them for me. It’s not like I was eager to get them out and use them. I kept them put away in a cupboard, with other heirloom linens, for “another time”.

Grandma’s crocheting was professional quality, although she never thought so. People would have paid good money for the things she created, but she never sold her items.

She simply gifted them to others.

Grandma made my set of 4 placemats in a creamy off-white, with burnt orange trim, since I was/am a rabid Texas Longhorn fan.

So I remembered I had these placemats.

And guess what? Burnt orange totally matches the colors of autumn and Thanksgiving.

And suddenly, they WERE my style after all.

Well, let me tell you, I had a moment, friends.

I took the edge of one of the mats and held it between my thumb and the rest of the fingers of that hand, and just FELT IT. I felt the soft-yet-sturdy yarn, the perfectly even stitches, crocheted with love about 40 years ago, and thought, really thought, about my grandmother.

As I touched her handiwork, I imagined that she had touched that very spot. It felt warm, and, I don’t know – ALIVE. I felt her – imagined? – smiling and being proud of me. KNOWING me. SEEING me. I remembered all the things I loved and miss about her. I felt the connection of time, and blood, and love, and kin in the yarn and structure of that placemat.

There was another time I had felt that kind of generational current run through me.

It was almost 30 years ago, in the middle of a sleepless night, as I was rocking our first baby girl in the rocking chair in her bedroom, after a late night feeding, hoping, HOPING, that she’d go to sleep this time.

PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod…

She was only a teeny newborn and I was learning what bone-weary fatigue truly was.

Neither of our babies were good sleepers…

So there I was, middle of the deep night, rocking that sweet baby,

And then there it was.

I looked at her and felt the most amazing kind of knowing, aware of something way bigger than me. What I felt was that thread of generational connection that flowed from grandma to mom to me to my baby.

I’d joined some kind of existential Mothers’ Club, that I didn’t know existed.

I remember looking at our beautiful baby, there in my arms in the still of the deep night, and I thought, “My mom held me. and looked at me… just like this. She must have felt JUST.LIKE.THIS. Full of love, and awe, and fatigue, and joy, and fear of messing it all up. And her mom – as they were on a crowded passenger ship immigrating to America from Germany in 1923, not speaking any English, needing milk for her sick newborn- she looked at that newborn – my mom – just this way, too”.

I felt time sort of stand still as I, mesmerized, and awestruck, joined the club of generational familial moms welcoming their tiny new humans, feeding them and keeping them alive, protecting them from all danger, deep in the night, as the rest of the world slept.

I sat there in the dark for awhile, rocking slowly, staring at my child while she (finally!) slept, not wanting to put her back in her crib just yet. I recognized the miracle of new life and the depth of generational connection. I was in awe of that moment.

My new baby smelled like milk and warmth and new human promise, and I felt absolutely connected to both the past and the future by a thread that runs through us all, from one generation to the next.

A current of generational maternal connection.

A knowing that was deeper than words.

As Tom and I sat down to eat our Thanksgiving meal yesterday, I looked at my grandmother’s handiwork, sitting there on my brand new table. I marveled at how stylish those placemats seemed, now, smiled to myself, and thought about how much, indeed, there is to be thankful for.