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Excerpted Inspirations #187

  • Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
    Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
  • Jul 14
  • 0 min read
[Continued from last week.] As she lay that night in her narrow hard bed, too proud, too excited to sleep, Mehetabel’s heart swelled and tears of joy ran down from her old eyes. The next day her sister-in-law astonished her by taking the huge pan of potatoes out of her lap and setting one of the younger children to peeling them. “Don’t you want to go on with that quiltin’ pattern?” she said. “I’d kind o’ like to see how you’re goin’ to make the grapevine design come out in the corner.” For the first time in her life the dependent old maid contradicted her powerful sister-in-law. Quickly and jealously she said, “It’s not a grapevine. It’s a sort of curlicue I made up.” “Well, it’s nice-looking anyhow,” said Sophie pacifyingly. “I never could have made it up.” By the end of the summer the family interest had risen so high that Mehetabel was given for herself a little round table in the sitting-room, for her, where she could keep her pieces and use odd minutes for her work. She almost wept over such kindness and resolved firmly not to take advantage of it. She went on faithfully with her monotonous housework, not neglecting a corner. But the atmosphere of her work was changed. Now things had a meaning. Through the longest task of washing milk-pans, there rose a rainbow of promise. She took her place by the little table and put the thimble on her hard, knotted finger with the solemnity of a priestess performing a rite. [...] The Elwells especially plumed themselves on the slow progress of the quilt. “Mehetabel has been to work on that corner for six weeks, come Tuesday, and she ain’t half done yet,” they explained to visitors. They fell out of the way of always expecting her to be the one to run on errands, even for the children. “Don’t bother your Aunt Mehetabel,” Sophie would call. “Can’t you see she’s got to a ticklish place on the quilt?” The old woman sat straighter in her chair, held up her head. She was part of the world at last. She joined in the conversation and her remarks were listened to. The children were even told to mind her when she asked them to do some service for her, although this she ventured to do but seldom. One day some people from the next town, total strangers, drove up to the Elwell house and asked if they could inspect the wonderful quilt which they had heard about even down in their end of the valley. After that, Mehetabel’s quilt came little by little to be one of the local sights. No visitor to town, whether he knew the Elwells or not, went away without having been to look at it. To make her presentable to strangers, the Elwells saw to it that she was better dressed than she ever had been before. One of the girls made her a pretty little cap to wear on her thin white hair. -Dorothy Canfield, “The Bedquilt” in A Harvest of Stories (1951), pp. 56-57 “A Rainbow of Promise” artwork by Linda Simonetti Odhner

 
 
 

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