Grandma Henke

I’m going to spill my guts and it has the potential of getting me into a lot of trouble.    Honey has a low tolerance for the type of thing I am about to publicly reveal.

When I retired I started to slowly reorganize some things at home.   You know, when you organize your stuff, you go from room to room and find all of the things that are alike and put them together in one place.   Like, say … material for instance.   Say you have a bin of material in the spare bedroom, a couple of bins in your closet, one or two in the study, a couple more in the family room and you drag them all into the living room.   Are you starting to get the picture here?        Yeah, you are.

When my kids were little I sewed their clothes and they wore them and I got compliments on them.    I made curtains and blankets and pillows and got compliments on them, too, so I was always on the lookout for good material at a low price.     The problem is I kept on collecting after my kids quit wearing what I sewed for them and ran out of windows to decorate.   I mean it’s a hard habit to break.    Finally, after most of the kids had moved away I got brave and gave boxes of material to daughters, daughters in law, charities, and the church … and it felt good.   I had a clean slate.    For years I stayed away from stores that sold material.   I thought I was cured ….

Then I was called to be the Relief Society president of our ward.   The Relief Society president sort of watches out for all of the females over 18 in our church.    All the Relief Society presidents I have known have made a lot of quilts and do a lot of sewing.   That’s just how it is.    You make quilts and you cook up a lot of chicken soup.    So I began watching again for sales on material.    It’s a good thing, too, because one year our Relief Society made hundreds of newborn baby kits as a humanitarian project and I was able to donate a lot of nice flannel to the cause … and it felt good.    We made a lot of baby blankets to send out to victims of floods and hurricanes and earthquakes.     Then all of the wards in our stake were asked to donate regular sized quilts to the humanitarian project … and I was able to donate material to that … and that felt good.      So I kept looking for sales.

Then I thought … The Relief Society president should have a nice portable sewing machine that does more than go forward and reverse … so I went to JoAnn’s and bought one (one that my youngest daughter covets to this day).     (I’ve had it three years and still don’t know how to thread it.)    And I kept shopping the sales.

I have been shopping the sales for five years now … but I haven’t been sewing.   I am about ready to stand and publicly proclaim “Hi, my name is Edna, and I … I am materialistic.”      In one bin I have beautiful flannels in browns, blues, and greens to make Hubby a soft, warm patchwork quilt (5 years ago).   I have several darling sets of flannel for baby quilts for children who are now ready to go to kindergarten.    I have super soft fleece for a quilt for my son’s wedding that was 4 years ago.   I have material to surround and back mother’s hand-stitched star quilt top … which I have had for 41 years.   I have two complete sets of  colorful cotton prints to make queen sized patchwork quilts, and enough sunflower material to make everyone I am related to an apron.    Oh, and there is a bin of material to make each of my 15 grandchildren a pillowcase for every holiday.  (My daughter’s mother in law did that and I thought it was such a great idea!)    Then I just have two or three bins of miscellaneous flannel and fleece for … just in case.   If that wasn’t enough, I had forgotten all about the twenty sets of new flannel sheet sets packed away under my bed because of a killer internet sale last year.      I am trying to remember if I was going to give them as sets, use them to make quilts, or insulate the garage.    I think I have a problem.

So now I’m going to have to face the music with the old man … and he isn’t going to be whistling Dixie.     It’s going to be really ugly.  He’s going to count the bins a few times and look inside them and lift the material up and look under it … and wrinkle up his forehead.   Then he’s going to sigh and start to say something and sigh again.    Then he’ll probably quietly say something like  ”Are you going to use all this material?”     And that, my friend, is going to do it … the last straw so to speak.   It will put me on the defensive.   Once he looks in the bins and sighs and says something that cruel … there is no choice for me but to go on the defense.    I am going to have to talk about all the things he has collected over the years … like … like … Oh gosh, help me out here kids my memory is fading.    

Okay … so he doesn’t collect a bunch of one kind of thing … he collects a plethora of weird stuff … not new stuff.  He collects old stuff like papers, unopened advertisements, magazines, pieces of electronics, empty boxes things come in, wiring, old monitors, old printers … even old small appliances that we have replaced because they are broken.    Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about … old stuff he doesn’t even keep in bins.   He keeps it in plastic supermarket bags and ugly crumpled boxes … or in stacks.     I’m gonna have to bring all that up once he says “Are you going to use all this material?”     Man, it could really get out of hand.    Maybe I better rethink my confession.   It’s not worth putting 41 years of marriage on the line over a measly few bins of material that I can put to good use.

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