I’ve spent years and years of my life entering through the garage of my Mimi's home in Mobile AL to quickly by moved into the living room by the phrase “Have I shown you what I have in the frame” whisked away from the kitchen to where a long frame holds a built behind her plaid couches. A rattan tv tray sits on top with thimbles and thread, she moves it aside to sweep her hand over fresh stitching. All hand quilted of course. Often hand pieced. She moves calloused fingers over incredibly small stitches while longing for her formerly smaller stitch ratio. Masking tape wraps these most useful fingers and she adjusts their wrap as pointing out details. Moving me to projects in various stages of progress. Completed, she unfolds the corners and hands me the others as the space fills the room. In a tin, a new piecing of points too small to imagine someone conquering by machine. Then again and always the frame. Quelling her ambition, the warped wooden frame now is in my possession. A plastic frame now takes up residence in her living room, a sensible size, keeping her from having to baste and frame a king size quilt by herself. 

It has been three impossible years of sadness. Searching for some profound answer of expression that could say why we couldn’t have a child, why I couldn’t. A wall surrounded me, it was impermeable. Reaching outside myself in wild wings towards meaning. Towards sources of healing, spirituality and health. My acupuncturist scanned my body for points of pressure and pain, her thumb holding until I noted the sensation as strange or innocuous. Red light incubating my belly and a point on my head. One hundred meeting points. Much like quilting I genuflected to the idea that I am largely unknowing. I am small and a beginner on a journey of what it is to be human, a woman, a mother. The ancient knowledge turned me to hypnotherapy, diets of teas and tinctures, and to the altar of my ancestors. What was atavistic was now essential and current. Culling myself into a fetal mess on my floor I prayed to spirits imagining the loving glowing aura of my family hovering above. I poured water in their cups, left flowers, playing cards and locks of hair. These spirits were from beyond from the present and from a jilted future.

The closest I’ve ever been to knowing and reasoning has been in my being a student to my network of surroundings. My family, my heritage, my tradition. Erasing for a moment my ego as I quiet myself to listen and learn from them 

-Cora Nimtz