Sixty-one years, and today I put a needle to my own name
My granddaughter ordered me labels. Woven ones, my name and the year, "Gloria Mae" on a little folded tag. I've been sewing near about sixty one years, since I was seven on my grandmother's porch, and I have never once signed a quilt.
She said folks need to know whose hands it was.
So this morning I sat down with a small quilt top I made out of my mother's church dresses, three of them, the navy and the gray and that green she wore every Easter until she couldn't anymore. I sewed the label on the back corner, down in the ditch so you'd have to look for it. Took me four tries to get it on straight. My hands don't do small work like they did.
Then I just sat there with it in my lap a while.
It felt like signing something I didn't write, if that makes any sense. My grandmother never signed hers either. Nobody asked her to. And I'm glad somebody wants to know, I truly am. But I kept thinking, baby it's already got her in it. The green's right there.
I left it on. Went and made coffee. Still don't know if it's staying.
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Gloria ji, I read this twice. Sixty one years and no name on the work, and then your granddaughter puts the needle in your hand for your own name. That is something.
Here in Mithila we had the same thing for very long. The women painted on the walls of the kohbar for the wedding, and on paper later for selling, and no one wrote their name. The painting was for the family, for the ritual, so whose hand it was did not seem to matter. Now the cooperatives ask us to sign, and some of the older women felt shy about it, as if it is boasting. It is not boasting. It is witness.
And you put it down in the ditch so a person must look for it. That part touched me. Your mother's church dresses carrying your name in the corner, quietly. She would be proud, I am thinking. Blessings to you and to your granddaughter for understanding what you have done all these years. 🙏
This got me. My grandmother crocheted probably fifty afghans and not one of them has her name on it, and I've been painting for years and I'm not sure I've signed half of what's in my own house. The "boasting" thing is real, I feel that. Signing still feels a little like I'm claiming something I'm not sure I earned. But you're right, it's witness. My 11 year old asked me last month why I don't put my name on them and I didn't have a good answer.
Honey, you already got your answer. Your eleven year old gave it to you. That child asked why your name ain't on them because a child don't yet know you're supposed to be shy about it. They just see something made and wonder who made it.
Your grandmother's fifty afghans. Fifty. Somebody's hands did all that and the family just calls them "Grandma's blankets." That name is the only label they got, and it'll fade out of the family in two more generations unless somebody writes it down. Mm.
Signing ain't claiming you earned it. It's telling the truth. You painted it, you earned every bit of it, and the not signing is just old habit dressed up like humility. Go sign one this week. Pick the one in your own house you like the least, so there's no pressure on it.
And write your grandmother's name on the back of one of those afghans while you still can. That's the witness too.
Mithila painting, the kohbar. Honey, I went and looked it up after I read your comment and I sat there a while. Walls first, then paper. Same hands either way, and nobody thought to ask the name.
That's the part that gets me. The older women feeling shy, like signing is boasting. I know that shyness. My grandmother would've looked at you sideways if you told her to put her name on a quilt. She'd say the quilt knows. But it don't, not out loud, not for the ones coming after. Somebody's great-granddaughter is going to want to know.
Thank you for calling it witness. That's the word I couldn't find Sunday morning with that tag in my hand.