The Path to the Future Through the Past

I don't believe my deceased family members could have been any closer to me than they were this weekend when I took a trip back to my hometown, Naperville, in the Chicago suburbs.

My friend Karen graciously co-hosted a Chelle Summer Open House with me at her house. We both invited our friends for a Sunday afternoon of prickly pear punch, sangria, carob cookies, and an overwhelming selection of Chelle Summer handbags that I had made. 

I found a penny the day before I left and then on my first morning in Naperville– on my run– I found a dime. My dad. Later that morning, a Cardinal kept flying around the backyard, another sure symbol of at least my dad. Some time after I graduated from college, every night a Cardinal flew into the garage and stayed there, my dad waiting to shut the garage door (after his last smoke of the evening) when the Cardinal he called, "Birdie" had arrived for the night. While I know people say Cardinals are signs of their loved ones, it's always had a slightly different meaning for me because of my dad and Birdie.

The signs continued Saturday with Mom's song "Every Rose Has a Thorn" by Poison appearing in a Facebook comment that morning and that afternoon when we sang, "On Eagle's Wings" at mass. It was like they were with me in every way but physically.

I was back in my old neighborhood staying some blocks from the house I grew up in and around the corner from the house I owned just a few years ago. I stay with people I call family, but I'll admit I feel slightly disconnected without my parents– or my sister– there.

And yet, although I only get "home" about once a year now, I still believe that it's important to remember where you're from to see where you go in the future. You must know who you came from, what has influenced you, and the path you took, to see the journey ahead.

There are some aspects of my life I'm not totally secure in for the future– I know what I want, but that journey isn't quite clear. And yet I know that by taking a step into the past somehow it's taking me several steps forward.

Signs and Messages

I was only going to go to one estate sale Thursday morning. I have a quadrant in Albuquerque that I focus on, partly because I have other things to do and also because I've had more luck in certain areas than others. I went to one, not planning to go to the second one I knew about, because I didn't think the area would have anything of interest for me. 

I ran my errands and then decided I would go anyway. 

I entered a room of the townhouse and instantly saw some vintage blue and orange fabric. I bleed blue and orange, not so much for the Chicago Bears but because my high school colors were blue and orange. As I went to pick it up, a lady standing next to the pile said, "Oh, that's mine."

Oops.

She showed me where there was more but there was nothing more cool than that blue and orange she had picked up. And I had no idea what was under it. I began going through piles of fabric, finding a few neat things but nothing as great as what she had. And as I did, another woman started looking with me. We talked a bit and she told me she was the president of the Albuquerque chapter of the American Sewing Guild. And that she taught classes on fitting.

She left the room before me and as I drove home with my new stash, kicking myself for not going straight from the first estate sale to the second (thinking it was more important to buy dog food and bananas for the next week), I was reminded of a conversation on my run-walk with Hattie earlier in the morning.

We were walking with a man named Sam whom we often see. I happened to mention something about sewing and he looked at me, surprised, and asked, "You sew?"

He proceeded to tell me how he hadn't met anyone else so young who sewed and that his wife is a big sewer. 

"You should come shop at our house," he joked and I instantly knew what he meant (there is always the joke about who has the biggest stash of fabric- my friend Bonnie taught me that).

Twice in one day life had intersected with sewing. It was one of those moments where everything had fallen into place so I could receive a sign.

I'd been late getting out to run in the morning because Greg and I had stopped to talk to our newspaper carrier about an issue we'd had and then I opted for my shorter route rather than my longer route. If I had gone longer, Hattie and I would have missed Sam.

While I missed the elusive blue and orange fabric, had I not been in the room at that time, I wouldn't have gotten a chance to talk to that particular woman while we sorted through the boxes and bins of fabric.

I'm in the midst of recreating my own version of the blue and orange fabric on paper, hoping it might be the first of my own fabric designs. And knowing that the signs and messages are all around us all the time if we're open.

Keep sewing, I told myself. It's slowly coming together.