“Tell me something you really like to do.” I was getting acquainted with some new friends. They range in age from five to ten, and they came to my house to learn how to quilt.
“Well, what I really like is learning something new every day.”
“Me, too, Anna! High five!” Anna may be the youngest of the group, and she has already figured out what makes a good day.
This is a new experience for me. I am from a family of public school educators, and I married into a family of public school educators. Home schooling was not an option in my day, and when our children were young, there was no network connecting home schoolers. Our own two were socially quite happy in elementary school, and they had ready access to me as a stay-at-home parent -- we did lots of home learning.
Thirty years ago, home schooling was illegal in Iowa, and our mandatory education laws prohibited public school personnel from ignoring “truancy”, as it was viewed at the time. Hubba's father was the superintendent of schools here, at a time when this law was being challenged in Decorah. Now the school works closely with the home schooling community, offering options to families who prefer this route, for whatever reasons the family sees proper.
A friend of mine home schools, and I asked her if any of the home school kids would like to learn to quilt. She broadcast my offer through her home school network, and I had four takers. They are Lydia, Anna and her older sister Aidan, and another Aidan, who is a boy.
“We have the same name, and we spell it the same way,” said Aidan.
“Uh-huh,” agreed Aidan.
“So how will you know which Aidan I'm talking to?”
“You can just say 'Boy Aidan' or 'Girl Aidan'. Or you can use 'Aidan B' and 'Aidan G'.
You know, I probably could have figured that one out myself. It brings to mind one of The Barn's stories, the one about the man who had two horses. He didn't know how to tell them apart, so he measured them carefully. It was then he discovered that the white horse was six inches taller than the black horse. I'm glad Boy Aidan and Girl Aidan could help me unravel this quandry.
This is the way I recapped my first meeting with these students to their parents:
(I sneak-previewed Anna's remarks in the opening of today's post.) When asked what she liked to do, Anna said, "I like to learn something new every day!" Let me tell you, she said it with passion. We high-fived. Cool. Upbeat = Anna.
Boy Aidan is one of the most sharing children I have known. At age 7, he shared all of his snacks with the class, and when he took fabric home, he said he wanted to make a quilt for his Beanie Baby. He also wanted to share his fabric with Anna, and she and he traded swatches eagerly.
Girl Aidan, I found out, is a Renaissance woman. She either does, or appreciates, art, music, and literature. I think she's into geometry, too, because she liked finding quilt shapes. She followed the "Quilt Soup" story intently, and when I played a Native American lullaby on my flute, she fell asleep. Well, she fake-fell asleep, but you get the idea about the appreciation angle.
Lydia is gentle and deep. I have the impression that she chooses her words carefully, and helping others and her family is among her strong values. It seems the care she takes in the way she treats others isn't motivated by how she will be perceived, but by how her actions will impact them.
As we sat at my dining room table, I pondered the wonderful task ahead of us. Imagine what their preconceived notions are about the quilts they will make! These are remarkable children, positive and forward-thinking. I told them about different projects they could make – table runners, wall hangings, and other smaller projects. They had already set their goals.
“I want to make a quilt to cover me up.”
“Yeah, I want to make a blanket.” I'm going to have to work on the vocabulary a bit.
We read a story I wrote called “Quilt Soup”. In the story, a little girl named Pearl and her grandmother work on a quilt together. Pearl is only eight years old, but in the end, she and Grandma make a nice little quilt for Pearl to snuggle under. I made the quilt I wrote about in “Quilt Soup”, and I have it in my house. After reading the story, we took a field trip upstairs to look at it.
“Yeah, like this one. I want a quilt this size.”
“Me, too. I want this size.”
Midwesterners have a strong tradition of helping neighbors, and we know the importance of instilling our youngsters with this spirit. Neighbors are defined as residents of the world, not exclusively within our own sphere of acquaintances. Within a month of Saigon falling, southeast Asian families were finding homes in northeast Iowa. At one time we had well over six hundred refugees from five or six regions, including Viet Nam, Laos (both Hmong and Lao), and Cambodia, living here in Decorah. Eastern bloc refugees and other ethnic groups populate quite a chunk of Postville, Iowa, just down the road, and a new radio station with the call letters KPVL, offers programming throughout the day for at least seven ethnicities and languages that make up that community.
Boy Aidan's grandmother is a Mississippi victim of Katrina, specifically Bay St. Louis. Within hours of the news of this devastation, “Decorah Cares” sprang into action. Supplies for clean-up and after-care were contributed and collected, and a semi was donated to make the run. Boy Aidan's mom and dad have been back and forth to his grandma's house, updating Decorahans on the reconstruction. There are other lives intertwined with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but none more personal to these children.
“Can we make another one to sell, and then give the money away?” Local lemonade sellers had already earned some money to use for hurricane relief. Perhaps they were thinking of a way to add to that amount. Assuming this was on their minds, I asked them how they would use the money.
“Our family sponsors a little girl in India, but there are lots of people who need it.”
See? We do the value-thing right in the Midwest. A nine-year-old girl has layers of experience with making a difference on the planet. This is normal for all the children in this class, for the children we reared, for the children at our church and others, and happily for the children of the families who were helped by Northeast Iowans in the past. Normal, not a big thing to be done with lots of fanfare. It's a regular, normal part of our lives.
We are using recycled and reclaimed fabric for our quilts. This week the children will gather fabric. There may be a stained shirt or dress that still has plenty wear in the fabric, or a favorite baby item. They may have relatives who will contribute some of their things, and I know there will be lots of sharing back and forth. I have a special piece of fabric to share with them, so that each quilt will have a matched memory of their quiting time together.
Thursday afternoon was about hope and the future, and pieces of the past. We ate cake and drank juice. I dragged out my flute and played it for them. Girl Aidan sang a little for us as she carried dirty dishes to the kitchen. Lydia read aloud for us in a strong, clear voice. Boy Aidan and Anna, good and fast buddies, romped happily with streamers of fabric, the pieces they eventually split and shared with each other. Lydia and Girl Aidan sat on the couch with me, and we talked about our lives. I wish you could hear Girl Aidan's expressive voice and observe Lydia's esoteric, watchful eyes.
Too soon for me, the dads came to pick up the quilt students. The next several Thursdays will be a joy. You won't want to miss them, either, because we will all be learning something new.
Copyright © 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
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