Something Really Big

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Mark Ryan’s panel with his mother and panel maker Nancy. Nancy Ryan died quietly of breast cancer soon after completing this block. She was one of us. Below: Dot’s hearts. Each was a name written on an early signiture block of plain muslin. Dot made the names into hearts and I sewed the whole thing together. G and Lenore are standing on her pergola with the quilt block. Photos taken with a very early digital camera.

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Himself: Swim, flu shot, grocery shop, job hunt, boxes, and a quiet evening at home. Herself: Bike, flu shot, invent menus on the fly, delete jpg’s. Dinner is so much more fun to cook if I am not the only one doing the cooking. Slept very badly. Reading: Skimmed a Kellerman. Too many diversions in it. Balance: Talking with the kids.

”I haven’t gotten us involved in something really big lately,” I said to G yesterday.

He laughed.

The Slough was a really big project. SOHO was big the first time, but we had a really small involvement with the SD Historical Society that last time around. Stoves….those 1950’s works of art, saving them was a really big project that involved both of us for a long time but wasn’t very altruistic.

Working with the AIDS Quilt was really the biggest involvement of all, and in the end involved both of us. For years. I, the workshop chair, didn’t really do anything but suit up and show up. Sister M did all the work of organization, and two sisters did the sewing. Each panelmaker designed their own panel.

Oh, I hauled boxes of fabrics and notions to and from the workshop site in Grumpy. G did the lifting. Without him it all would have stayed in the truck. But once things got started, it was discovered that I could cut words out of felt with the trusty Gingher scissors that Dr. Harriette gave me. I could snip…I could draw with scizzors.

We both did displays where ever displays were wanted along with a solid core of friends and volunteers. AIDS Walk, Pride, anywhere we were needed. As everyone faded away, G and Carrie helped shut it down after we made our last four blocks. A panel is three feet by six feet. A block is 12 feet by 12 feet or 8 panels.

Now he volunteers amid the cars and trucks of the Automotive museum, and I shuffle donations, of which there are not enough, at the Cancer Society Thrift Store. Not big things but important in their own ways.

“It’s been a while since we did anything really, really big,” I said again. Maybe just thinking about it will stir up the dust in my head.