It's Easter morning.  My mother visited me during my sleep and when I woke at 5:30 cuddled under my quilt, she was still warmly present in my heart and my mind.  The first quilt she ever made was the schoolhouse pattern.  Years ago when I was teaching in Florida and not realizing how much time was involved, I asked her to make this quilt after seeing it in a magazine.  Being wrapped in my quilt is comforting when I need soothing and warming on chilly nights. Just the other day I was trying to recall how many years ago she made it.

So with my mother vividly on my mind and feeling quite contented, I randomly pulled out one of the four boxes of all letters saved from the the twenty something years she wrote to me when we lived in Florida.  The letters are catalogued by years.  I keep saying I'm going to sit and refine the order by months but I get so entranced in memories, the task never gets done.  The first letter I picked up was  December 31, 1993.  We must have spent Christmas in Massachusetts as she writes about missing me when she and my father went for coffee that day.  We always had a late afternoon coffee at the Salt Box in Bolton.  My father would ask if I wanted a piece of pie with my coffee so I would eat one to make him happy!   The Salt Box was a country store with a cozy little eating area that had three  tables near a fireplace.  The store was a maze of rooms containing various items of bygone days giving you the feel of simpler times. As I read on, a few lines later, my mother wrote about cutting the strips to sew between the rows of my quilt and how she was going to start my sister's  quilt when mine was finished!

March 31, 1994 
.............quilting another schoolhouse.