Holiday Decapitations and the Christmas Quilter

By Timothy Anderson
~ ~ ~

Reese looked over at me. “Tim, sometimes don’t you… when you see people in those stupid Santa Hats, don’t you just want to reach over and snap their necks off?”
He studied me, waiting for confirmation. Two teenage girls, and their father, all of them wearing “stupid Santa Hats” waited in the car next to us for the light to change.
Gazing down into the car next to us, the occupants seemed quite harmless.
“Well don’t you? Think how good it would feel! Snap!”
I turned back to look at him just in time to witness Reese make a chicken execution motion with a flourish of his wrist. “There, wouldn’t that just make you feel so much better?” He began to laugh so hard the truck started shaking.
Reese is not a small man, with thick arms and a determined steel-glazed intensity about him, I could almost hear the snap of that neck.
The light turned green, and I eased forward. If Reese would have been driving the truck, we’d already be in a full demonstration of holiday road rage, complete with the rear end of the truck pitching out.
“I hate Christmas! Hate it. Hate it. All the expectation. The family duty. I just can’t do it anymore.”
Reese wasn’t laughing. He looked very serious. His hands clenched together, while a sort of grinch-like look came over his face. Reese’s eyebrows brunched up, just like my father’s did when he used to threaten, “Don’t make me stop this car!”
Approaching the Division “Y”, perched on the north side of Spokane, traffic slowed. Our fellow motorists were cautious, attempting to allow plenty of stopping distance on the shinny glazed surface. It was already snowing again.
“Oh for Christ Sakes people!” Reese moaned at the vehicles in front of us. “C’mon—see what I mean Tim? We could fix all of this with just a few snaps” and he was back to the virtual Chicken execution motions.
Reese is not exactly a small man. Yet from looking at his jovial appearing face, always on the verge of saying some outrageously horribly wonderful thing-the kind of thing everyone is thinking but no one ever says, I couldn’t reconcile his bah humbug words with that cute, not-so-devilish face. I’d always wanted to pinch his cheeks and tell him how cute he is, but I am short on courage. I visualized doing so now and experiencing my own execution.
All around us brightly lit stores peddled the holidays. Traffic slowed and hesitated while Reese kept up the dialogue with the parade of idiots-a parade that I might add, we were equally part of. He randomly flipped through radio stations, and with each holiday offering responded with a forceful “uh huh, no way.” After an exaggerated flick of the wrist, we went from “Best of the super seventies” to something from the 50’s, until the radio DJ went back to Christmas Carols sending Reese airborne. “I’m over this people, I’m over Christmas, do you hear me!?! DO you hear what I hear?”
I could see his point. Some things about the holidays really work for me: Listening to Bing Crosby and the old standards, warm apple cider with caramel, and even putting up holiday lights under a full moon with fresh snow. Other things don’t work: Credit card bills in January, Black Friday stampedes and putting up holiday lights in freezing rain.
Admittedly, I’d not seen Reese much over the last few months. Reentering the work force after spending over five years recovering from an industrial accident, my life had finally accelerated back to normal. Reese and I, after living together for several of those years, “drifted” as my friend Betty abbreviates such periods of separation.
Oh yeah, Reese and I’d drifted all right. Tonight was the first time we’d spent time together in months. The chill between us had already affected everything—the prior 6 years we’d been inseparable now had this massive gulf in it. Our friends, our family, all of those in our circle of relationships couldn’t help but notice the sudden but very naked absence of Reece from my side, mine from his. No one actually said anything, but that in itself, said everything that needed to be said.
I called Reese tonight because it was my first night off in weeks, it was the holidays, and ok, I admit it, I missed his companionship.
My grandmother used to refer to such episodes as a “falling out” but that really didn’t seem to fit here because we’d never really argued-there was no “falling.” We’d not engaged in any big blow up, nothing climatic. No hostility. We just aggressively quit talking, and as that silence became mutual, it expanded.
I willfully redirected all my energy into work and not toward our friendship. This is how my people, Lutherans, deal with real or imagined conflict. We don’t.
So we “drifted”-but more like with paddles, each of us paddling unconscientiously away from one another, paddling toward opposite shores, where we beached ourselves and silently stared back at one other across a widening river--Literally and figuratively. Reese moved out of town, down valley. I also moved out of town, down valley, and back onto my land. Rebuilding on property I’d retained overlooking the river, I dedicated most of my time toward carpet colors, cabinet choices, and ceiling fans that could have doubled as airplane propellers.
Reese’s new place was across the same river, within sight of my future home. He also focused on carpet colors, riding lawn mowers and ceiling fans that could have doubled as airboat propellers. By the time we both fully resettled, we lived less than half a mile from one another and better yet, within eyesight. Yet, we were separated by 25 miles of county road and a lack of bridges across the broad waters. But, that separation really might as well have been a hundred miles when one adds in the fact neither of seemed to want to be around the other.
“Turn there, the quilting store is right next to Rosaurs. Across the parking lot from Starbucks.” I looked over at Reese toward where he pointed. The snow noticeably accelerating, I followed his directions into the parking stall in front of the quilting store. Every car in the parking lot seemed to have some sort of bumper sticker, “Happiness is being a grandmother”, “I square dance and I vote”, and “Jesus Loves You.” Most of the vehicles were already accumulating snow. I visualized putting a “Visualize Rathdrum” bumper sticker on the other vehicles and then I considered finding a “Visualize Santa” for Reese’s pick up truck.
For the record, I have never been in a quilting store, so I didn’t quite know what to expect. Or what to do. Following Reese up the stairs into the store, I rehashed what I’d learned on the drive down from Pend Oreille County. Sometime during that fall, Reese took up the notion of becoming a quilter. His cousin quilted, as did many of his gambling friends. I wanted to be respectful of this latest pursuit. But I also knew that sometimes Reese would get wild ideas that he didn’t actually follow through on. Like the huge Chrysler Newport that he’d bought to enter into Demolition Derbies. Or the Combine we dreamed of restoring to enter into the Lind Combine Demolition Derby. There was the Ebay phase, the “I’m going to decorate for Christmas this year” phase, immediately followed by the “I’m so over Christmas” phase where an entirely decorated tree landed in the garage the day before Christmas Eve.
On some occasions, he’d get this idea, and it was like if we didn’t act on it immediately and with willful dedication, the opportunity wouldn’t be as worthy. Highly planned, well detailed pursuits were for losers. Indeed his first pride parade participation occurred spontaneously after we’d just attended the Combine Demolition Derby festivities. On the spur of the moment, we marched in the middle of the pack, ducking from all the TV cameras. We’ve never been back.
Still, once he decided on some new pursuit, nothing held him back. That included jumping 30 feet off of Yahk Falls. Or recording every episode of Mama’s Family, even those that never aired. Reese could turn a wrench like no one else I knew, once installing an outdoor shower on the back of his travel trailer in less than a day. Another time he completely gutted his most recent travel trailer, remodeling it until it became what he called a “Showplace”.
With the quilting, this already felt like a long term pursuit. A keeper.
“I don’t know how to explain it Tim, but when I start quilting, I go in my sewing room and I just loose track of time. All of the sudden I look at the clock and nine or ten or twelve hours have passed! I completely relax. I love it!”
With Reese holding the quilting store door open, I entered. So this would be another first. Another new experience I wasn’t sure I needed. Reese often loves to make me uncomfortable. He knows I hate yard sales but he’s brilliant at finding something I really want, and then holding it over my head. “You have to go to ten yard sales. Then you can have it.”
I’ve stolen plums and peaches off of fruit trees in Paradise, Montana just so he’d drive me down some forgotten Montana highway-One I just had to explore. I’ve played Extreme Bingo at the Sander’s County Fair and gambled through every bonus screen at Northern Quest Casino. All of these were things I’d have never done on my own. Yet these represent upper level courses required under his mentoring.
The door shut behind us and an onslaught of warmth replaced the snowy cold. The place was filled with women. In one corner, a table of ladies cut fabric or laid out patterns. Through out the store, the latest sewing machines with four digit price tags vied for my attention. I immediately observed that these sewing machines came equipped with little computer keyboards and small LED graphics displaying stitch patterns and thread counts. I never knew that sewing had become so high tech. Moving toward one of the machines, my attention was diverted by the owner of the store approaching us.
“Well, this is a surprise! We never see men in the store. And now we have two of them!”
Without thinking I pointed at Reese, “I’m just with him. I don’t quilt.”
Reese shot me a look that needed no translation. I rapidly began stuffing my masculinity issues back into that dark inner place from where they had just exploded all over the store. I tried to get interested in everything-and I also tried to ignore the women gathered around that table, the very women who were so obviously not trying to be obvious as they stared at us. Next I did what they say to do when Jesus comes back. I tried to look very busy. I finally found a corner of the store with rugged cowboy and moose and log cabin-like quilt patterns which I poured through as if they were unreleased pickup truck brochures. Meanwhile, Reese did his thing.
I guess I like quilting enough. I enjoy looking at the various quilts displayed at the county fair, but I know it’s not for me to attempt. The math alone would kill me. But the intricacy is captivating, and I wonder at the stitching, the layout, the colors, and the imagination that must be at play to quilt these masterpieces. I drifted around the store, letting the redness of my face fade, picking up pattern magazines and quilt books. From somewhere in the store holiday music played and as embarrassed as I was, there was no where else I’d rather be. I could hear Reece laughing over by the cash register, standing next to the woman who’d originally greeted us, and always the star of good devilish humor he also already had the women at the table giggling.
And that’s the thing about Reese-the disarmingly wonderful, evil thing about him-through his humor and his outrageous gift of saying that which shouldn’t be said, ever, he could charm anyone through laughter, pushing that imaginary line, veering right on top of it, almost to the point of no return, and yet somehow in the midst of being so outrageous, he could ease the tension right out of the room.
The quilters were charmed. They loved him. They wanted him back.
I looked outside, hypnotized by the snow swirling and dancing in the spotlights guarding the parking lot and I groaned realizing that the traffic at the Division Y was no longer moving. By the time we left, the women at the table were begging Reece to join their sewing circle and although I wouldn’t be a regular there myself, I no longer felt like I’d just crashed a women’s lingerie party.
A week later I found myself back in Spokane; sneaking into the quilting store under the cover of darkness. The woman from before immediately recognized me.
“You’re back!” she exclaimed.
I nodded.
“So are you ready to begin a lifetime of quilting?”
I can’t even thread a needle and I wasn’t exactly brilliant at replacing buttons. “Doubtful. Actually, I’m just here to get a Christmas gift certificate for my friend, you know the guy I was with the other night.”
“Oh we love him. He’s so funny. The other women are trying to talk him into joining some of our classes.”
I shrugged. “Well if he did, you’d never be the same.”
“Oh I’m sure of that. Not many men will drop a thousand bucks on a quilting machine.”
“You wait-- he’s only just begun to spend money here. I promise.”
I paid for the gift certificate and then eased my way back out into the snow flurries. Spokane seemed buried in snow, and although I didn’t know it at the time, we would nearly tie an all time record for snow accumulation; a record that Pend Oreille County would actually shatter.
~ ~ ~
Although one of the biggest themes surrounding the holidays is the birth of the Christ Child, an equally large theme is loss. Something about Christmas, its attention to memory, nostalgia, and tradition can’t help but remind us of those we’ve lost and their AWOL status-especially during Christmas.
On one of Jim Brickman’s CD, there’s a song where the lyrics wish the plane would fly faster and that arrival to a holiday destination would be sooner. The anticipation of reunion is one of my favorite parts of Christmas. Reunion with the Christ Child. Reunion with family. Reunion with those we love.
Over the last year, the distance that developed between Reese and I, wasn’t helped much by the fact that we’d both been going through a lot of loss. In less than a years time he would lose three uncles, each long before their time. Two of those men were among my most favorite people in the county. I’d also lost grandparents, an uncle and my mother seemed to hang tentatively in remission from cancer. Friend after friend was testing positive for HIV and as the snow kept piling up, the deepening blanket of gray represented a symbolic barrier inhibiting any further communication.
I wasn’t holding my breath that either of us would want to hurry up and restart our friendship, and the brief holiday reunion did not thaw the chill in our friendship. The holidays came and went. Nothing changed in my relationship with Reece. I remained busy in work, life, and eventually grad school. Reece continued quilting, sometimes attending quilting retreats up in the Calispel Valley at one of the larger ranches and sometime losing days on end in his sewing room. We saw each other only once between January and October.
I realize the tension and the reason behind our fading relationship remains unexplained: The grand unspoken “why”. What caused our mutual avoidance and our mutual lack of compelling energy attracting us one to another? Was it something really juicy like a body hidden in an attic or a fabulous theft? That I’d somehow quilted better than he? That I’d scored the blue ribbon at the county fair?
What if the distance was just the natural phenomenon of two people getting absolutely ear shattering over one another? What if we were just so sick of one another’s stories, that to hear one more rendition of a trucker story or how that little farmhouse had this amazing story, that wasn’t so amazing after the 12th telling, that neither of us could stand the stalemate of the stale status of our lives?
When I was a child I always thought that I’d be friends with everyone I met for the rest of my life. Until I turned 42, I actually tried to remain friends with each person to cross my path-to the point of exhaustion. I believed that if someone drifted out of my life, this was an indictment of my personhood, my consistency, and that no person could go unaccounted for.
Something finally snapped. I quit. I let go. I launched beyond every long-lost friend, happily ever after reunion theme and settled into quality verses quantity. I accepted that very few people would actually accompany me from young adult hood to assisted living. Instead of thousands of friends, I focused on six or seven. It wasn’t that I gave up on reunions and rekindling lost relationships. I just quit holding my breath waiting for them to happen.
One day the phone rang and I picked it up. It was Reese. “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.
“Nothing-other than procrastinating getting to my next paper.”
“They’re having this thing down at Toad Hall in Spokane-sponsored by the young Democrats. I guess it’s to watch the debates. It’s ten bucks, but that includes hot dogs and wine. You want to go?”
“Sure.”
I met Reece up in Usk and jumped in his newest Cadillac. The drive down to Spokane was just like old times. Neither of us said a word about whatever it was we’d not been talking about. John Mc Cain lost the debate, and Reese was in a great mood the entire way home. Pulling into the lot where I’d left my Jeep, he gave me a hug and said, “That was fun. I’m glad we did that.”
I was too.
A few weeks later Reese invited my partner and I to dinner over at his place. Another skill Reese has that I don’t is that he’s an amazing chef. As the rice cooked for some kind of chicken coconut curry Thai extravaganza, I asked Reese to show me what he’d been sewing over the last year. His face instantly lit up. Following him into the sacred sewing room, I listened as he began to describe each project. Quilt after quilt emerged from a pile next to his sewing machine and he held up finished pieces, nearly finished ones, and raw idea’s just starting to take shape. Everywhere I looked I saw vintage fabrics, cut into intricate designs, with fancy borders and a litany of retro colors.
Reese was an extremely talented quilter.
“I actually haven’t been doing much in here lately. But I just spent a day last weekend cleaning up the sewing room so that I could get back to it.” He paused for a minute and then his eyes got that devilish quality that I’ve learned is especially, most wonderfully wrong.
“Oh Tim, you have to see what I am working on next.”
I studied him, tentatively putting down the nearly finished quilt I’d been holding.
“Look at this fabric, isn’t it fun? It’s going to be my Christmas Quilt.”
I looked closer as Reese unfolded the fabric. Dangling down from his hands, a repeating pattern of buxom babes, with plenty of leg showing, cuddled up in red and green Santa Moo Moo’s, fell open. I fought the urge to cover them, and hide them from younger eyes.
The holiday gals, complete with Santa fur trimming the edges of each coat, looked as if they’d just stepped out of an estrogen convention. I also noticed that each of Santa’s risqué helpers wore Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa’s Hats. Better yet, not a single one of the babes from this winter wonderland had seen a scissor mark anywhere close to their necks!
Reese held up the fabric, shaking it open again for effect, and then began to act as if he was modeling it on the Price is Right or Let’s Make A Deal. With a long graceful sweep of his arm, he revealed the enormous beauty of his future quilt’s design, and as the arch of his arm completed its forward motion, he finished with a special flourish of his hand.
I could not contain my grin, and I felt this enormous warmth spread across my cheeks. Our friendship seemed back on track, and looking at all those happy 50’s chicks put me right into the holiday mood circa Mad Men. Obviously the fine ladies pictured on the fabric could not help themselves. They were born to express holiday cheer, maybe even “go a sleigh riding together for two” complete with a stiff drink and a cigarette. Reese caught my approval and joined in.
“It’s just the most fabulous fabric! It’s going to make the most perfect Christmas Quilt.”
And I agreed. It so was.
~ ~ ~
I’ve been thinking a lot about quilting this year. I’ve also been thinking about my relationships and that so many friends I once knew have drifted off into oblivion. I feel the guilt and the uneasiness over letting go. Maintaining the majority of my friendships or keeping close a fraction of the people who’ve crossed my path is impossible. For this I fight a sense of failure.
During the holidays-especially when I acknowledge Reese’s perspective, the expectations we put on ourselves and that others put on us, really do threaten to drown us. All the must do’s and should have done’s but ran out of time’s. The gift lists that keep growing even as the bank account continues to dwindle. It is the most wonderful time of the year! That is, if you’re of a mind to disappear into the farthest corner of Barnes and Noble and not emerge until New Years. (sorry, I don’t follow this last sentence)
Yet when I objectively think about the make up of a quilt, I see all these pieces of rough fabric, some uniform, some wild and exaggerated, some that shouldn’t even be there. I know on a gut level that not every piece of fabric will make it into the quilt. I know that a quilter will toy with this color, or that pattern. Yet some fabric choices obviously don’t work. There is a process of selection, and maybe sometimes, even a most cherish pattern or vintage fabric, just won’t work when compared with the rest of the piece and the quilter’s vision.
In the writing world they call this process murdering your darlings. Revise! Revise! And Revise again-or better stated, a thousand points of a really shitty first draft. In quilting the same process is at hand. But after all this natural selection, those fabrics and patterns that made the cull, well, somehow they all come together. Magically they unite in the miracle of stitching and borders and pattern. Under normal circumstances these pieces of cloth would never go together in an ordered way. Yet when the quilter steps back, collects the mess, the disordered forms a united “whole”. A beautiful demonstration of harmony rises from disorder.
When I think about the sum total of our lives, the elation and despair of the many acquaintances, all the odd and dissimilar relationships that I’ve had the fortune (or misfortune) to embrace, somehow even with the separation and dislocation, what remains assembles into a cohesive something--a stunning collection of chaos, unworkable edges, and perfect moments that once woven together, results in the sum total of who we are.
I finally get the quilting thing, especially as it pertains to Christmas. Christmas is, by its nature, about disorder, upheaval, and unmet expectations imploding all over everyone. A culling process is at work here as well. Expectations meet reality. There’s the miracle child born in a manger, an anointed king arriving on a donkey, and grace originating from a cross. Each chapter in God’s divine arrival, taken by itself, does not seem that it would really work. But taken together, the story of Christmas, in all its imperfection and roughness, blends into a seamless fabric of perfection. A Christmas Quilt that truly is fabulous in every way.