I have masks, a heaping supply of gratitude and a plan to make memories using my sewing machine

Early in the pandemic, when everything except for the worrying part of my mind was shut down, I bought piles of fabrics and a sewing machine.

I also ordered bags of nose-bridge strips, after learning of their existence, along with various types of filters to slide into the folds of the hundreds of face masks I would produce one sleepless night after another.

I was going to do my part to protect America! For about three whole days, that was my plan.

Then I remembered who I am.

I’ve never had a talent for the sewing machine. I inherited this skill void from my mother, who was not about to be shamed for her unwillingness to learn the 45 steps required to thread the Singer Slant-O-Matic my father bought for her.

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Dad had a habit of jingling coins in his pants pockets, which took a toll on them. He thought Mom could repair them. Mom thought he could ... never mind. No need to quote her.

For all her life, Mom refused to admit that, on her first sit-down at the sewing machine, she deliberately sewed shut the pockets in three pairs of Dad’s pockets. To this day, I hear the hum of a sewing machine and see my big, burly father slouched over that Singer, singing Dean Martin songs as he mended his own damn pants.

Full of masks, fabric and gratitude

Anyway, here I am, with an ample stock of KN95 face masks and two boxes full of fanciful fabrics in my basement.

On this brink of another COVID-19 spike in our country, maybe I should have started by thanking all of you who have trusted science and done all that you could to keep yourselves and others safe. This holiday season is going to be happier than last year’s for an awful lot of people, including my family.

I am so grateful, which is how I have come to remember the other part of who I am.

Stick with me here, please.

For five summers, before her death when I was 12, I used to tag along with my great-grandmother to her weekly quilting bee at the Methodist church down the street. That community of women – and the bounty of their endeavors – left such an impression on me that 50 years later, they showed up in my first novel.

Only now, though, am I ready to use the skills they taught me.

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Along with that new fabric, I also have two bins of my kids’ childhood clothing, which I always wanted to use for quilts. That I still have those bins tells you all you need to know about how that turned out.

Finally, I have a plan.

I’m sketching patterns and making a quilt of the homes that built me. It’s a different way for this writer to tell a story, one stitch at a time. Women have been doing this with quilts for hundreds of years, and certainly with more expertise than I. No matter.

Stitching memories of homes gone by

My quilt will be a collection of the houses full of my best memories. My childhood home is in it, of course, with its wide front porch and the swing, always a swing. I’ll stitch both houses from my single-mother days, too. The first one I rented two months before I could move in. Sometimes I’d drive over and park on the street in front of it, just to look at it and imagine the new life I’d build there. The biggest Christmas tree we ever had was in those front windows. I’ll stitch that.

We lived with two black cats by the time we moved out of the second single-mom home. Reggie and Winnie will be looking out those quilted windows, behind the blossoming Spirea bush.

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I’m stitching friends’ houses, too. Gaylee’s was the first house I helped paint, and the first one I visited after my daughter was born. Jackie’s and Kate’s home was an act of hope, as they built it long before they could legally marry. Sue bought her home for her parents so that she could care for them to the end of their days, which she did. So many shared meals in these homes, so many world problems solved by dessert.

I’ll stitch our grandchildren’s homes, too, as no place makes me happier than a house with one or more of them in it. I’m hoping to snatch bits of their outgrown clothing for a roof here, a sidewalk there, and flowers everywhere.

At the heart of this quilt is the home I’m in now, and this is where my stitching has begun. This is the story of a life I could not imagine those many years ago. My gratitude, stitch by stitch.

Connie Schultz is a columnist for USA TODAY. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner whose novel, "The Daughters of Erietown," is a New York Times bestseller. Reach her at CSchultz@usatoday.com or on Twitter: @ConnieSchultz

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Connie Schultz: Gratitude for KN95 masks and a plan to make a quilt