I’m a major procrastinator, in lots of things, but this year, I’m turning over a new leaf.

On New Years’ Eve, my brother and sister-in-law, who had been visiting us for a week, left to go back to Ohio.

I think partly because of that and that I felt like I hadn’t had enough time to just blabber with my brother, I was very depressed that day.

I looked back on my year and didn’t like what I saw.

I hadn’t finished a new book. My weight loss had stopped or gone backward. My house wasn’t in company ready shape at all times.

Frankly, I felt like I’d failed that year.

Of course, I hadn’t. I finished Sword & Illusion, a book I’d been working on for about four years and I do believe it’s the best thing I’ve written. Now If only I could find an agent to even request pages…

Anyway, I decided it was time to finish all the things I started – all the craft projects, all the book ideas, all the things I keep saying I want.

Today, I uploaded a bunch of pictures to Facebook and scanned some other old photos I’d inherited when my mother died.

The last few days I’ve been thinking about her. I’m her oldest child and with both her and Daddy gone, that kinda leaves me with a lot on my shoulders – yes, this is a self-imposed burden perhaps, but I feel it.

My mother was a quilter. An amazing quilter. Very prolific. She never made art quilts and she didn’t like applique that much. She made quilts for her family to use. When I pointed out to her that the first quilt she made – which she gave to me after my sister died – was falling apart, she said, “Then I guess it was loved.”

She never wanted her quilts to be put in a box on a shelf and treated like a precious treasure. Therefore, there are about 7 or 8 quilts in my son’s room – several of them baby quilts – that she made him and when he has them all on the bed, he says, “I sleep in love.”

There are three quilts on our bed she made and one I did (I made my husband a king sized quilt to commemorate when he got his PhD.)

There are four quilts my daughter has that Mom made. One of them, a Sunbonnet Girl quilt, was a combined effort. I appliqued all the blocks while sitting in a recliner on dialysis. Mom put it together. Another one, a quilt for the Girl’s graduation from 8th grade, she made after the Girl and I picked out the pattern and fabric. We had adopted the Boy by then and my sewing time was limited, so Mom took the fabric and pattern and made the quilt.

The other night, I was sick in bed and I put my hand on the quilts and realized that the one I’d made was falling apart. Interestingly, the fabric I bought at a fancy quilt store began to tear before the fabric I got at a chain fabric store!!

Anyway, I realized that when these quilts fall apart, that could be it. There’s no one else who is retired, living alone, and spending hour after happy hour sewing and quilting for us and other people she loved. And herself.

One of my projects to finish is a quilt. The pattern is called Cinderella, and I made it YEARS ago, but stopped quilting it when we adopted the Boy. That was 8 years ago, so I decided that is one of the projects I’m going to finish this year.

I’m also getting my sewing area back in shape and I’m going to sew again. I may not be able to replace all the quilts, but I can leave something for my family, and I can get back that part of me I’ve missed.

I inherited my love of sewing and crafts from my mom, and I want it back.