mending_holes kerry my mom insisted i take an old quilt of hers back home with me. she even busted out an old suitcase just for the quilt, and paid for the baggage fees. we were standing in my parents’ bedroom where she’d laid a folded quilt on the bed. i recognized it–an amish wedding ring quilt, circles in different shades of blue on white. ditsy flower prints, tiny bits of plaid and stripe, but mostly royal blue. my favorite shade of blue. this quilt was on my parents’ queen bed when i was little. it was on the bed on saturday mornings when i crawled out of my sheets and into theirs, squeezed between them, and we dozed, listening to npr on the clock radio, the spotted dog curled up in the corner. that was when dad still drank coffee and he would have a mug in bed and read the paper, and some mornings i’d curl up and rest my head on his legs and he would rest the open newspaper on top of me so it formed a kind of tent. my mom would sleep until at least 10:00 if we let her. “it’s handmade,” she said. “it’s called a wedding ring quilt. i bought it in the 70s when i lived in ohio. keith hated it.” she chuckled. keith was her first husband. she still spits his name out like a rancid nut. he was a photographer like my dad, but wealthy and jewish and insisted she convert even though he didn’t practice. she converted and they had a huge wedding in the temple. she was only 22, with her hair long and blonde and shiny, and she wore a lacy high-necked gown. they had no children. one day she came home from work and he said he didn’t love her anymore, that he’d packed some things and that was it. “there are a couple of holes,” she said. “if you take the quilt i hope you’ll patch them.” “of course,” i said, thinking of joy’s quilt that i mended while watching tv in her basement. it’s meditative to me, mending tears in an old cherished quilt or sewing a new button onto a shirt, even darning a sock. there were only a few. there was also a brown ring. i pointed to it. “cigarette burn?” she laughed again, but sheepish, as though i’d caught her. “yep. smoking in bed. i was young.” i knew she’d smoked for several years. it suited her, strange as it is to say. she was voted best dressed in high school, she was a buyer for expensive coats and strange cubic furniture, and she permed her hair and wore chelsea boots and got coffee table books about couture fashion. when she got together with my dad, as the story goes, he refused to kiss her unless she stopped smoking. “and that was it,” she’s said. that was how she quit, right then and there. now that i have made the same mistake–and i remember the first cigarette i smoked, where i was and with who–i doubt it was that easy for her. “it has been years of off-and-on for me, stretches of months or even years without and then somehow there i am again, buying a pack and throwing half away from guilt, soaking them in water because i know i’ll dig them out of the trash if i don’t. i’ve begun rolling my own. they’re thinner than a pencil. i tell myself this is the way to stop, finally. i have been in love, i know the beginning of it and how all-consuming it is, how you’re willing to give and give and give, to sacrifice whatever, hoping for that closeness. aside from love, what is it, or is there anything, that could make it that easy to quit? tonight i put the wedding ring quilt on the bed. it felt familiar in my hands as i spread it out, trying to make it even on both sides. the sight of it is calming, like the feeling of coming home after vacation and noticing the smell of the house, perhaps the smell someone else would notice but you don’t. every house has a smell. everyone has a history or at least a vice, but it doesn’t always leave a tiny burnt ring. a scar. 211217 what's it to you? who go blather from