Needlepoint and Memoir

What does needlepoint have to do with memoir?  I can tell you. My memoir (personal story) called Undertow is a manuscript, not a published book … YET. Currently a few reviewers (author friends) are reading it. You might know it by its long name, Undertow: Seventeen Years in a Fundamentalist Cult.

The other day someone asked me whether Undertow was “about cults.” No. It is not a collection of articles about destructive cults or fundamentalism or an expose of The Way International (the fundamentalist cult I belonged to from 1970 – 1987). Those sorts of writings are found in my blog posts.

—One of many helpful books I’ve read about writing memoirs is Sven Birkerts‘, The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again—

To read why The Way International is fundamentalist and is a cult, particularly while its founder, Victor Paul Wierwille, was alive, refer to: Cults and Critical Thinking.

A box for my memoir, Undertow

So there I was in my house looking for a box to mail a hardcopy of my book to a reviewer. I keep extra boxes in the closet, but on that day they were all too small for Undertow. I thought about buying a box at the Post Office, since my book is special to me and should have a special box, but before I did that, under the bed in my writing room I found what I needed: a flip-top box, probably 30 or more years old.

But there was a problem.

The box already held treasures

The treasures in this flip-top box were pieces of cloth covered with needlepoint. One was a decorative pillow cover that I made but never used. In the summer of 1976, I had bought the pre-packaged kit to make it, which included several shades of green and brown yarn, along with the pillow-sized cloth printed with a scene of a tree with grass and rocks beneath it. (featured photo).

Other treasures in the box were several pieces of cream-colored “tatting.” My father’s mother made  these. You see them in old movies placed on the upper backs of sofas or wing-backed chairs. Tattings look like lace decorations—completely useless, simply ornamental.

Also in the box was another pillow cover that my mother had made. It features a cluster of flowers, including a red rose, on a forest green background. When I was little, my mother was always making things like this. Once, she made a small round braided rug from woolen scraps and won first place at the annual Farm and Home Show in my hometown, Salisbury, Maryland. Her creativity wore off on me, I think, so that in later years I was inspired to make the tree-rock-grass pillow cover.

The box’s best treasure

The last treasure in the box, the box I sacrificed to mail my manuscript, held a tablecloth. It was a needlepoint effort that my mother, Anne Lamy, had begun. She died in 1968 when I was sixteen, and after she passed, we sorted through her belongings and found the tablecloth. It was unfinished. Part of it was still held tight, encircled in the metal embroidery hoop, the printed design ready for stitching. When I took the hoop off, it left rust marks on the cloth that I still cannot remove. And I’d rather not.

The cross-stitch pattern on the tablecloth is called “blue onion,” a simple design that covers the wide borders of the cloth. Also, in a plastic bag, was a supply of embroidery thread in many shades of blue. Mom had meticulously kept the yarn with the tablecloth, planning, I am sure, to finish the project. To my knowledge Mom rarely started anything she didn’t finish. For this project, though, she ran out of time.

For years I kept the bag of yarns and the unfinished tablecloth. Finally, in 1975 when I was pregnant with my daughter, Rachel, I pulled the bag out of storage. I felt as if I had unfinished business to complete before I became a mother. Shortly before my baby was born, I finished that cross-stich project begun by my mother. The cloth bears the fruit of both of our labors and sometimes when I examine it, I weep with gratitude.

The box’s double-duty

Today, the flip-top box has done a wonderful familial favor. It protected three generations of our family’s needlepoint projects and now has carried a book with tens of thousands of words I wrote—some about my mother.

In 1968 on the day before Thanksgiving, at age 48, my mother died. This post is dedicated to her. Thanks, Mom, for leaving this trail of beauty.

Click on the first photo to view a slideshow with captions.

My mother’s blue onion pattern cross-stitch tablecloth that I finished in 1975.

My pillow cover

Mom’s pillow cover

My father’s mother’s tatting lace

Thank you, readers, for spending time with me here.

See you next time!

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