Hey
Sakazi,
Yes, this
is a long one but don’t act like you don’t have two minutes to read it. LOL.
I
remember being a very young little boy going to visit my Grandmother. Everybody
called her Aunt May. It was always a trip I enjoyed because she had the most
interesting things around her house. She had things I had never seen before,
like an old washing machine on the back porch where you fed clothes through the
wringer. I got my hand caught in it one time; not a good feeling, lol. I also
remember her wood stove and her outhouse. She didn’t have indoor plumbing at
the time. When I would arrive there with my parents I would jump out of the
car, run past the chickens, and up the old wooden steps into the old rundown 4
room house. It looked to be leaning from the outside, and on the inside, there
was newspaper stuffed in the cracks of the wall. I loved the faces on the black
and white comics hanging out of the walls. It made my heart happy, but my hands
would get slapped if I pulled them out, especially in the winter. I didn’t know
that was the insulation. The house had no heat. In the front room of the house
there was this very old man in a bed. His skin was like bronze, and to my
little boy eyes, it looked like a million wrinkles ran through it. When he
would open his eyes, I’d see that they were grey and faint. His name was Papa
Rod. That’s all I knew about him until I was told that he was born a slave. Of
course, I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I was too busy studying the
quilt that was covering his body to pay attention, to tell you the truth. This
quilt looked as if it had millions of colors and millions of patches to my
little boy eyes. I thought to myself, “that is an ugly quilt? Why didn’t my
Grandmother go to Kent’s or TG&Y (if you know these stores you’re telling
your age, lol) and get a good quilt like my mamma had? What is this raggedy
thing?” Later on that night, when we would go to bed, my Grandmother would
bring lots of these homemade quilts that she had made from her old dresses and
scraps and put them on the bed for us. I thought to myself, “all these quilts
are ugly, they smell like mothballs, but my it sure is warm.”
When I
was about 21 I decided to move away, and guess what, here came my mother giving
me one of my Grandmother’s quilts. By then, I had an appreciation for the hard
work that went into making it. So, I appreciated it, but I was still a bit
embarrassed by it. I took the quilt with me to Atlanta. I not only used that
quilt to keep me warm at night, especially when I was sleeping in my car, but I
used it when I had to get on the ground to work on my car. Now don’t get me
wrong, it was special to me because my Grandmother had made it, but when you’re
in a struggle nothing has much value. So, I would use it for whatever and
whenever I needed it. Most of the time it was thrown in the trunk for wrapping
tools or thrown in the closet until I needed it.
Not long
after I moved to Atlanta things got really bad. I remember coming home from
work one day. I was behind on my rent, and the sheriff had evicted me and set
all my things out on the street in the rain. I drove up shocked, and I got out
of the car trying to get all the things of value that were left that my
neighbors hadn’t picked through. In my mind, they had taken everything of
value, but there on the ground was my Grandmother’s quilt. I used it as a bag.
I put as many of my clothes in it that I could and stuffed it into the car and
left. I went to a storage company and put what few things I had left in storage
and started trying to find a place to live.
Stay with
me. I’m going somewhere with this. A few months later, I couldn’t afford to pay
the storage bill. So, I just let it go, losing everything in storage including
the quilt.
Now, let
me take you to my deeper point. A few years ago, I saw a familiar looking
quilt. It looked just like the ones that my Grandmother had handmade. It
brought back so many memories. I knew it wasn’t the same quilt, but I also knew
that somebody’s grandmother or great-grandmother had made that quilt and I was
embarrassed that they had taken such good care of it. As I was studying the
lines and the stitching I got a lump in my throat. It looked so much like my
Grandmother’s work. What was so surprising to me was that the very quilt I
thought was so ugly through my little boy eyes, as a man, I realized that I was
looking at a masterpiece. I asked the curator about the quilt, and she started
telling me the story. This woman, who no doubt didn’t know anything about my
Grandmother, was telling me my history. She was describing my Grandmother’s
quilt. She said it was made by an African American woman and that her family
had kept it for years. All of the fabrics dated back to different times in
history. There were patches from dresses and her rags from the civil war to the
civil rights era. As I was taking it in, I had to ask her what it was worth.
She told me that this quilt wasn’t for sale because the family didn’t want to
sell it. They knew the value, but she said you could get a few of these limited
and rare quilts with this kind of history for around twelve thousand to one
hundred thousand dollars each. My jaw hit the floor. I was so embarrassed that
I had this treasure in my house, in my possession, in my life, and I had
treated it like a rag. What a lesson for us all.
It made
me think about us as humans. We are so much more valuable than a material
thing, but sometimes in life we have people in our lives that should be treated
like treasures. Instead, we discard them and treat them like rags, like my
Grandmother’s quilt. We only use them when we need to be warm or comforted.
Like that quilt, we think they’re worthless until we need them, and like that
quilt, it takes somebody else to point out their value to us after they are gone.
If you
are like that quilt, and you are being treated like you don’t matter or being
pushed aside and used only when you are needed, stop letting that happen to
you. You are worth more than the people that created you know. My Grandmother
had no idea that one day her quilts would be worth millions. She had lots of
them. She created it and didn’t know, which tells me that it’s possible for
your parents not to know that you are a treasure. Like that quilt, you are
beautiful in your patches, and it took all of those patches to make you whole
and who you are. Each one of them represents something in your life that you’ve
been through. Wear them with pride. Like that quilt and its thread, something
held you together through it all. Like that quilt, even if the people that you
give warmth to are not giving you the care you need, you still have value
beyond what they know. Like that quilt, you are made from fabrics that have
endured and seen more than most people could imagine and you’re still here.
Like that quilt, if someone who is immature can’t appreciate your beauty, I’m
sure a grown up will. Like that quilt, you are a treasure. Your story matters.
I wish my Grandmother’s quilt would have come with a label telling me how
special and valuable it was and would be. Then the young foolish man that I was
would have known how to handle it, to treat it with care. But unlike that
quilt, you have a voice. Use it. Start demanding that you are treated like the
treasure that you are!
I love
you,
God
bless.
Tyler Perry*
