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EDITOR'S NOTE: Doug Smith is retiring June 5. This is the 15th in a series of his most requested columns. This first ran in the Observer on Wednesday, May 23, 1990. Doug still clings to the quilt.
The handmade patchwork quilt is worn and faded, semiretired to the bottom of the bed linen closet.
Grandma Lillie Herrin Ritchie put a lot of love into cutting and sewing each of the 306 4-inch by 4-inch squares.
The quilt was her high school graduation gift to me in 1962.
We all got one, my 27 cousins and I. The quilt was Grandma's "diploma," her way of rewarding each grandchild's effort and bestowing her blessing as we faced the world.
For an 18-year-old high school graduate, a quilt was a quilt: something to put on the bed. I didn't take mine off to college with me. Beach blanket bingo on a quilt? No, thank you.
Fortunately, we don't remain 18-year-olds forever. Today, the symbolism of the quilt looms larger than it did back then.
Grandma died April 27 at age 93 at the Lutheran Home in Albemarle. This past Mother's Day was our first without her. But all the Mother's Day gifts we heaped on her through the years can't repay the gift she gave four generations of us Ritchie heirs: her love, her support, her example.
All us - seven surviving children, 28 grandchildren, 56 great-grandchildren and 14 great-great-grandchildren - were inspired by her story, retold for each generation. It reflects perhaps Grandma's favorite axiom: "Can't never could." No one was allowed to say "I can't" without first trying.
When her husband, Ira Ritchie, died in 1932, leaving her with eight young children, some family members suggested she give them up for adoption. No single woman could manage alone, they said.
Grandma wouldn't hear of it. She moved from the farm in Cabarrus County to Charlotte, found work in a textile mill and taught the older children to baby-sit the younger ones.
She helped care for my cousins and me when our fathers were fighting in World War II. Her hands were never idle. My earliest memories are of Grandma sewing. Or gardening. Or cooking. I can still taste those homemade dinner rolls!
But my mind fixes on the quilt. Red, green, blue, orange, lavender checks, plaids, stripes and floral prints. The same fabrics from which she made her dresses, drapes and bedspreads.
She could have given the grandchildren a card, a flower, a few dollars. But always it was a quilt, with the insistence that she be present at the graduation ceremony.
In the parlance of human resources administration, I'm not sure whether Grandma's recognition practice was a positive or a negative motivator. It seemed to work both ways.
My younger brother Danny was having trouble in high school English, and there was some doubt that he'd graduate with his class. My mother reminded him that he'd already sent an invitation to Grandma Ritchie. Did he want to call her and explain?
Danny passed English. Grandma bestowed her quilt. And Danny graduated with honors from college.
Now my quilt comes out of the closet only on the coldest nights. But it comforts me as no electric blanket ever could. I pull up the covers and hear Grandma's admonishment to the slothful: "Can't never could."
Thanks, Grandma. I'm still trying.
