My great grandmother’s postage-stamp quilt (bottom) in my granddaughter’s bedroom
In contrast to the sanctuary of ingenuity, we may also take refuge in the sanctuary of everyday use. This is a sanctuary of pragmatism and utility, of ordinary things and days.
When I was teaching college and high school literature courses, I relished teaching Alice Walker’s short story, “Everyday Use.” I remember sitting in my community college office, reading this story for the first time. Wholly oblivious to the fact that there were other colleagues and students around me, I literally shouted, “Amen!” as I reached the end. This story deserves a hearty “Amen”–and more.
Set in the 1960s, Walker’s protagonist is a black mother of two adult daughters, Maggie–who lives at home with her mama–and Dee–who has left for the city and a better life. Early in the story, she describes her protagonist:
In real life, I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather.
Walker’s plot centers on a visit from Dee, who returns to the family home with her boyfriend. Dee, who has renamed herself Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo to honor her new identity, is immediately smitten with the milk churn in her family home. She announces that she will use the top of it as a “centerpiece for her alcove table” and she will think of “something artistic to do with the dasher.” As she moves through the house, however, she finds something even more desirable than the old milk churn: two old family quilts, a Lonestar pattern and a Walk Around the Mountain pattern. Both are made from pieces of her grandma and grandpa’s clothing, as well as from her great grandfather’s Civil War uniform.
When her mother offers newer, machine-stitched quilts that will “hold up better” and reveals that she has promised these quilts to Dee’s younger sister, Dee/Wangero cries, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts! She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.”
To which, her mother responds: “God knows I been saving ’em up long enough with nobody using ’em. I hope she will!”
In the end, the mother snatches the quilts from Dee and places them in Maggie’s lap. She chooses everyday use over decoration, leaving her eldest daughter quiltless and clueless.
Last fall at a church auction, my husband and I bid on, and ultimately bought, an old metal Case tractor–a collector’s item still in the original box–for an amount I will not disclose. (It was for a good cause!) The next morning when we went to pick up our granddaughter for church, Paul presented our grandson with the tractor. Before anyone could say a thing, Paul had removed it from the box and was on the floor, tractor in hand, beckoning Griffin to play.
In the sanctuary of everyday use, pricey collectible tractors are loosed from their precious boxes and, as toy tractors will, take their places among their Dollar Store contemporaries. They are pulled and pushed through sand and dirt, they are forgotten and left in the rain, they are used, and they are loved. Best of all, they are not heralded to be anything more than they were intended to be.
Great grandmother’s china will leave the china hutch in this sanctuary. And though there be chips and cracks, though the painted roses may fade and the cup handles broken, ordinary families will eat their dinners from this china. And their everyday use, like comfort food, will be deeply satisfying.
My great grandmother’s postage-stamp quilt hangs from a small wooden ladder in my granddaughter’s room. But it has been–and undoubtedly will be–used. Its worn edges and faded pastels give testament to a century of use. And if Gracyn uses it to make a tent, to host a picnic for her dolls, or to curl under with a good book, so be it. In the sanctuary of everyday use, this is expected. And applauded.
