Before her fingers stiffened too much with age, Grandma Johnson cross stitched the gingham cloth of her aprons and table cloths. She also made rugs from rags, tied together into long strands of recycled cloth and twisted into spiral ovals to protect our feet from cold linoleum. And to breathe more beauty into life.
I still touch that cloth that she decorated, pushing needle and thread through it with her flesh and bone hands. Even imagining that cloth fills me with the spirit of her love—her love of life, her love of beauty, and her love of us.
In this way, Grandma embroidered my life, breathing more beauty into me. May my words embroider you too with love. May my words, even though they, like the cloth, will eventually decay and be forgotten, pass on the love so that you too will manifest love through your own arts and crafts and daily acts, passing on love from hand to hand and heart to heart.
-Terra Rafael
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