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Editorial: A gift of warmth at Christmas

By LAURIE HERTZEL, Star Tribune

Last update: December 24, 2008 - 4:58 PM

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EDITOR'S NOTE

Taking a holiday timeout from recounts and deficits, we've turned our Christmas Day editorial columns over to one of our favorite writers, Star Tribune Books Editor Laurie Hertzel. We hope you'll enjoy Laurie's story of a missing quilt -- and the warmth it brings her each Christmas -- as much as we did.

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The e-mail from my Oklahoma niece nearly vibrated with excitement. "We sent you a package!!! Hope it gets there in time for Christmas!!"

I hoped so, too. The gifts that my brother David and his family give are always quirky, but well-chosen. One year they sent a mug and an ice cream scoop from Braum's, their favorite creamery. Another year it was chocolate-covered peanuts from the Hydro Peanut Factory, just down Route 66 from Weatherford, where they live. I've been to Hydro. I've been to that peanut factory. Probably not many of you can claim that. That connection made those peanuts taste all the better.

So last Christmas, when I got Mary's e-mail, I happily waited for the package.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

They had mailed it Dec. 19, but by the Saturday before Christmas, it had not arrived. It did not arrive the day before Christmas. It did not arrive the day after Christmas. Weeks went by, and it did not show up.

We did our best to track it down, calling post offices in St. Paul and Weatherford, but nobody could find it. Every night when I drove home from work, a little blossom of hope sprang up inside me: Maybe today's the day the package will be there! But it never was, and I reluctantly came to accept that my present was not lost, but stolen. I called my brother.

"Do you want to know what it was?" he asked.

I did. Please let it be Hydro peanuts and a Braum's mug, I thought.

But no. It was a quilt -- a handmade quilt, crafted by his entire family.

The girls, Mary and Liz, picked out the fabric; it was printed with dogs, in honor of mine. My sister-in-law did the stitching. In the middle square, each of them -- Mary, Liz, their brother Jakob, David and Cynthia -- drew pictures of dogs running around the world.

And they all signed it.

I was devastated, and I was furious. Someone must have walked right up to the front door while my husband and I were at work and our dogs were asleep and picked the box right off our top step.

My brother is a kinder person than I am. He said he hoped that whoever took it was homeless, or poor, or a shivering junkie, and that when they drape themselves in the quilt they feel the love that went into it.

I am not so generous. That is not what I wish for them, I said. For months, every time I thought about it, I got angry all over again.

And now it has been a year, and here it is, Christmas again, and I find that my feelings have changed. Somehow, over time, the quilt has shifted in my brain from being the gift that makes me angry to being the best present I have ever been given. I think about David and his family choosing the fabric, cutting the squares, stitching the blocks, drawing the pictures, signing their names.

It's true that I don't have the quilt, but I don't need it. I have everything else, all of the things that went into the making of it: the thought, the attention, the generosity, the family, the love.

I can see the quilt in my mind's eye, and it does what quilts are supposed to do; it wraps around me, and it keeps me warm.

Laurie Hertzel is the books editor of the Star Tribune. She is at 612-673-7302.

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