The postman rang the doorbell this afternoon, when I wasn't expecting him to. I was lying in bed, starting to feel extra awful, but the postman brightened my day. Well, he was just the last link in the chain. The real magic happened a while ago.
My summer has been about as awful as I could ever have imagined, but for a few hours today, I've been able to forget about it. The box that arrived was from my parents, a gift out of the blue. They had had something special made for me, and were saving it for either birthday or Christmas. But with my world crashing down on me, my dad recognized that I really needed a boost. It did the trick. I feel very loved, very supported, and now I'm fighting the good kind of tears instead of the bad ones.
My dad acknowledged that his retirement lifestyle no longer justifies dressing up in a suit and a tie very often. There wasn't much need to keep a closest full of ties. So he sent a big handful of them to a quilter to cut up and make into a quilt for me. The result is amazing. The quilt is so beautiful. Everything about it is perfect. In his letter, dad says that it's a link between us. That's so true, and I wonder whether a few of the details were intentional or intuitive. For example, the base fabrics are black and gold. To me, that ties the link between my lifelong fandom of the Colorado Buffaloes and his long running hobby of RVing in gold and black RVs. I feel like that part was probably instinct, which is wholly endearing.
They said it could either be a lap blanket during treatment or a wall hanging. I am okay with using it for both. I am always using more than just the one small blanket they provide at chemo, so for my last cycle, I will bring it with me. But when that's done, I have one spot of my walls that I had been leaving open without knowing why. I know now. I have a perfect spot for it.
When it first arrived, my constant companion through this cycle jumped on the bed, and stopped short when she found a new textile with different colors and smells. She was startled. I just had to include a picture of her getting acquainted with it too.
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