My mother’s quilt shop was a gathering place for my family, for friends, and the surrounding community. The opening and closing of the shop bracketed precisely the beginning and end of my twenties. And this place, the experiences and relationships that formed and changed during this period, were formative, to say the very least. It’s been more than 20 years since the shop closed. As I get older, and learn more about myself, the lens through which I reflect on this experience keeps evolving. I see things differently, I understand things differently. Sometimes nostalgia feels good, and sometimes it doesn’t. This is a reflection on the experience and changing relationships of my family, who are mostly all women. We were the girls in the shop.

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Audio of poem “The Girls in the Shop”

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I can hear it, jingling of the bells

They wiggle and whack the door

Serenading an entrance

Come now and consort with us

Exchanges both heart-felt and light-heart

I miss (most all of) these hearts

They knew me and I knew them

Tones in their voices told me everything

I can hear it, the rumble and the squawk

Tables, scooching us together

Yarning, wise ones, piles and stashes

Anecdotes, advice aplenty

Tea and stitching and breadcrumbs on the floor

Breadcrumbs snaking trails in my mind

Twining paths, hither and thither

Galaxies of connections, expanding

I can hear it, metal plate latching shut

He’s arrived but doesn’t come in

Tending, looking, chatting, looming

Outside still after he’s come in

Neighbour stories always most absorbing

Wide smiles and back-pats to the others

Pivot, narrow-eye side glance laser beam

It’s a private show and no one believes me

I can smell it now, something on the stove

Saturday lunches with the girls

Placeholders for deep conversation

Things go unsaid when it’s time to eat

Only smiles, gathering and “goodness”

Discussing everything and nothing

Chatting’s wearing a conversation cloak

You don’t notice it straightaway (but I do)

I can smell it, spicy home sweet home

Blackening the plump glass jar

It burns, it burns for hours

it burns in my memory

Glowing familiar amber warm

I want to warm my hands now

And place them, warmed, on my face 

I smell it, feel it, home sweet home again

I can smell it, cool island gardenia

Wafting from my grandmother’s blouse

Mid-embrace, familiar scent

Nestled deep in the pilled fibres

Inhaled, I’m tethered to the deep knowing

My tether waves loose in the wind now

I want to know and be known again

I would know her if I breathed it once more

I can feel it, needle pricks on my pointer

Finger pads rough and catchy and wise

They need not look, they know where to go

Intuition guides them down the way-ward

threads stuck to our frocks and smocks

Togetherness dissipates the pain

But in solitude, now, constellates

Remembrance dispatched, a signal to the sky

I can feel it, elbow ache at day’s end

Cups of tea obscuring, throbbing

Shifting, shifting when everyone goes

Trading aches, the body and the mind

Bespoke connection will have to do

Ready remedies for your thought-aches

and pains aplenty

Give me yours and I’ll give you mine

I can taste it, hot cider in my mug

End parts, fragmented spices

Sinking down to congregate

Swirling, now, in concentrate

Tired sludge remains – last and best, like us

Sediment is resonant

Spent potency, diminished

Softer, with time, it’s okay to be soft

Impasse is tragic

The path forward is not the path forward

when you are facing the wrong direction

Everyone loses when the things remain 

anchored at the bottom of our seas

We are stuck in place by iron will

I’m tired from pulling at your anchor

Waters murky with disturbances

Wispy cool breath clouds, heavy chill

Limbs tingle with cold connections

They (can) warm radiant when we converge

Aren’t you cold enough yet?

One hand on your anchor, one hand outstretched

If I let go, I will float away

Be careful what you wish for

The presence of absence is not nothing

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