I found myself standing along the shore of the Gulf of Mexico the other day. I was on the seawall in Galveston, I was reminiscing to myself about what a role it had played in my life, particularly while I was married, and that was a long while with three kids. But I also realized it played a role in my life before I was married, and would likely play a role in my life after my marriage. And that felt like a good point of view, a continuation.

Then the other day I found myself in LaGrange at the Quilting Museum, a place I’d never been. That got me thinking about quilts, primarily the ones my grandmother made that would be thrown down as pallets on the floor whenever we came to visit in San Antonio. I loved those quilts and how warm they felt, particularly on a cold, cold morning when you just wanted to snuggle in and hold that heat close to your body. And this morning, as I cuddled in my warm bed, I thought of my life as a quilt.

I saw it as a series of days, with a patchwork of memories, all stitched together into a life that I call my own. It has the bits of my childhood moving around the country, my youth as we settled in Houston, my first jobs, my first loves, my time in the Navy, my time in college, my marriage, my children, my career, my travels, my retirement, the move to the Hill Country, my wife’s illness, her eventual death, my grief, my recovery, my music, my friends. I see myself as a quilt in progress, with new squares to be sewn, new memories to be made, a patchwork man, maybe with a little redwork thrown in for color.

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