Daddy's Favorites

A collection of quilts made by a father and daughter during the last three years of his life and the middle years of hers.

The last three years of our lifetime relationship were an extraordinary gift of time together, alternately completely wonderful and absolutely difficult. We did a lot of the things we had always done. We painted the house, watched football, squabbled, ate dinner together every night, retold family stories, celebrated birthdays and put up the Christmas Tree.

But things had changed. Daddy's years of defining himself by the work he did were waning. When he sold his house and moved in with us, the last vestige of having a job, looking after the house and yard, vanished. He moved into a house that already had a man of the house, my husband. So we replaced Daddy's old job with a new career - quilt maker. Now and then he took a little sick time, had a stroke, had pneumonia, had congestive heart failure but he was always excited to get back to work.

Some of the dozens of quilts we made together document our lives and put pattern and color to those family stories. But there is so much more to it than that.

Many of the quilts capture our feelings about the situation we found ourselves in: treading water in the paradoxical whirlpool of parent parenting child and child parenting parent, both of us care giver and care receiver. I tied his shoes and cut up his pork chop. He wished it wasn't so and fussed about being a burden. He gave advice and warned about all sorts of dangers. I wished it wasn't so and fussed about being a grown up already.

And so it went...than whirlpool was always a circle of love and all of the quilts reflect it.