This is an archive post ~ originally published Apr. 2, 2012 and updated in 2018

In my late teens, I was visiting Edith, my grandmother, in the San Joaquin valley where I stayed with her for part of every summer.

She gave me her pincushion and a few spools of thread and told me to thread all the needles on the pincushion so when she needed to sew she could just grab a threaded needle.

I don’t remember if she told me or not that she could no longer see well enough to thread the needles herself, but I knew it, and as my own eyesight blurs the lines between things, I think of that evening, sitting in the dusk on that bed in that room with needles and thread, knowing that she was showing me that vulnerability was part of life, and was OK.

This is one of my ‘secret songs’ – music I’ve written just for myself, trying to find a way to hold a moment and experience it over and over.

In this room heaven blooms
You sit at your leisure,
like a moon rising gold and full across a new planted field

I am like a thread that follows to your needle
You are my queen and my king

In this room, heaven bloomed

Just one memory of Edith (Anderson Henson) Reynolds