I watched a good movie yesterday called How to make an American quilt. It’s basically about Finn Dodd, a 27 year-old woman (played by Wynona Ryder) who feels a lot of indecision in her life, and so she goes to spend the summer with her great aunt and grandmother.   During the summer she learns much about her elders’ lives and the lessons they have learned.

The story centers on the stories of several women in a quilting bee as they work together to construct a wedding quilt as a gift for Finn.

Finn is a Berkeley graduate student visiting her grandmother Hy (Ellen Burstyn) and great aunt Glady Joe (Anne Bancroft) in Grasse, California.  During her stay, all of the women share their life stories with her, which leads her to reflect on her own life and where it is headed.

There is much midlife wisdom in this film, lots about the choices we make when we’re young and where they can lead us.  Lots of about the important decision points we reach and how we decide what’s next in our lives.  I loved this quote from the movie:

“Young lovers seek perfection.  Old lovers learn the art of sewing shreds together, and seeing beauty in a multiplicity of patches.”

This is the wisdom we gather as we age, much like the gathering of patches of cloth we enjoy, some of which remind us of important times in our lives.  This is what I realized when I met my new (and improved!) husband Mike five years ago. …..my idea of love had changed dramatically!

Love had become less a seeking towards a perfect union, and more a gathering of all I had learned.  Now Mike and I piece together our lives day-by-day into a quilt of varying shades and hues.  It changes all the time, but it is always a thing of beauty!

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