(art by Phoebe Wahl)
My Grandmother, who I called Gamma (because I couldn’t pronounce grandma as a toddler), had a cedar hope chest at the end of her bed. When I heard it referred to as a “hope chest,” I was intrigued. What did hope look like? How did one keep hope in a wooden box? Curious as Pandora, I waited until no one was around and I quietly opened the lid to see what the hope that was contained inside.
Disappointment settled on me fast, as I gazed in at an old handmade quilt, linens, and my Mother’s christening dress (once white but had become a faded yellow). But I did not see hope. If “Hope is the thing with feathers,” as Emily Dickinson said, it wasn’t in this wooden chest. I closed the hope chest, disappointed.
Seeing me upset, my Grandmother asked, “What’s wrong?”
I explained that I don’t know why the old wooden chest was called a hope chest when all that was in it was a bunch of old cloth.
“Did you see the handmade quilt inside?” she asked. I nodded. “That was made by my mother, your Granny Watson, and women from our church, women who were our neighbors. They got together and, each bringing their own squares of cloth, to craft a quilt for me and the man I was to marry, your Papa Fred.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Begin In Wonder Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.