Here’s why you should let that heirloom go
The lesson of Sunbonnet Sue
<Welcome to Sandwich Season, where I explore the burdens and blessings of life in the sandwich generation—in the hopes of encouraging others in similar seasons.>
Hi friends—
Remember my last post, “Sometimes we need to take a break”? Well, I’ve taken my own advice and in just two weeks feel reenergized. I’m realizing I might need to let go of my every week posting schedule and go to publishing most weeks instead. (I’m also sharing some tidbits in the Notes section of Substack, just for fun … it’s this platform’s version of social media.) Life is an experiment.
Now on to this week’s post! I have a sandwich season story for you … please see “The Lesson of Sunbonnet Sue,” below …
Take good care,
Sarah
The lesson of Sunbonnet Sue
Emptying out my parents’ basement storage room a couple of summers ago, I found a double-bed-sized quilt featuring Sunbonnet Sue, its blocks appliqued with fabrics cut in the shape of a little girl dressed in a bonnet, pinafore and boots.
Quilters say this pattern became popular in the early 1900s, and to my Gen X eyes, she looks like the Holly Hobbie of an earlier generation.
Sunbonnet Sue had been zipped into a thick plastic pouch, which had probably come with a mass-produced comforter-and-sham purchased by my mom years ago from T.J.Maxx. As I removed the blanket from the pouch and unfolded it, I knew I was holding a handmade treasure, in nearly new condition. I looked for some sort of identification. Where did this quilt come from? And then I found it. On the back side of one of its corners was a stitched-on tag printed with the name Francis Henk.
I never met Mrs. Henk. She was the mother of my great uncle Ken, who was married to Great Aunt Beatie, my dad’s dad’s half-sister.
But I sure knew Beatie and Ken. As a kid, I thought they were living the life. Not only had they moved away from their cozy Illinois hometown to the mountains of Colorado, a true beauty state, but when we drove out from our home on the tabletop-flat Minnesota prairie to visit them, we found that they lived in a mobile home.
To my nine-year-old self, that mobile home was nothing short of amazing. A house on wheels! With a kitchen, a bathroom and everything else—on wheels! Plus the back of the rig was decorated with the most intriguing bumper sticker ever: “If this rig’s rockin’, don’t come knockin’!”
Wooh! I might have been young, but I was pretty sure I knew what that meant.
Beatie and Ken would have been in their fifties then. Bald, wiry, denim-clad Ken with his charming smile worked in construction, and Beatie with her piled-up graying hair, foxy glasses and twangy accent made their house a home and told us about the fun they had on Marriage Encounter weekends.
Through the years, we saw them only rarely. But Beatie kept up with us through holiday phone calls and $5 checks mailed in birthday cards signed with her and Ken’s names, Ken’s “K” a pileup of curly-cues, as if written by some besotted teen girl … which I guess Beatie was, once upon a long-ago time.
I remember asking my mom, when she was in the thick of raising my very busy younger brother and me, why Beatie and Ken didn’t have any kids. She paused, and now I can imagine some of the thoughts and answers that were probably running through her head. I’m guessing she needed to edit them before responding.
What she came up with was a comment Beatie had once made: She didn’t have kids because “she didn’t want to wreck her figure.” I could tell from my mom’s expression and tone that she—who battled her weight most of her life—did not love Beatie’s comment and might even have taken it a bit personally, no matter how delighted she surely was to have my brother and me, along with her more generous physique.
Whatever the case, it added to my impression that Beatie and Ken and their child-free life far away from the rest of the family were a little bit crazy but kind of cool in a vaguely rebellious, off-kilter way.
When they passed away a couple of years apart in the early 2010s, having no children meant that someone else needed to clear out their home, which by then was a regular brick house. Cue up my parents. Beatie and Ken had named Dad executor of their wills, so off he and Mom drove to Colorado to take care of business. I remember it all took quite a bit longer and substantially more effort than they had expected. (Surprise, surprise.)
I’m guessing the beautifully stitched Sunbonnet Sue quilt I found was one of the items Mom and Dad retrieved from the Henk house. And once it reached Minnesota, down to the basement it went for future sorting that never happened, not to be seen again until my parents’ house needed clearing out in 2023. Ah, the circle of stuff. (You might recall some of these adventures in “Generations of stuff.”)
Finding that quilt on a shelf, hidden away amid a flotilla of dead relatives’ suitcases and boxes of Christmas decorations, led me to wonder, Why would Mrs. Henk have made this pastel-colored girly girl quilt for her rugged son and his figure-conscious wife anyway?
I’ve made exactly one quilt myself, and it took fourteen years all told. And I’ve jerry-rigged a couple of quilt tops out of topsy-turvy blocks that had been thrown together and abandoned by some long-gone, not-so-exacting shirttail relatives. So I have an appreciation for the effort and precision required to make these functional pieces of art work.
The idea of dropping this lovingly made quilt off at some thrift store felt … what? … disrespectful maybe. But so did putting her back in a plastic bag.
What to do with Sunbonnet Sue?
Finally, in the summer of 2024, I found myself worn down from dealing with allllllll of my parents’ stuff and our own stuff as well, having recently moved into my parents’ house. I brought the quilt to my trusty consignment shop (shout-out to Aal Yours in Fargo!) and asked my friend Heather if she might sell it. Let’s give it a go, she said.
And then I forgot all about it.
A couple of weeks ago, scrolling through Facebook, I ran across a friend’s announcement of a new grandchild and an accompanying flurry of photos: little baby bundled up in blankets, little baby in a basket, little baby’s feet resting in an adult’s arms, little baby’s hands by her cheeks, little baby sound asleep on a Sunbonnet Sue quilt. How sweet, I thought. Of course, a Sunbonnet Sue quilt would be perfect for a little girl. Why didn’t I think of that?
Some days—yes, days—later, my brain registered—Wait a second!
I went back into Facebook, found that photo and … darned if the colors didn’t look familiar. I texted my friend: Where did you get that quilt?
Uh-huh. You figured it out faster than I did.
It took three generations and a couple thousand miles, but Old Mrs. Henk’s quilt finally found a home.
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P.S. Here’s my previous post, on taking a break … and being benevolently selfish:
I had a Sunbonnet Sue quilt when I was little (that's 90+ years ago). Unfortunately, I have no idea what became of it. I guess my kids are lucky because they won't have to find a place for it.
Oh what a sweet story of new life for that quilt!