Happy Holiday Hop: The Final Gift

Aren't the holidays wonderful! So many parties and family events, and the decorations are so beautiful. I've had a great Christmas already. On Sunday, my family got together to paint miniature houses. The results ranged from the creative to the hysterically funny, but we all laughed and had the best time ever. I'll post a few pics for you throughout the post.

But there were a few missing faces around the table where we were working. During the holidays I always miss my dad who died a few years ago. He loved his family so much that he thought of a way to give us one final gift after his death. This is the way it was.

Okay, I admit it; I was always a daddy’s girl. My daddy was the first person I ever told a story to. I couldn’t write at the time, I hadn’t even started school yet, so I dictated the story to him, and he wrote it down for me. After he died I found that story written in pencil on notebook paper safely packed away in the cedar chest where he kept important papers.

He used to work the second shift and didn’t get home until eleven. I remember begging to stay up until he came home. Sometimes Mama would let me. When she did Daddy and I would watch the late news together while he ate a fried egg sandwich. He always shared with me. I don’t even like eggs, but sharing one with Daddy made it tasty.

Daddy also gave me a marvelous gift when I was eleven. I was horse crazy, but my mother was afraid for me to have a horse in case I should get hurt. Daddy talked her into it, and one icy Christmas morning I got a beautiful palomino mare from Santa.

Years later after I got married and moved to another state I was washing dishes one morning and looked out the window when a car stopped in my driveway. It looked like Daddy’s car, but what would he be doing at my house on a workday? He said he missed me and thought he’d take a day off to drive up and see me.

When I had my first child Daddy and Mama went crazy over him, especially Daddy. After a family of girls I expect that little boy did thrill him. That little boy was Daddy’s best man at his second wedding. My mother died young.

The last Christmas Daddy was alive he baked a fruit cake to bring to my house for Christmas dinner. I know what you’re thinking: fruit cake. Daddy loved to bake. If you’d ever eaten his fruit cake you wouldn’t turn your nose up at it.

Anyway, he only brought half of the cake. He said, “I decided to freeze half of it for you to have next year. I don’t think I’ll be here.”

Everyone pooh poohed him, but Daddy was right. He died in March of the following year.

As Christmas rolled around my stepmother said, “We still have the fruit cake that David baked. I’ll bring it.”

Those words struck terror into my heart. How could we eat the last thing my father baked? Once it was gone there would never be any more. The cherries and nuts that decorated the top had been placed there by his own hands in a pattern of his own design. It wasn’t right to eat it!

But on the other hand, how could we not enjoy it as he had wished us to do? Wasn’t that why he cut it in half the previous Christmas?

I went back and forth in my mind for several weeks, but the issue was decided a week before Christmas. The cemetery in our community hosts a remembrance ceremony right before Christmas each year. They put candles in white paper bags on each grave, and after playing a carol and having a prayer, relatives of the dead light candles in remembrance of their loved ones.

My heart felt like a lump of ice in my chest as I joined my stepmother at the cemetery. This was the first Christmas without my father, and it had cast a shadow over my holiday. As we lighted the candle on my mother and father’s grave my stepmother said, “It’s his first Christmas in Heaven.”

I thought about that for a long time. Wasn’t Daddy’s Christmas far grander and more glorious that anything I could imagine? Wasn’t he singing with the angel choir as all of Heaven celebrated the birth of our Lord?

I looked at that candle, and for the first time since March I felt something other than loss. I felt grateful for having had such a wonderful parent, and even though we're parted for a while, one day we’ll meet again. When we do, I intend to tell him how much I enjoyed that last fruitcake.

I'm giving away one copy of The Captain and the Cheerleader, one copy of The Table in the Window, and one copy of Her Kind of Man. Enter to win by leaving a comment telling me one of your precious Christmas memories. 

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The Fourteenth Quilt

About The Fourteenth Quilt:

Annie, Celia and Lynn are all that are left of the Relief Society quilting class, but they are still determined to make baby quilts for the new mothers at church. Annie, who is just south of eighty years old, calls the quiltsters (short for quilting sisters) together to ask for more. She wants to make lap quilts to give to some of the “forgotten” oldsters she sings to each week at the nursing home—something to wrap them in love at Christmastime. It’s a good idea, but the trio discovers that life and making quilts don’t always go as planned.

The quiltsters discuss recipes and quilting ideas including a crocheted cat mat to use up their fabric selvage and trim scraps, all of which they share in the book.

Sarah and Brian meet at the university. Their first date is after Sarah’s First Saturday Block of the Month class she attends with her mom at the local quilt shop. Their romance grows, and they plan their future together—a plan that will require them to be separated for six months before their wedding. But, can they bear to be apart that long?

What wraps together this Christmas tale? The Fourteenth Quilt. 

Q &A with Robyn Echols:

Q:  What prompted you to write The Fourteenth Quilt?

Robyn: In 2012 I and two of my friends decided to make baby quilts for the new mothers at church and lap quilts for the residents of the nursing homes where one of those friends performs each week. Shortly after we gave away thirteen lap quilts six days before Christmas, we felt prompted to make one more. The fourteenth quilt ended up taking quite a journey in the seven days between the time the decision to make it arose and when it was delivered. After it was all over, I said to myself, “Someone should write a book about this.” So, I did.

Q:  Is the book only about this quilt at Christmastime?

Robyn: No. The story actually starts in the spring of the same year the fourteenth quilt was made. It includes some of the quilting adventures, successes and disasters experienced by the three quilters. If you are looking for a novel about highly accomplished quilters whose work turns out museum quality every time, this isn’t it. At times our quilting experiences are best described as a comedy of errors.

Q:  What is the “young love” in the sub-title all about?

Robyn:  The daughter of one of the quilters fell in love that year. The story of the young couple in the book is almost entirely fictional. Only the scene where they crossed paths with the fourteenth quilt is based on real events.

Q:  Speaking of fictional, how much of the book is based on real events and how much is made up?

Robyn:  The scenes involving secondary characters and barely mentioned characters are fictionalized. They are there to support the overall plot of the book. All the names except for Archie the cat have been changed to protect the guilty – er, the innocent. Most of the quilting experiences of the three quilters along with the scene at church the Sunday before Christmas are fictionalized versions of real events. ­­In other words, who could make this stuff up?

Q:  Explain the references to blog posts at the end of some of the chapters.

Robyn: I did not take a lot of photos to support this book. After all, I had no idea it was a story worth retelling until the end. However, during the time these events took place I took some pictures and wrote up some blog posts on my personal blog. Because of the publication costs, I did not attempt to include these images directly in the book. Instead, I chose to dedicate the month of September 2015 to posting or reposting six articles or photo collections to support the book on my Quilt Gateway blog (I took the name from the Gateway Quilt Guild to which I belong). You can access them by going to http://quiltgateway.blogspot.com and searching through the history for the month of September 2015.

Q:  Do you plan to write more books about quilters?

Although I quite often touch on quilting in some of my stories, I have no plans at this time to write a book primarily about quilters. Then again, I had no idea I would write The Fourteenth Quilt until I lived the story.

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About Robyn Echols:

Robyn Echols has been writing since she was in junior high school. By choice, she spent most of her evening hours in her "dungeon", as her mother called her downstairs bedroom, writing stories, only joining her family in front of the television upstairs when her favorite programs were playing. She has spent hours learning and teaching family history topics, and focuses on history from a genealogist's perspective of seeking out the details of everyday life in the past.

Now Robyn resides with her husband in California near the “Gateway to Yosemite” and has fun researching and writing the books that she hopes will interest and entertain her readers. She writes Young Adult/New Adult and contemporary fiction under Robyn Echols and adult historical romance under her pen name, Zina Abbott.

The author is a member of Women Writing the West, American Night Writers Association, and Modesto Writers Meet Up. She currently lives with her husband in California near the “Gateway to Yosemite.” She enjoys any kind of history including family history. When she is not piecing together novel plots, she pieces together quilt blocks.

Author Links:

Website  |  Blog  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Pinterest

Goodreads  |  Amazon Author Page

Quilt Gateway blog (See posts for September 2015)

The Fourteenth Quilt Facebook Page

The Fourteenth Quilt Pinterest Board

Purchase Links:

Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble