While cleaning out my attic many years ago, I found a dusty old box marked “special.” It looked like my handwriting, but a much younger redaction. I opened the carton with genuine excitement, having literally forgotten the contents it held.

It was a patchwork quilt, a birthday gift from my grandmother on my twenty-first birthday. There was a card in the box, with an image of a beautiful yellow rose.  I opened the card and the sadness I felt took my breath away.  I couldn’t bear to read her words and closed my tear filled eyes, and tried to remember her, as she was that day.

The memory was so loud, I could actually hear the excitement in her voice as she chattered on in her thick French accent, while I ripped apart the meticulously wrapped package. I could almost smell the sweet aroma of the fresh baked cookies she was making for me that day.

My beloved grandmother, my surrogate mother, was a seamstress. And although we had very little money, I always wore gorgeous and elegant clothes.  We would pour through the pages of the latest fashion magazines and together picked out the most beautiful designs. “This is made for you,” she would proudly exclaim, tearing page after page out of the magazines.  She needed no pattern—every measurement of my body had been devotedly memorized in inches and yards.

She had a job boxing bullets on an assembly line all day—but at night, while others were sleeping, there she was, hunched over her sewing machine, working feverishly to complete something special for me—a dress, coat, suit. Her way of saying “I love you.”

The memories, in flashing snapshots kept coming—one after the other. The sound of her sewing machine, and the gentle humming of her favorite tune. The puppy we picked out when I was five. The clownish self-portrait I painted for her, that she hung so proudly over her bed. The multi-colored sweater coat, I still wear to this day. Her mother’s treasured cameo pin, worn near and dear to my heart. Her fear as she lay dying in my arms.

And now, better late than never, the flashback of the day she proudly presented me with my birthday gift. I struggled to recall my younger self, opening the beautiful card with the single yellow rose and reading the message inside. “A patchwork quilt for your 21 years,” it said.

The quilt was truly magnificent. Handcrafted, full of vibrant colors, large enough for a king size bed.  And yes, I recollected thinking that while I thought it was beautiful, I was slightly disappointed in her choice of gifts. At twenty-one, I was moving around a lot and didn’t even have a bed large enough for this patchwork of remnant material.

Remnant material?

A sharp pain spread across the center of my chest. I frantically pulled the quilt from the musty, old box, laid it on the floor, and caressed the hundreds of squares of material lovingly.  Why, this was no patchwork quilt of remnant material.  This was a pastiche of every dress, suit and article of clothing my grandmother had so laboriously made for me during my first twenty-one years.

A patchwork quilt of me.

The red dotted swiss I wore at a surprise party for my ninth birthday, the hunter green velvet I wore for my sweet sixteen, the lavender satin from my prom dress, the yellow silk jacquard worn on my first job interview.

Overwhelmed, I wrapped myself with her labor of love and cocooned myself in the yards of memories, shivering from the realization of what I had just discovered.

How could I have missed her sentimental intention? How shallow had I been, to think this patchwork of my life was merely remnants of old material?

I cried then for the lost opportunity to embrace her tightly and to express my reverential sense of gratitude to her for preserving my life in this way.

As my tears stained my grandmother’s masterpiece, I spoke out loud, apologizing to my selfless and lonely grandmother for all the time lost, asking her forgiveness for not understanding or appreciating the powerfulness of my heirloom.

Swaddled in my precious gift, still clinging to my birthday card, I was consumed by the heart-wrenching memories that are but a patchwork quilt now.

In 1995, I received the Rosh Hashanah card above, from my then seven-year-old daughter Ariel.

It was the first card she ever gave to me. And she sent it via the post office, stamp and all. I was impressed.

The Rosh Hashanah card arrived on September 25, which coincided with my late grandmother’s birthday. So it had even more significance for me.

When I opened it, there were two hearts—one purple and one red. Connecting the two hearts was a red and purple blob.

“The little purple heart is me,” Ariel said proudly. “And the big red heart is my brother.” (Her brother and my first born, was eleven years old at the time.)

“And the yin yang in the middle is you, Mommy.”

I was the yin yang?

To fully comprehend the significance of being the yin yang, I looked it up in the dictionary.

Two principles, one negative and feminine (yin), and one positive and masculine (yang), whose interaction influences the destinies of creatures and things.

At that moment, I felt terribly important. Almost overwhelmingly so.

In an instant, I forgot about all the tsuris which was eating away at me. I put aside how tired I was, and how defeated I felt.

And the constant drudgery of work, work, work, suddenly became more palatable.

And even my divorce, several years earlier, shattering my dreams and my children’s innocence, seemed almost acceptable at that moment in time.

“I can do this,” I recall saying to my weary self.

Because I was the Yin Yang in my daughter’s life.

The red and purple he/she that conjoined two very special hearts.

In early 1967, my mother sat me down to inform me that once she remarried in August, we were moving from Bridgeport to Westport Connecticut.  I wasn’t pleased. In June, I was graduating from St. Ambrose Catholic Grammar School in Bridgeport and was planning on attending Notre Dame Girls Catholic High School in the fall.

But my mother’s marriage and relocation plans put the kibosh on my high school aspirations.

I begged her to let me live with my grandmother and attend Notre Dame Girls, but she was convinced that Westport was going to be the best thing that ever happened to me. She sang its praises and was convinced that our lives were going to be forever changed, and in the most incredible ways.  The streets were safe, the residents were famous, and we were soon to live amongst the classy and well bred.

So what? I was popular. I had tons of friends. And I was looking forward to attending Notre Dame Girls with my buds. Who cared about classy?

But plead as I might, the decision was made. We were moving to Westport in August of 1967.

And that’s when fashion became center stage in my life—like it or not.

As someone who wore a school uniform for eight years, fashion was of little importance to me.  Plus, being at the bottom rung of the money ladder, we had bigger fish to fry so to speak.

But my mother was obsessed with finding the right dress for me to wear to her wedding, as well as future fashion plans for how we would present ourselves to the Westport world.

First came the marriage outfit—an orange paisley accordion pleated dress with matchy shoes and purse. I felt like a fruit salad. I was a Bridgeport girl. Paisley wasn’t big in the Bridgeport hood, and neither was orange. But I tried to suck it up and felt extremely self-conscious all wedding day.

The reception took place at Longshore Country Club. This was my first foray into the tony town of Westport. As we drove through the massive trees flanking both sides of the picture perfect rustic road leading to the reception, it painfully dawned on me that I was probably not going to fit in here.

Moving day was scary, and lonely.  Westport was a mere 12.2 miles from Bridgeport on I-95, yet worlds apart. We pulled up to the long driveway on a tranquil, dead end street, to a magnificent house. I couldn’t believe we were actually going to live there.

Having spent my first 14 years sharing a room with my mother, I was ecstatically enjoying my lavender and lace boudoir. And I actually had a piano in my room. I was pinching myself to make sure it was all real.

But it soon became tortuously clear that my rags-to-riches life change was going to be a swirling whirlwind of anxiety, rejection and pain.

Immediately following the wedding, we went to Country Gal in Westport for some bathing suits, cover-ups, bathing caps and sunglasses. My mom was frantically preparing me for my pool debut at Longshore.  There weren’t a lot of swimming opportunities during my Bridgeport years. And I had a near drowning experience as a youngster, so swimming, and any associated attire was not my forte.  So it should have come as no surprise to me, that my pool induction would be an utter and total failure.

What was my mother thinking when she convinced me that I looked tres chic in my bubblegum pink daisy embellished bathing cap and matching one piece daisy patterned suit? And let’s not forget the pair of daisy-shaped sunglasses I wore, to pull the whole ridiculous look together. I was maybe 90 pounds, and a lanky, awkward, pink spectacle.  I observed with intense interest Muffy, Buffy and Stuffy prancing around the pool flirting with Chip, Skip, and Topper.  I jealously witnessed this incredibly gorgeous blonde Adonis they called Oakes, throw Bitsy in the pool. I left the pool that day feeling profoundly ugly, convinced that I would never be part of the in crowd. I hung out at that pompous pool every sunny day for weeks, and those kids never gave me so much as a glance, let alone a chance. (FYI, I’ve changed everyone’s names to protect the not-so-innocent.)

My back-to-school shopping trip took place in early September at Country Gal, along with every other young girl in town. Main Street was packed with beautiful people, dressed to the nines, browsing, shopping, and chatting with friends who they saw coming in and out of the stores. Everyone knew everyone.

The young girls my age, many of whom I recognized from the Longshore pool, were wearing rainbow colored fabric pumps with chunky heels, that I later found out were “Pappagallo’s.” Their statement shoes matched their flashy floral shift dresses, which my mother whispered to me were Lily Pulitzer’s. The first question that came into my mind as I warily viewed my brightly adorned peers was “Pink goes with green?”

The Westport girls had perfectly flipped hair; many wore eye framing side bangs. Their moms sported beehives and up do hair in elaborate coiled arrangements. They were all picture perfect, and I was beyond intimidated. On the contrary, my frizz ball hair was parted down the middle and pulled straight back into a messy nub.

The clothes my mother chose for me were way out of my league, ridiculously pricey, and nothing I would ever consider wearing. I never saw so many shades of pink, purple, yellow and green all mixed into one extremely busy and ugly tent dress. Thrown into the mix were a few madras, polka dot, paisley, and striped ensembles, accessorized with Emilio Pucci scarves and textured tights.  To complete the wardrobe, my mother splurged on Mary Jane flats, square toed patent leather slip-ons, and kitten heels. As I hid in the Country Gal dressing room to avoid  the it girls, I was praying that my Bedford Jr. High School debut was going to be more successful than my Longshore pool coming out.

My first day of school was a blur—except that I will never forget the giggling girls whispering about my black and white polka dot dress, red tights and red Mary Jane’s. One girl called me the Mod Martian. Unfortunately, the name stuck. So did Theresa the Greaser and Olive Oyl. Suffice it to say, I had a heck of a time making friends. I was finally able to muster up a few misfits, and together we struggled our way through ninth grade.

But that didn’t stop my mother from trying as hard as she could to trend me up. I added go-go boots, jackets with frog buttons and mini dresses designed by Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin to my repertoire. But try as I might, I just couldn’t break through. All those well-bred, rich little girls wouldn’t give me the time of day.

My mother was desperate for me to assimilate, and ultimately signed me up for a program called “Junior Years.” It was a charm school-like ten week course run out of the Westport Women’s Auxiliary Club; or some such name.

It was at Junior Year’s that I realized so much about my young self. I was a quick study: Less was more, I conquered my frizzy hair (thanks to the Girl from Uncurl), and kept all clothing super simple.

The program was sponsored by Cover Girl, and I became an expert at hair management while downplaying my ethnic look, with just the right amount of makeup. I was determined to start Staples High School as a new and improved Teri. I had declared war on myself, and I was going to divide and conquer. To this day, I still call makeup my war paint.

I traded in my floral shifts and Mary Jane’s for cheap Landlubber jeans bought at a local Main Street store called Functional Clothing, and stopped trying to be someone I wasn’t. I also stopped slouching for fear someone would think me too tall, and wore those tight fitting Landlubbers proudly, not giving a damn how skinny I was.

On my first day at Staples High School, not one person from Bedford Jr. High even knew it was me. I had managed to reinvent myself, and it turned my life around.