Inheriting someone’s fabric feels like inheriting someone's photo albums.

Fabric is the keeper of memories. It encapsulates the whole season of life while the fabric was in use as a shirt, skirt, curtain.

My friend, Marcia, recently asked if I would like to look through her fabric stash. After 30 years in a turn-of-the-century home on a colorful acreage, she and her husband are in the process of downsizing to a new location.

She turned on the warm light. We knelt on the hardwood closet floor. She pulled out a box and sighed disapprovingly when she brushed away a small spider web with her fingers. It made me smile. Her house is so clean. It’s always clean. I didn’t even notice the small web. I selected all the floral cottons. She told me all their stories.

Through the boxes of knits, wovens, and miscellaneous, she shared stories about hamsters eating through flannel, daughters learning to sew, grandmothers hand stitching quilts, the making of wedding veils.

I suspected the day would come where I feel caught off guard by my parents’ generation moving into their late chapters. It’s been looming, but now it’s here. And as predicted, I do in fact feel caught off guard.

By the end of looking through the closet of fabric and memories, I was equally determined to use these floral pieces for something special as I was reluctant to cut them at all. My mom told me recently I am becoming more sentimental. I guess she’s right.

I asked Marcia if my camera and I could take a walk around the yard with her while she brought in the last of the year’s produce.

The way Marcia is handling this move is a lesson to me in how to age gracefully.

After walking around the gardens, we sat on her wooden bench while the sun set. I asked how she was feeling about selling the property. She reminisced about what a good place it was to raise her children, and then finished by saying she wants it to be a good place for the next family to raise their children.

It’s hard for me to confront the reality of parents and friends growing older and selling houses. It’s hard for me to use this fabric because it’s a representation of that reality.

But I’ve been thinking it over. It occurred to me that as Marcia is honoring her property by wanting it to enjoy the games of a new batch of children (when I was young, her yard was filled with quicksand and cowboys. The next batch will probably fill it with zombies), a good path to honor this fabric is helping it to continue writing stories.

Maybe the best way to honor the past is to enable its possessions to enjoy the future.

There is room yet in this fabric’s photo album of memories.