Moiya's Cedar Chest

... 40 years old and still unquilted ...

From Moiya Wood 

This vintage quilt has been in my cedar chest ever since I got “my very own” cedar chest.

I think mom and dad got that, probably for themselves but that was the time when Dad went out and bought new bikes for Richard and Glen, my two younger brothers. My parents didn’t get a two wheeler for me. I never ever even had a tricycle.

I got a cedar chest.

Of course I would ride my friend's tricycles and bikes.

My mom and dad could probably see that I was pretty disappointed with no bike.

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So, my belief is that they told me the cedar chest at the end of their bed was for me. They had purchased it around the same time I think. Mom kept things of hers in that cedar chest.

Of course, I would rather have had a bike.

At that time of my life I was pretty darn agile and athletic.

I remember Dad having everyone who came to our house have them stop to see how well Moiya could do.

This is a true fact … I could have continued twirling that hula hoop for the entire day without dropping it.

I could also twirl a baton and throw it high into the air while spinning around before catching it.

I would practice doing those activities for hours on end.

I didn’t know what in the world I would ever use a cedar chest for. My mom explained how I could keep treasured things in that chest. They would be preserved there for me. In other words, she said, “The moths wouldn’t get into that chest”.

Moiya's cedar chest

She had me smell the CEDAR. It did smell good! Mom said it was my “Hope Chest”.

That is one of the conversations where I understood that I was to save things for my marriage. 

I kept my huck-weaved pillow and my first sewing project made in High School Fabrics and Dress class in that “Cedar Chest”.

I sewed an apron with my monogram “MP” stitched into the hot pad that was snapped onto the waistband). That apron rests on my shelf by the kitchen now.

Then, as a young adult, when all my other friends were getting married and I was not … I came to resent that cedar chest.

I had lots of friends – girl friends. I was a bridesmaid probably more times than anyone else in this world has ever been.

In fact, the guests at all of those weddings would come through the line shaking my hand with big smiles on their faces and say, “Always a bridesmaid – never a bride”.

I still have that Cedar Chest.

It is in my bedroom, the same place where my mom and dad kept it in their bedroom. This star quilt in this post, is one of the things still in that Cedar Chest. I just don’t know where it came from.

Was is from a grandmother, a great-grandmother, or from my mother?

I guess I’ll never know.

Moiya