Here is my lovely momento.

I write a poem called “In my parents’ house”.

In 1995 my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, makes teapots with the poem on the pot. She gives me one for Christmas.

She dies of cancer in 2000. My sister chooses my poem to read at her memorial.

A friend then reads the poem at my sister’s memorial in 2012 (also cancer), because I missed the California memorial. I was sick at home with pneumonia #2.

After she dies, I am sent a box of a few things from her house. Yarn and a second teapot. My sister had one.

I give the teapot to my niece, my sister’s daughter, telling her her grandmother made it.

My mother signed things with an H inside an O.

Here is the poem:

In my parents’ house
love is dispensed in teacups

When they notice you
Pacing in some empty mood
Or with that blank deserted face
Eyes shutters into an empty mind
They say, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

The warmth of the cup in your hands
And the hot liquid, sweet and milky
On your tongue works wonders
And binds your soul to your body

When my sister is twelve
She embroiders a patch for a quilt
In yellow flosses, a cup
with steam curling upwards
And the words, “Such a comfort. TEA.”

____________________

I think my maternal family still has the quilt, with jeans patches. My grandmother Katy B handed out squares to everyone at the cabins in Ontario and we all made squares. She and my cousin sewed them together and tied the quilt.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: momento.