My Tee Shirt Memory Quilt Security Blanket

both sides of my two-sided quilt

I found a huge bin of old tee shirts as I was cleaning out the attic. I never considered myself a tee shirt wearer particularly and do not know how I had managed to collect so many tee shirts over the years. I had a random collection of more than 60 tees with the names of some of the places we had traveled, rock concerts, film festivals, cultural events and garden shows we had gone to, causes I had supported and events I had attended. It was like unearthing a treasure trove of memories. I didn’t want to ship them to South Africa to sit in a closet there unworn in a bin and figured no one would want to buy my memories in a garage sale. I couldn’t see the point of storing them anymore yet I couldn’t throw them away. So I decided to make a tee shirt quilt. 

comfort watching my estate sale in progress from Teri's porch

As I cut out the squares, I began to realize the quilt represented an entire chapter of my life in New Jersey beginning in  1978 when I moved back to NJ from Florida until my move to South Africa, or what I was now calling Chapter Three. Chapter One started when I was born in NJ until my family moved to Florida when I was in H.S. Chapter Two were the Florida years, part of high school and undergraduate school at the University of Florida. After college in Florida, I moved back to NJ and started Chapter Three, work, graduate school, met my husband, fell in love and married, more work, more graduate school, and together we raised two beautiful sons. Now we were about to embark on Chapter Four in South Africa, just the two of us, and the quilt would be a perfect home comfort to bring with me. A security blanket. A memory quilt.

The oldest tee shirt in the quilt was one I picked up coincidentally in Africa in 1979. I bought it because British Airways lost my luggage after bumping me off the second leg of my journey, a flight from London to Nairobi. I went to Kenya and Tanzania on a month-long photo safari in August of 1979. I flew British Airways from JFK to Nairobi with an all-day layover in London. I was meeting my group in Nairobi, most of which were coming from the San Francisco Bay area on another flight. The safari was sponsored by UC Berkeley and I was invited to go by my tent mate and friend Triona who was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. 

I decided to spend the 12 hour layover touring around London rather than hanging out at Heathrow so I took a train to Piccadilly station. That day I saw Maggie Smith in Night and Day in the West End, went to Portobello Road, and had some tea.

When I got back to Heathrow three hours before my flight to Nairobi was to take off I, and 69 other very unhappy fellow travelers, discovered  that the airline had overbooked the flight by 70 passengers and we were unceremoniously bumped off the flight! Next possible flight? Same time tomorrow! There were no cell phones, no email, really no way I could think of to get in touch with Triona and the Berkeley crowd who had not yet arrived in Nairobi.

The airlines at the time were still very generous in these situations. They put all 70 of us up at a nice hotel, gave us about $100 each for dinner and emergency supplies since they could not take our luggage off the flight.  And we were promised priority seating on the same flight in 24 hours. I made friends with a very nice guy named Martin who happened to live in South Africa and was on his way home. We grabbed something to eat in London and went to the Odeon to see Ian Dury and the Blockheads. The next day was Sunday so we went to the Natural History and the British Museums to check out the African exhibits. That night we got on our flight to Nairobi which continued on to Johannesburg where Martin lived and where he invited me to visit for a few days at the end of my safari. 

When I arrived at the Nairobi airport, there was no Triona, no safari driver to pick me up, nobody! And to top it off, my bags had failed to make the trip from London the night before. I changed some money and took a local bus to the Norfolk Hotel where I knew the group was staying while in Nairobi. There was no one from my group there either. They had all gone for a lecture at the Nairobi Museum. I took a bath and put my dirty clothes back on for a third wearing. When Triona and the Berkeley group got back I told them all about my "adventure" thus far. They donated socks, a spare backpack and supplemental clothes and I was able to collect another $400 from British Airways the next day to buy more clothes and supplies. 

For the next month, we spent most of the time camping and photographing wildlife in game parks in Kenya and Tanzania interspersed with a few stays at some very nice lodges. At every lodge I would look for a phone and call British Airways to see if they found my bags. They did eventually find them and delivered them to Nairobi during the final days of the trip. Too little and way too late. And I found that my suitcase had been opened, ransacked and pillaged along the way. I ended up leaving it in my room at the Norfolk Hotel. The tee shirt in the quilt was from the Kilaguni Safari Lodge in Tsavo National Park. I probably never would have bought it had my bags not been missing for almost a month and I needed a clean shirt.

The newest tee shirt in the quilt was a bright kelly green tee I bought at the Seaside Heights St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March of 2013. Part of the cost of the tee shirt benefited the charity “Restore The Shore” which provides Hurricane Sandy relief to the Jersey Shore victims. Sandy struck in October 2012 at the end of Chapter Three while we were packing up and preparing for our big move. I like to think of this tee shirt as a kind of metaphor, both for the renaissance that was happening in New Jersey after Sandy and my personal rebirth as I entered my Chapter Four in South Africa.