Jeana’s Journal

Over the years I have made “fits and starts” at keeping a record of my life. I received my first journal in 1981 as a Christmas present and I was not a very good record keeper. Someday my children may enjoy the few pages I wrote because many of the stories there are about them and their childhood.

Later, when I started to travel and teach, the journal I kept was more about keeping track of myself and obligations: what I needed to do and names, dates and information that I wanted to remember, with occasional notes and/or personal reflections. I filled several books like that.

I was also buying lots of fabric as I traveled and I sometimes needed more, or was curious as to how much and where I had purchased a particular fabric. So in 1991 I began keeping a fabric purchasing journal with swatches of the fabrics I bought. (This could be a good fabric dating tool in years to come.) I kept these journals going for about ten years and I filled many notebooks.

Then in 1998 I kept a Gratitude Journal for about six months. For me, this may be the best and most valuable record I have ever kept. I faithfully made one entry each day from April 20 through October 25.

I made my own rules about keeping this Gratitude record: 1) I only listed one thing I was grateful for that day, 2) I could not repeat myself; and 3) I had to explain why I was grateful for that one thing.

It was an eye opening experience. Because I had to stop every single day and reflect on the day’s events I found that time slowed down for me because each day was noted and reflected upon. I learned things about myself and how I think. I learned to appreciate my life and the small details in it instead of always looking forward to a better day. That journal truly changed my life and my thinking.

These days my journal is a combination of quilting ideas I want to remember, reflections on interesting events, and mundane things like what I planted in the two pots on the front porch so I can remember next Spring and decide which plants I will repeat and which ones I will leave out.

I am also keeping a more public journal, this Jeana’s Journal, and I keep a record of it by printing out each entry and storing the entry pages in plastic sleeves in a small yearly binder.

At this point you may be thinking what is the purpose of all of this record keeping of a life. My motive is simple.

Women who are important to me because they are who I came from—-my mother, my grandmothers, and earlier ancestors, excepting one or two, did not keep any kind of a written record of their lives. Yet it was them who gave me these hands and this mind that governs my daily existence. With my hands and my mind I am able to create quilts and quilt designs that are among my greatest pleasures in life.

They are the ones whose works, beliefs and attitudes come together into the person I am. I want to know them, their thoughts, and their struggles. Knowing that could bring me much pleasure, recognition and understanding.

Their names have been recorded and kept. Going back thirteen generations, descending from mother to daughter only, I know that my far off grandmother, Mary Greenaway, was born in England in 1568 and died in Suffolk, Massachusetts in the 1600’s. She was among the first immigrants to this American continent.

I want to know what motivated her and her family make that dangerous and unknown journey. What did they hope to find? What, in fact, did they find? Was it good, or was the challenge greater than they had imagined?

I also have many, many questions for the generations that followed her. However, these are things I cannot know because time has erased most, if not all, of what they did.

The one, and only, thing I can do about that is to begin with this (my) life and keep a record for those who follow me. I am trying to make it a pleasurable occupation for myself by recording thoughts, memorable experiences, and sometimes simple daily routines that can shed light on the life that I lived.