It's Midnight and I'm Halfway Home

 

In life, time moves on so quickly we forget how we got to be who we are today.

I found an Irene Roderick book on improv quilting and worked through it making units out of fabric scraps. With units done I started puzzling them into a whole. The resulting picture reminded me of a route I ran as a kid.

My immigrant family was big—six kids, two parents and two grandparents. We had no car and public transportation stopped at nine pm in our town.

I was curious and loved to learn and experience new things. My mom, the primary caregiver, had no time to get me to those experiences. I started Girl Scouts as a Brownie and attended meetings after school. At eleven I wanted to be a Cadet but meetings were in the evening at a church just under a mile from our home starting in October when dark came early. My mom said I could go but would have to get there myself.

Being an eleven year old girl and having to walk in the dark to and from an evening meeting was a challenge. My desire to experience MORE, overrode my fear.

I don’t remember thinking much about safety before hitting the road the first evening. Once on the road worries sprung up all around me—especially on the way home when traffic almost stopped. Did that car slow down ahead? Was anyone hiding in the recesses of the train bridge I’d have to cross under? Was anyone sitting in the park next to the church watching for me to come out and head home? Was someone behind the bell tower?

Coming home I started running. I’d run in the street because I worried about people hiding in the bushes to grab me. I ran under the train bridge where pigeons roosted and cooed. I worried their cooing would distract me from what was hidden in the shadows.  Sometimes they all flapped excitedly and I worried someone was behind me.

Worry and hyper-vigilance bookended my evening at Girl Scouts but once in the room I was totally present. Soaking in all the new ideas, challenges and community. This happened again when I turned sixteen and started working at a Walgreens drugstore in the center of town. I worked until closing at nine. By the time I cashed out, it was after nine and busses had stopped and I was running the same path home that I did for the Girl Scout meetings.

Why didn’t I ask someone for a ride home? Most people didn’t live my way, but more than that I think I was taught or learned not to ask for help. My parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe who fled their homes during WWII, spent time in displaced persons camps, couldn’t appear weak or in need. I somehow learned I had to do hard things on my own.

Where does courage come from? Desire, hope, longing, need, altruism...so many places. Courage is a muscle that clearly grows strong when flexed again and again. I flexed my courage muscle starting as a kid going to Girl Scouts, then as a young adult in college dissecting cadavers for my physical therapy program, then as a working physical therapist when I was called to do range of motion on a man burned over 98% of his body, or range of motion on a train worker cut almost in half by two freight cars, or chest PT on a brain dead woman whose family wanted her organs donated, or to walk the first AIDS patient who came to our rural hospital when we knew so little about the disease. In my career I chose to work with people who were never going to get better and only wanted to get home. It was a specialty few chose to follow. I would never have agreed to most of this had I not first primed then built a strong courage muscle.

What is on the other side of courage? You won’t know until you get there. Maybe it’s a confidence boost, maybe it’s the peace you feel from helping someone or yourself, maybe it’s an experience that changes your life and the lives of others.

So how did I get to be who I am today? By being born to survivors whose lessons right or wrong made me stand up for myself and find a way to reach for what I wanted. A furious independence that grew from courage to try.

What does this piece mean? Running home felt like I was running in the middle of the night—midnight-- but today as I make this quilt, I’m more than past the midnight of my life. In exploring myself and my story through fabric art I get closer to my home, my heart, my center.

PS Looking back at my life I feel like I’ve been watched over or guided. In working on this piece I wondered what constellation might have been in the skies guiding me? I found Columba, The Dove. One of Columba’s attributes is to “bring spiritual courage to venture into the unknown.” It is known for its “hopeful nature with a capacity for solitary missions of exploration”. Finally, “Columba teaches that gentleness can be a form of bravery and that venturing out alone…requires as much courage as any warrior’s quest.” I sewed Columba into my sky.

"It's Midnight and I'm Halfway Home" made by Anna Viadero, Montague, MA 01351 in 2026