“Requiring caretaking and at the same time providing solace, “textiles are often mobilized in the face of trauma, and not just to provide needed garments or coverings but also as a therapeutic means of comfort, a safe outlet for worried hands, a productive channel for the obsessive working through of loss,” explains one art historian.17 Fabric is a special category of thing to people—tender, damageable, weak at its edges, and yet life-sustaining. In these distinctive features, cloth begins to sound like this singular planet we call home. Cloth operates as a “convincing analogue for the regenerative and degenerative processes of life, and as a great connector, binding humans not only to each other but to the ancestors of their past and the progeny of their future,” fiber artist Ann Hamilton has written. “Held by cloth’s hand,” she continues, “we are swaddled at birth, covered in sleep, and shrouded in death. A single thread spins a myth of origin and a tale of adventure and interweaves people and webs of communication.”
― Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

One of the great moving experiences of my time here has been reading, and finishing, today, the National Book Award winning “All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, by Tiya Miles. The quote above is from the final chapter. Oh, Charlie. The rock diver. What pleasures he has found on this trip, only dog. We have been happy together on these daily walks. What another night of dreams I had. So much anxiety after missing my four final exams in college (!!!) and how would I make them up? Especially since I was pregnant! Sheesh. I was happy to wake up and Charlie and I met quite a few hikers this morning at a later hour. Friendly hikers of the Brickyard. Frank and I enjoyed our last day of extreme quiet. Guest arrives tomorrow and stays through the rest of our time here. I worked on my newest poem. More revision. So much tighter. Tonight Frank played tennis and I walked in Oak Bluffs, past Inkwell Beach where Henry Louis Gates Jr. was sitting in a chair on the sidewalk interviewing someone on the chair beside him and being filmed by cameramen. He looked and gave me a friendly nod as I passed! Frank and I met for a casual dinner when he was done at our favorite Oak Bluffs pasta restaurant. Sweet times talking over the day on the ride home, the dark road, the young deer crossing our path.