Memories are made in the finest places. They skit across the notes of an old song. They nestle in the textures of fabric and intricate artwork—the click of knitting needles, the dyes of embroidery thread, the mystical montage of quilts. My mother was a quilter and also loved to embroider, especially on pillowcases. She also did a lot of crochet. Almost every member of my family has something my mother has made: a quilt, hot pads or a pair of pillowcases.

Memories are here now. They were here in the past. Memories have been carefully saved and lovingly preserved. Their value lies not only in the wood, in the thread and in the building blocks. They live especially in writings. I have letters written to me by my mother who wrote a letter to each of her children every month after they all left home to establish homes of their own. Those letters are precious now. They preserve her handwriting and her concern for us. Mother also was a scrapbook keeper. Wedding and birth announcements adorn many of those pages. She loved and revered each President who served during her lifetime. She kept newspaper articles about them. These articles are in her scrapbooks.

Memories of our children and grandchildren abound. I could write a whole column about these. I opened a drawer in my daughter’s old bedroom recently and there were some of her baby clothes. The little blue dress was embroidered flowers, size about nine months. A few years ago I gave my son souvenirs of his high school prom. They had been on a shelf in a storeroom for many years.

Memories are flattened out and developed onto photographic paper. They are the faces that we’ve known and the faces we will never see again, only in the features of children and grandchildren. I have a large framed photograph of my grandfather, whose father was killed in the Civil War. I look at it and try to see a resemblance to