This was a super special day. And a weird day. And a deeply disturbing day, in the aftermath of the ICE shooting.
Eleanor, who just turned five, asked last summer if we could sew on the sewing machine. So I pulled out a box of fabric and told her to find two pieces she wanted to sew together. And then another. And then another. I would cut clips in the fabric at the right length and Ellie would rip the rectangle. “It could be a blanket for my doll,” she said.
“We’ll keep working on it,” I replied, and it could be a blanket for you.” Over the summer and fall, she would often ask to go upstairs and sew, and the quilt top grew. Finally we went to a fabric store (the wonderful Lakes Makerie) and she picked out a bird print to get the quilt larger and finish it off.
After Christmas, when all the leaves made our dining table enormous, I tied the quit to batting and a backing with a rainbow of embroidery floss, and I added a fabric photo of Ellie and me on the back. Today was delivery day.
Ellie made the delivery even more special when she instructed me to put the part with our photo at the head of the bed. “I want to look at you and me at night.”
The weird part has to do with Ellie’s fabric drawing sewn into the quilt, which she made with special fabric markers months ago. When I asked her today what was in her drawing she explained to me, “And that’s me the sun melting donald trump because he is the icy bully and I already melted him and now he’s just a little puddle.”
The disturbing part of the day was basically all day, with continuing coverage about the ICE shooting. A day of position shifting on the part of Republicans.
I listened to the Tangle podcast with Isaac Saul. I listen to it faithfully because he presents issues with coverage from the right, from the left, and then his own take, which is always thoughtful and insightful, but does not toe a party line. I recommend it. His essay today reminded me why we have been feeling that a tragic incident was inevitable.
This is America. Distrusting government force is in our national DNA. Heavily armed, masked federal agents with unclear levels of police authority and training cannot reasonably expect to just traipse through our neighborhoods as if they were war zones, kicking down doors or descending from helicopters and snatching people off the streets en masse, and then think everyone will placidly accept it. That (thankfully) is not a circumstance of life we are built to accept. From: Isaac Saul, “The ICE Shooting in Minneapolis.” The Tangle, January 8, 2026.
And let’s talk a bit about fabric here, as well — specifically camo. Why should we welcome masked officials dressed for blending into the jungle onto our city streets? To me, the camo reference is all about force, stealth, and certainly guns. Do any camo-wearing military-related people NOT have guns?
So profound. X