Heavy Weight

     So early in the year for it to be a 3-blanket night, but that's the way it is around here. I like to feel the weight of blankets piled up on me when I sleep.  I think it stems from my childhood.  Here's the back story:
    My mother's family home was in a rural outpost of  Rensselaer County; it was bereft of most traces of civilization, including paved roads and electricity.  Like cable service of later times, electric utilities were not available in sparsely settled regions, as on what is now called North Pole Road.  My grandmother, uncle and aunt lived on an unserved road, and had to wait until there were enough families to justify the power company's installing power poles where they lived. It was after a long wait and much anticipation that the family  finally became wired, some time in the late 1940's. 
      First purchase was a refrigerator: out with the icebox.  Next, an electric sewing machine, maybe my aunt's long-wished for possession, but perhaps because that was the only other electrified item that came to mind. My uncle was a self-taught electronic genius for his time and had been able to rig up battery operated radio transmissions, and possibly even their first 7-inch screen television.  So what else could there possibly be?
      Anyway, my aunt took up sewing with a vengeance, and for a time specialized in quilts.  My mother, and a few other folks, would save scraps of material, mostly culled from worn-out or outgrown clothing and bring them to her for the patchwork quilts.  In this time, the go-to practice was to make do with what you had, not to buy stuff that could be substituted for.  When the directions called for cotton batting as fill for the quilts, my aunt would not have had that, so she used bedsheets as the filling, folding several of them in order to make the quilt nice and thick.  In time, my aunt made a nice patchwork quilt for the bed my sister and I shared.  I remember tracing the background of a number of the quilted patches, recognizing a dress or skirt we had once worn. 
    There was no heat of any kind in the upstairs of our house, and, moreover, my mother was so worried about house fires that she would put the fire out in the downstairs stove at night. No need to be concerned about freezing pipes as there weren't any---all the water was outside.  My mother would always go upstairs to hear our prayers and tuck us in, and  the last part of our nighttime ritual was when she would spread the blankets out over us.  On the frigid nights in a completely unheated house, a nice thick lovingly-handcrafted quilt seemed like a great idea.  But when my  mother, a powerful woman, tossed the quilt over the lightweight bodies of my sister and me, we initially lost our breaths, and were rendered almost motionless.  That state of being was preferable to freezing, however, so we endured the weight, at least during the coldest weeks of winter, and since it was our mother who laid the quilt over us, we felt warm and secure.  So in tonight's chill, I will spurn the so called comfort and efficiency of my warm but lightweight microfiber quilt, and pile on at least 2 additional blankets or comforters or whatever is available, knowing that at least one of the components can never be replaced.