So, there are all those cliches about how all the colours – even the ones that initially don’t seem to fit, actually do come together someow, often quite beautifully, in the tapestry of our lives. And all the knots and nubbins on the reverse side, unseen to others, and maybe to ourselves . . . they too are part of our lives, markers of the ups and downs, and side-trails of our Journey.

Or maybe we just see the knotted, tangled side of our everydays, reflecting the ups and downs, the seeming contradictions, the disappointments, failures, picadillos – and the great big sins . . .

Whatever.  The colours fade eventually, as does our strength, our health, maybe our mind and its former perspectives.

This tapestry hangs in my sister Muriel’s house in Fonthill. It used to be at Gandma and Grandpa Barbers when I was small. It came from England with some branch of the family a century and more ago, an espousal of middle-class culture and values in a day when oriental themes and such treasures were prized. .

Before Grandpa's home, the tapestry hung for some years at Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary (Willoughby) Potter’s house. My Dad would have seen it when visiting their home in Freeman (now Burlington, Ontario) when he was but a boy.

So many people I can’t ask now about such tapestries, stories, meanings, memories. I wish I could . . .