A Poem about Pescha, Leah and Sarah

For those who have read the book, I thought you might enjoy  a photograph of Pescha and Leah taken on their front stoop in the early 1930's.
Here, too is a poem (which didn't make it into the book ) which predates the prose and directed it:

Patterns

A box arrived one day with things you made
An embroidered tablecloth, some dresser scarves, a bedspread.
The bedspread was part of your trousseau
Crocheted in filet with strange birds in the design.
Later on, I learned there were such birds in the forests
In Europe where you lived as a girl.
Packed within the needlework were photographs
Of that girl. A girl who looked just like me
A girl, who, like myself sewed her own clothes.
Making her own designs was her artistic expression.

I remember seeing you only once in the nursing home
Mother thought you would frighten me, being old and ill
But when you held me, I felt a certain kinship and kindness.
I was scarcely two years old when you died.
Years passed, I grew up. Your son, my father, died
Your daughter grew old and sent those things to me.
I set the photographs on a table and when my children came in
They asked, "When did you dress up in those old clothes
To take those pictures?"

There are some patterns that transcend time
My needlework and yours are one.
Although I never knew you, we had parallel lives.
It's in the genes, they say, the way
I like to lay out the colored threads and plan a pattern
The way the stitches are even on the backside of the cloth
The way we rip it out and redo it until it is perfect
Because only we know there is one wrong stitch.
The way we bury the knots and break the threads
The way our girlhood dreams were buried and broken
By the realities of life.
The way we learned to accept
Even to delight in
Things that aren't perfect.