The quilt inherited quietly may hold more family labor than the formal portraits show.

Families keep two kinds of record. The formal one is arranged and posed, and the other is made of objects that were worked on in the evenings by people who were not thinking about being remembered. A quilt holds hours, hands, thrift, and several people’s separate patience, none of which appears in any frame on the wall. The unposed record is often the more truthful one.

If something like that has come to you, find out who made it while there is still anyone to ask. Write the answer down and keep it with the object, since the story is the part that goes missing first.