A Map Stitched in Time: Tracing the Threads of the Past

Lauren Nixon-Matney • January 5, 2026
A Map Stitched in Time: Tracing the Threads of the Past


The imagination of a child can take you to endless worlds on the other side of the stars where magic allows time travel to break the space time continuum at any moment…


The First Time Travel Jump—Split Infinity


When I open my eyes, I am somewhere else.


The Shannons’ living room, warm and familiar, the glow of an old TV screen flickering against the walls. I can hear the hum of the VHS player, the quiet rustling of someone shifting on the couch. The smell of popcorn lingers, and for a moment, I forget whether this is real or something I’ve stepped back into.


The movie is already playing. A girl just a little older than me falls through time, slipping between past and present like it’s as simple as turning a page. My fingers curl around the edge of the blanket draped over my legs.


Can time travel be that easy?


Could I do it too?


The hum of the VHS player shifts into something new. The world around me bends again, pulling me from the comfort of the Shannons’. The world around me seems to twist, just like it did in the movie, as if the boundaries between past and present were never meant to stay fixed. With a blink, I’m no longer in the Shannons’ living room, but standing in another time a place where VHS tapes line the shelves like windows into different worlds.


The Next Jump—Finding The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan


Time bends again. A flicker of static, a shift in gravity, and suddenly…


I land in an old video store, the kind with narrow aisles and rows of plastic cases stacked too tight, their corners worn from years of hands flipping them over, reading the backs, deciding what story to take home.


My mom gasps. ‘Oh my God, I loved this movie.’


She holds up a dusty VHS tape, the cover slightly faded, the title in soft, elegant letters: The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan.


I’ve never heard of it. It looks old.


‘It’s about a woman who finds an old dress and it’s hard to explain. She goes back in time.’


She flips it over, reading the blurb like she’s seeing it for the first time in years.


I glance at the price sticker.


A quarter.


Twenty-five cents for a portal through time. Twenty-five cents for a forgotten world.


We buy it. Take it home. Put it in the player. And when it starts, I feel that same pull in my chest the same feeling I had watching Split Infinity, except this time, it’s different.


This time, it’s not just about traveling through time.


It’s about longing for something already gone.



Watching The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan


As I slide the tape into the player, the present starts to blur into something else, something deeper. The room fades as I’m pulled back into another world one where time isn’t linear but dances between what was and what could have been.


The lights are off. The glow of the TV flickers against the walls, soft and golden. I sit curled up on the bean bag, a blanket wrapped around my legs, Mom and Nanny sitting close.


The movie plays soft music, sweeping dresses, an old Victorian house full of ghosts from another time. A woman finds a forgotten dress in an attic, slips it over her head, and suddenly, she isn’t here anymore. She’s somewhere else. Some other place in time.


I glance at my mom. She’s watching, eyes fixed on the screen, lost in something deeper than just the movie.


Her expression shifts, something flickering across her face not just nostalgia, but something quieter, deeper. I wonder what she’s remembering, if she’s thinking about a past that feels just out of reach.


I glance at Nanny. She smiles softly, like she’s already seen the ending but still loves the story anyway.


And then I look back at the screen. The main character is stepping forward, reaching out, pressing her fingers against something invisible an unseen thread between past and present.


Something in my chest tightens.


I wonder if I found the right dress, the right house, the right moment… could I do it too?


As the credits roll and the house around me settles back into its familiar shape, something stirs within me. The time-traveling dreams from the movie pull at the edges of my mind, and before I know it, I’m not just lost in the story anymore. I’m reaching for something real something that could take me to the past, just like the characters I’ve watched.


The Trunk as a Time Machine


I barely make it through the credits before I’m up, heart racing, heading straight for our family trunk.


I climb on top of it, arms stretched out, just like before. Just like always.


Only this time, it’s different.


This time, I know how it’s supposed to feel. The moment right before the leap. The shift, the pull, the breath caught in my chest.


I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the air to hum, the ground to shake. My own dress is just an old nightgown, but in my mind, it’s something else. Something older, something from another world.


“Take me back.”


And I swear, just for a second I feel it.


The weightless drop in my stomach. The moment before the fall. The past stretching out in front of me like a thread I could follow if I just reached far enough.


I press my hands against the lid of the trunk, just like Jennie Logan reaching through time.


And that’s when I remember what’s inside.


The trunk feels heavy, filled with memories and moments that stretch across the years. As I sift through the artifacts within, I feel the weight of time in my hands. And then, the quilt worn and stitched with care—emerges from the depths, its history alive in every thread. A family quilt that has a piece of the first Texas flag sewn by Sarah Bradley Dodson ( my great great great great great Aunt) made in the early stages of the Texas Revolution leading up to The Battle of the Alamo.




The Quilt & The Lizard


It’s heavy, worn soft with time, stitched together by hands I never knew but somehow recognize. I pull it out, unfolding the layers, running my fingers over the seams, tracing the history sewn into every piece.


My favorite part of the quilt wasn’t the history stitched into it, or even the small piece of the first Texas flag... it was the lizard. A tiny, hand stitched lizard, embroidered by my great-grandmother Dora. It sat almost hidden, like a secret waiting to be found.


My Granny used to tell me stories about watching her mother quilt, how Dora would sit with family or friends, the soft rhythm of needle and thread moving through fabric, voices low and steady, hands working together like a quiet kind of music.


I used to trace the stitches of that tiny lizard with my fingers, as if I could feel a piece of her there her hands, her patience, the way she moved thread through fabric the same way my dad wove stories about her into my childhood.


Another Stitch in Time – The Texas History Quilt


Quilts tell stories. Every stitch, every patch, a moment in time, held together by the hands that came before. 


In middle school, I took Texas History with Miss Madura, a teacher whose husband had supposedly coached Shaquille O’Neal in high school (something we all thought was the coolest fact ever). But the thing I remember most about her class wasn’t basketball it was the quilt. She had our entire class sew a Texas History quilt, with each of us designing a square dedicated to something meaningful from our state’s past.


My square was Sarah Bradley Dodson, sewing the first Texas flag. I remember pressing my pencil into the fabric, painting each stroke carefully, imagining her hands moving just like mine stitching something that would outlive her, something that would be remembered. I already knew what it meant to stitch history together.


I thought about Sarah sewing the first Texas flag her red stripe above the white, a symbol of unity and independence. I thought of Dora and all the hands that had shaped my story before me. I wanted my own piece to reflect that sense of purpose, of heritage, that same sense of possibility, where time bends, and the past reaches forward to meet the present, creating a connection that spans generations.”



When we finished, Mrs. Madura pieced it all together, stitching our stories into one shared tapestry. Years later, at graduation, she brought it back, unfolding it one last time before passing it on to someone else. I don’t know where it ended up, but I like to think it’s still out there somewhere stitched into time, a part of history.


The quilts I’ve seen, the pieces I’ve stitched, all remind me of the time I spent learning our history. But as the years passed, those same threads began to unravel, and the familiar comfort of family heirlooms started slipping away things I once thought would always be within reach.


The Loss Creeps In—The Memories Remain



A letter I used to hold... gone. A name, written in old ink, stolen, sold to someone who didn’t know its weight.


The trunk meant to hold the stories of generations, the heart of our family history lost? I can’t touch it, can’t pass it to my children.


I don’t even know who holds the key to our history.


The origin of our family’s Texas story. My Time Machine! 


And occasionally that makes my stomach twist in a way I can’t quite explain. Because I was supposed to be able to pass my hands over those stitches for the rest of my life, for my children to run their tiny hands over the threads of their history. 


And though this is a loss that truly aches sometimes, life is about so much more than the possession of physical items. Some of these artifacts may be lost from us, but the history behind them remains. 


I take a step back. The room is still. The air holds steady.


But I can feel it like an echo, like a shadow, like something just out of reach.


Some things disappear. Some things slip through time, through hands, through memory.


But not everything. Some become memories that remain.


Maybe history isn’t something behind us at all. Maybe it’s a trail of light, stretching forward, waiting for us to follow it back.


I close my eyes for just a second, and it’s still there. History doesn’t vanish. It lives on in all of us, stitched into the fabric of who we are passed down through generations, carried forward in the stories we tell and the memories we preserve.



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