I sat in front of the sewing machine a good part of the day, cutting off those jeans and hemming them for shorts for summer. Farm kids are so hard on clothes! I was sort of complaining to myself about the chore. But after giving it a little thought, I decided it was the uniform of a healthy childhood, one not spent in front of the TV or gaming system.

Those jeans were Army uniforms worn while waging fierce battles in the back pasture. They went to the moon and raced cars. Many aliens were slain wearing those pants. They climbed trees and caught fish, went camping, and rode bareback on a favorite horse. They protected knees when sitting on that rough barn roof and collected the mess like mud flaps when standing on the back of the tractor.

Those mangy old farm boy jeans—ripped and stained as they are—carry memories that can't be made anywhere other than outside.

So, I carefully stitched together the remnants of the legs I cut off for shorts from those pants that can no longer be worn and made pillows for the man cave...where they can loaf around and dream up the next adventure to ruin the new pants in the closet.

Fast forward 16 years. I'm not sure how to explain how I feel about this blanket I just finished hand-stitching. It’s been 16 years in the making. Each winter, I sewed a few rows. The boys are now 16 and 19, so I decided it was time to finish it up. It breaks my heart a little. My new blanket warms me in more ways than one.