Calendar Series: 27th Month / Sleepless Night with Bridge to Morning (1988)

My mother's mother's female ancestors have been traced as far back as 1790 in Drumhecknagh, Kilmore Parish, County Cavan, Ireland. 

In 1836, my great-great grandmother, Jane Bennett, then 9 years old, was working on an embroidered sampler. In 1837, her family left Ireland and settled in Quebec, near New Hampshire. The unfinished sampler was passed down from mother to daughter, from New Hampshire to Boston to St. Paul, Minnesota until it came to me in Washington. 

Because I have no children and no possibility of female nieces in this generation, I have passed it on to a cousin who is my mother's great niece and who lives in California, in hopes that it will continue to be passed down the female line. While working on the Calendar Series, I looked at the 19th century embroidered sampler and felt a distinct kinship with that 9-year-old girl from County Cavan, Ireland. I am fairly sure that I added the alphabet to this painting with the sampler in mind, although when I got to the end of the alphabet, I began to make it into a palindrome and then followed no order. When I tried to upload the image of the sampler, I got error messages. Several further attempts were also unsuccessful, but I will try later today. Am unable to upload the complete image but can upload this detail: