I’m sitting next to a window that’s wide open, though it probably should only be cracked. It’s the first spring-like day of the year, and the earth has ditched it’s thick, snowy blanket for brown grass flecked with green. There’s a bright sun in a blue and white sky, and the air is alive with birdsong, so the temperature seems warmer than it would if this was later in the year.
Still, there’s a cool edge at the back of the breeze blowing in, and so I smooth my quilt over my lap, tucking it around my bare toes. I trace each piece with my finger, finding the somewhat imperfect seams that join each bold, scrappy piece to the ones next to it, and I smile, remembering the spring day three years ago that I sat cross-legged on the floor, piling up this sunset of colored fabric all around me.
Some of the patterns, taken on their own, aren’t necessarily ones that would have caught my eye. That golden one with the brown flecks, for example, or the cream-colored one with hearts. But once I’d laid them all out, measuring and cutting them into precise shapes, and sewn them together piece by piece, I could appreciate them for what they were. I could see the see the beauty they brought to the whole.
Because even though I didn’t immediately gravitate to a particular piece of fabric, it was those pieces that became blocks, and the blocks built the quilt front. And then came the batting and the backing, and the slow process of joining those three layers by hand, tiny stitch by tiny stitch. They added the warmth and structure to the whole quilt: the one I now sat curled beneath in the spring breeze.
Three years in the making. Longer, if you count the dreaming that led up to it.
You see, I had the dearest teacher when it came to learning to quilt. We met as eighteen-year-olds, brand new adults turned out into the world alone for the first time, and in one another we found a friend of the heart, though we didn’t recognize it right away. I don’t think you could find a set of girlfriends more different: she’s an early bird, and I’m a night owl. She’s an introvert, and I’m an extrovert. She’s calm and down-to-earth, while I’ve got my head lost in the clouds, and no one would ever use the word “calm” to describe me.
And yet, somehow, whenever one of us reaches out, the other has a hand there already, waiting. This friendship of ours has stood the test of both time and distance, and has seen us through births and deaths, marriages and moving, and most recently, the pandemic. It has offered a listening ear more times than we could count, and poured out grace upon grace over each failing.
When we lived half a continent apart, relying on phone calls to keep the bond strong, we daydreamed together of the day we could sit in the same room again, mugs of tea at hand, and make these works of art together. It was three years ago that this chance finally came. We found a pattern and set to work, my friend as the teacher and me as the student. She finished hers long before me, of course. But once I’d caught up, and we spread them out side by side on the floor, I had to laugh. Though we’d used the same pattern, our finished pieces were as wildly different as we were. And it occurred to me, then, what a perfect metaphor this was for our dear, dear friendship.
But you can take it further than just that. As I sit here in the sunshine, quilt over my knees, this quilt reminds me of all those people who have touched my life in some way. You see, I’m a firm believer that God places people in our lives very precisely. When we meet each person; the circumstances surrounding those events; the characteristics that shape the relationship… they’re as different as the scraps of material in my quilt. Some friendships might not seem as impactful, or last as long, or go as deep. Some may ebb and flow with the changing days, or be bonds made more of circumstance than common ground. But for one reason or another, but they still have something to add, and without them, there would be a glaring empty space in the pattern.
And I am grateful for each and every one of them.
For each and every one of you.
