Speaker 1: Used every Thursday evening, just as the last of the
Speaker 1: daylight begins to thin and the sky turns the color
Speaker 1: of peaches, five women gather at Mabel's house on Chestnut Street.
Speaker 1: They arrive one by one, each carrying a small bag
Speaker 1: of fabric scraps, a thimble, and sometimes a pie or
Speaker 1: a jar of something homemade. The front door is always open,
Speaker 1: Mabel never locks it on Thursdays. The quilting room is
Speaker 1: at the back of the house, past the kitchen where
Speaker 1: the kettle is always warm, through a hallway lined with
Speaker 1: photographs of grandchildren and summer vacations, and one very old
Speaker 1: picture of men Mabel's grandmother standing next to a loom.
Speaker 1: The room itself is wide and bright, with tall windows
Speaker 1: that face the garden. There is a long wooden table
Speaker 1: in the center, scarred with pinholes and thread marks, and
Speaker 1: around it are five chairs that have held the same
Speaker 1: five women for thirty years. Mabel is the eldest. She
Speaker 1: is seventy eight now, with silver hair she keeps in
Speaker 1: a loose braid and hands that move with the certainty
Speaker 1: of someone who has sown a thousand seams. She learned
Speaker 1: to quilt from her mother, who learned from her mother,
Speaker 1: and before that, the line stretches back through women whose
Speaker 1: names have been forgotten, but whose stitches were made in
Speaker 1: blankets still folded in attics across the county. Tonight, Mabel
Speaker 1: is working on a quilt made from old flannel shirts.
Speaker 1: She found them at a thrift store, soft and worn
Speaker 1: in shades of blue and gray and faded green. She
Speaker 1: cut them into squares and is stitching them together with
Speaker 1: a simple running stitch. Nothing fancy, just the rhythm of
Speaker 1: needle and thread moving through cloth. Across from her sits Pauline,
Speaker 1: who is sixty three and loud and lass with her
Speaker 1: whole body. She is making a quilt for her granddaughter's wedding,
Speaker 1: all cream and gold, with tiny roses embroidered in the
Speaker 1: corners of each block. Her stitches are impossibly fine, almost invisible,
Speaker 1: the kind of work that makes you lean in close
Speaker 1: and hold your breath. Next to Pauline is Alma, who
Speaker 1: barely speaks, but whose work speaks for her. Alma makes
Speaker 1: quilts that lick like paintings, langscapes, and fabric mountains in
Speaker 1: gray wool, rivers in blue silk skies, and cotton so
Speaker 1: thin it seems to shimmer. She has a gift for
Speaker 1: color that no one can explain. She simply knows which
Speaker 1: pieces belong together, the way a bird knows which direction
Speaker 1: is south. Beside Alma is Dottie, the youngest at fifty one,
Speaker 1: who came to quilting late after her children left home,
Speaker 1: and she found herself with evenings that felt too long
Speaker 1: and too quiet. She is the newest member of the circle,
Speaker 1: though she has been coming for six years now, which
Speaker 1: hardly makes her new. Dottie is learning patience. She is
Speaker 1: learning that some things cannot be rushed, that a seam
Speaker 1: ripper is as important as a needle, and that mistakes
Speaker 1: can become features if you let them. And then there
Speaker 1: is Vera, who is seventy and quiet and brings her
Speaker 1: own tea in a thermis because she does not like
Speaker 1: camomal which is what Mabel always makes. Vera quilts in
Speaker 1: straight lines and geometric patterns, precise and orderly, the way
Speaker 1: her mind works. She was an accountant before she retired,
Speaker 1: and her quilts have the clean beauty of a well
Speaker 1: balanced ledger. For the first hour they work in relative quiet,
Speaker 1: The only sounds are the soft pull of thread through fabric,
Speaker 1: the snip of scissors, the occasional sigh as someone leans
Speaker 1: back to stretch. The radio plays softly in the corner,
Speaker 1: old songs that none of them quite remember the names of,
Speaker 1: but all of them recognize. Outside, the garden darkens, the
Speaker 1: first fire flies appear. Then Pauline sets down her needle
Speaker 1: and says, did I tell you about the cardinal? And
Speaker 1: the evening begins. Pauline has seen a cardinal in her
Speaker 1: magnolia tree every morning this week. She is certain it
Speaker 1: is the same one, a bright red male with a
Speaker 1: black mask, and she has named him Gerald. This leads
Speaker 1: to a story from Alma about a blue jay that
Speaker 1: used to steal clothes pins from her mother's line, And
Speaker 1: then Dotty remembers a crow that her son once taught
Speaker 1: to say hello, and Mabel tells a story about a
Speaker 1: mockingbird that sang outside her window the entire summer her
Speaker 1: husband was ill, and how she came to think of
Speaker 1: it as a kind of guardian. They talk about gardens.
Speaker 1: Pauline's tomatoes are coming in too fast, she cannot give
Speaker 1: them away fast enough. Mabel suggests a recipe for green
Speaker 1: tomato chutney that her grandmother used to make, and she
Speaker 1: promises to write it down, though they all know she
Speaker 1: will forget and Pauline will have to ask again next week.
Speaker 1: They talk about grandchildren. Alma's youngest has started kindergarten and
Speaker 1: cried every morning for two weeks, then stopped crying all
Speaker 1: at once, as if a switch had been flipped. Vera's
Speaker 1: grandson is building a robot for a sign Yan's Fair,
Speaker 1: a contraption of cardboard and wires that does nothing but
Speaker 1: sit on the table and look, in Vera's words, quite impressive.
Speaker 1: They talk about things that are harder. Pauline's sister is
Speaker 1: in the hospital. It is nothing serious, they think, but
Speaker 1: the waiting is heavy. Dotty's mother has begun to forget things,
Speaker 1: small things for now, like where she put her glasses
Speaker 1: or what day it is, and Dotty is trying not
Speaker 1: to think about what comes next. Mabel listens. She does
Speaker 1: not offer advice. She simply says that is hard, and
Speaker 1: the words land like a hand on a shoulder. The
Speaker 1: evening moves forward, The kettle is refilled, someone cuts a
Speaker 1: slice of pie. The radio plays on at some point
Speaker 1: without anyone suggesting it. They begin to work faster, their
Speaker 1: needles moving in a kind of shared rhythm. The room
Speaker 1: fills with the quiet music of making, and the quilts
Speaker 1: grow beneath their hands, row by row, square by square.
Speaker 1: There is something ancient about this, something that has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with fashion or trends or the world outside
Speaker 1: these windows. It is simply women making something warm out
Speaker 1: of small pieces of cloth, and in doing so, making
Speaker 1: something warm out of an ordinary Thursday evening. By nine o'clock,
Speaker 1: the light outside is gone completely, The fireflies have faded,
Speaker 1: the garden is a dark shape beyond the glass. One
Speaker 1: by one, the women begin to fold their work and
Speaker 1: pack their bags. There are hugs at the door, and
Speaker 1: promises to bring fabric for next week, and someone reminds
Speaker 1: someone else about the chutney recipe, and someone laughs about
Speaker 1: Gerald the Cardinal, And then they step out into the
Speaker 1: cool night air and walk to their cars. Mabel stands
Speaker 1: at the door and watches them go. She turns off
Speaker 1: the light in the quilting room. She sets the kettle
Speaker 1: to boil for one last cup. The table is bare
Speaker 1: now except for a few stray threads and a single
Speaker 1: pin that catches the kitchen light. She sweeps them into
Speaker 1: her palm and drops them into a jar on the counter,
Speaker 1: a jar that is nearly full of Thursday night threats heads,
Speaker 1: each one a tiny record of an evening spent in
Speaker 1: good company. She carries her tea to the front porch
Speaker 1: and sits in her rocking chair. The night is still
Speaker 1: and soft. Somewhere down the street a dog barks once
Speaker 1: and falls silent. The air smells of cut grass and
Speaker 1: the faintest trace of Pauline's pie. Mabel thinks about the
Speaker 1: quilt she is making, the squares of flannel from shirts
Speaker 1: that once belong to strangers. She thinks about how strange
Speaker 1: it is that cloth can hold warmth even after the
Speaker 1: person who wore it is gone. She thinks about the
Speaker 1: other women driving home through the dark, carrying their own
Speaker 1: quilts and their own small griefs and their own quiet joys.
Speaker 1: She rocks gently back and forth, the way a needle
Speaker 1: moves through cloth, and she feels the kind of settled, bone,
Speaker 1: deep peace that comes from a life lived in stitches
Speaker 1: and stories, in the company of women who understand that
Speaker 1: some things do not need to be said out loud
Speaker 1: to be known. The night settles around her like a quilt,
Speaker 1: warm and familiar, and Mabel closes her eyes and lets
Speaker 1: it hold her