Speaker 1: Us was to be us the weaver.
Speaker 2: Elena sat at the loom on her porch, the same
Speaker 2: place she had sat every afternoon for the last forty years.
Speaker 2: The wooden frame was worn smooth where her hands rested,
Speaker 2: the headles clicked and clacked as she passed the shuttle through,
Speaker 2: a sound so familiar it had become a kind of breathing.
Speaker 2: Outside the evening birds were settling into the maple tree.
Speaker 2: The wind moved through the garden and carried the scent
Speaker 2: of honeysuckle up to where she worked. She was making
Speaker 2: a blanket for her granddaughter, Lily, who would turn sixteen
Speaker 2: in autumn. Elena had started it in space Bring when
Speaker 2: the first crocuses pushed through the last of the snow.
Speaker 2: She wanted it finished by September, and she was on track.
Speaker 2: The blanket was already three feet long. A wide rectangle
Speaker 2: of soft wools stretched across the loom, growing row by row.
Speaker 2: Each color in the blanket meant something. Elena had chosen
Speaker 2: them carefully, not by what looked nice together, though they
Speaker 2: did look nice, but by what they remembered. The deep
Speaker 2: blue was the year she learned to swim in the
Speaker 2: river behind her grandmother's house. She was seven, and the
Speaker 2: water was cold, and she had screamed with delight. The
Speaker 2: pale green was the year her garden grew tall. The
Speaker 2: summer everything bloomed at once, tomatoes and sunflowers and zinias,
Speaker 2: all reaching for the same patch of sky. The warm
Speaker 2: yellow was the year her daughter was born. The room
Speaker 2: full of light, even though it was November. She did
Speaker 2: not plan the colors in advance. Each morning she woke
Speaker 2: and knew which one came next. It was not something
Speaker 2: she decided. It was something that arrived, the way a
Speaker 2: song arrives when you are not thinking about music. She
Speaker 2: would go to her yarn shelf, and her hand would
Speaker 2: find the right skin, and she would bring it to
Speaker 2: the loom and begin.
Speaker 1: To day.
Speaker 2: The color was a soft rose, the color of the
Speaker 2: dress she wore on her first date with Arthur. They
Speaker 2: had gone to a dance at the town hall, and
Speaker 2: the floor was polished oak, and the band played too fast.
Speaker 2: They laughed about it later, They laughed about it for
Speaker 2: fifty years. Arthur had been gone for three now, but
Speaker 2: the rose color still carried his laugh in it, and
Speaker 2: when she wove with it, she could feel the warmth
Speaker 2: of his hand on the small of her back. The
Speaker 2: shuttle moved through the warp threads and Elena beat the
Speaker 2: weft into place with the reed. Each pass packed the
Speaker 2: threads a little tighter, a little more solid. The blanket
Speaker 2: was taking shape row after row, and she could feel
Speaker 2: the weight of it growing in her hands. That was
Speaker 2: one of the things she loved about weaving. You could
Speaker 2: feel the work building, you could hold it. Her neighbor Grace,
Speaker 2: often stopped by in the afternoons. Grace was younger, only sixty,
Speaker 2: and she liked to sit in the other rocker and
Speaker 2: watch Elena work. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they did not.
Speaker 2: Today Grace brought a basket of peaches from her tree,
Speaker 2: and she set them on the small table between the
Speaker 2: rockers and sat down. That rose is pretty, Grace said.
Speaker 2: It is the dance, Elena said. Grace smiled. She knew
Speaker 2: about the dance. Elena had told the story many times,
Speaker 2: and Grace never tired of it. There was something about
Speaker 2: the way Elena told it, as if the dance were
Speaker 2: still happening somewhere, as if she could step back into
Speaker 2: it at any moment. Do you remember what the band played?
Speaker 2: Grace asked, I do not remember the song, Elena said,
Speaker 2: I remember the floor, I remember his shoe. I remember
Speaker 2: the way the light came through the windows and made
Speaker 2: everything gold. She passed the shuttle through again. The loom clacked.
Speaker 2: A bird sang in the maple tree, a simple three
Speaker 2: note phrase repeated. Elena had been weaving since she was
Speaker 2: a girl. Her mother taught her, and her mother's mother
Speaker 2: taught her mother. The loom itself was old, built by
Speaker 2: her great grandfather from oak he felt himself. The wood
Speaker 2: had darkened with age and use, and there were smooth
Speaker 2: dips in the treadles where generations of feet had pressed.
Speaker 2: Elena sometimes thought about all the blackets that had come
Speaker 2: off this loom, all the hands that had worked it,
Speaker 2: all the stories held in its frame. Elena sometimes thought
Speaker 2: about all the blankets that had come off this loom,
Speaker 2: all the hands that had worked it, all the stories
Speaker 2: held in its frame. She thought about the women in
Speaker 2: her family, how each of them had sat where she sat,
Speaker 2: had watched the same sky change through the same window.
Speaker 2: They had woven blankets for weddings and babies and cold winters.
Speaker 2: They had woven blankets for grief too. The slow, repetitive
Speaker 2: work a comfort when words were not enough. Elena's mother
Speaker 2: had woven a gray blanket in the weeks after Elena's
Speaker 2: Saunta died, and when it was finished, she gave it
Speaker 2: to the church, and Elena never saw it again, but
Speaker 2: she knew it was somewhere keeping someone warm. The sun
Speaker 2: was lower now, and the light on the porch had
Speaker 2: turned amber. Elena could feel the day cooling the first
Speaker 2: hint of evening. She kept weaving. The rose rose were growing,
Speaker 2: and she was almost ready to transition to the next color.
Speaker 2: She could feel it arriving, the shift, the way a
Speaker 2: season changes, not all at once, but in small degrees.
Speaker 2: She chose a deep plum, the color of the plums
Speaker 2: that grew on the tree in the back yard, the
Speaker 2: tree Arthur planted the year they moved into this house.
Speaker 2: The plums were small and sweet, and every August Elena
Speaker 2: made jam from them, and every year she gave most
Speaker 2: of it away. The plum color was rich and warm,
Speaker 2: and it felt right against the rose, the two shades
Speaker 2: speaking to each other across the rose. Grace reached over
Speaker 2: and picked up a peach. She bit into it, and
Speaker 2: the juice ran down her chin, and she laughed. Elena smiled.
Speaker 2: These were the small things, the ordinary things, and they
Speaker 2: were everything. She thought Lily about the girl growing up
Speaker 2: so fast. Lily had visited last month and sat at
Speaker 2: the loom and tried to pass the shuttle through. Her
Speaker 2: hands were clumsy and eager, and the threads bunched and tangled,
Speaker 2: and Elena had gently guided her fingers and said, not
Speaker 2: so fast, Let the loom do the work. Lily had
Speaker 2: laughed the same laugh as Arthur, and Elena had felt
Speaker 2: the rose color stir in her chest. The blanket would
Speaker 2: be warm. It would be heavy, in the way that
Speaker 2: a good blanket should be heavy, a weight that presses
Speaker 2: you into the mattress and holds you there. Elena imagined
Speaker 2: Lily pulling it up to her chin on a cold night,
Speaker 2: the colors wrapping around her, the memories folded into every thread.
Speaker 2: She would not know which color meant what, but she
Speaker 2: would feel them. Pool would carry the stories the way
Speaker 2: the loom carried the hands that worked it silently, without explanation.
Speaker 2: Through touch, the light faded further. Elena finished the plump
Speaker 2: section and began a soft cream, the color of the
Speaker 2: milk from the cow her grandmother kept the color of
Speaker 2: the sheets hung on the line to dry. The color
Speaker 2: of the first snow. The cream was a resting color,
Speaker 2: a place to pause, and she wove it, slowly, letting
Speaker 2: the rhythms settle. Grace stood and stretched. I should go,
Speaker 2: she said. The peaches are for you. Thank you, Elena said,
Speaker 2: come back tomorrow, I will, Grace said, and she picked
Speaker 2: up her basket and walked down the porch steps and
Speaker 2: across the lawn to her own house, where her own
Speaker 2: evening was waiting. Elena was alone now, but she did
Speaker 2: not feel alone. The loom was company, The porch was company.
Speaker 2: The birds settling into the maple tree were company. She
Speaker 2: wove until the light was almost gone, and then she
Speaker 2: tied off the shuttle and stood and stretched her back
Speaker 2: the way she always did, and she draped a cotton
Speaker 2: cloth over the loom to protect the blanket from the
Speaker 2: night air. She went inside and put the kettle on
Speaker 2: while the water heated, She stood at the kitchen window
Speaker 2: and looked out at the garden. The last of the
Speaker 2: daylight was in the sky, a thin line of gold
Speaker 2: along the horizon. The garden was quiet, The honeysuckle was
Speaker 2: blooming by the fence, and she could smell it through
Speaker 2: the open window. She made her tea and sat at
Speaker 2: the kitchen table and thought about tomorrow's colors. She did
Speaker 2: not plan exactly, but she let her mind drift, and
Speaker 2: the colors came to her. A soft gray, perhaps the
Speaker 2: color of the morning fog that settled over the valley
Speaker 2: in autumn, or a warm amber, the color of the
Speaker 2: honey her neighbor brought over in jars. She would know
Speaker 2: when she sat down. She always knew that the tea
Speaker 2: was came a mile and it was warm in her hands,
Speaker 2: and she drank it slowly. Outside. The night came on,
Speaker 2: and the stars appeared one by one, and Elena thought
Speaker 2: about all the blankets in the world, all the hands
Speaker 2: that had made them, all the people who slept beneath them.
Speaker 2: She thought about the threads, how they crossed and held,
Speaker 2: how they made something solid from something that was on
Speaker 2: its own, just a strand a single thread could be broken,
Speaker 2: but woven together, they were strong, They were warm, they held.
Speaker 2: She finished her tea and washed the cup and set
Speaker 2: it in the drainer. She turned off the kitchen light
Speaker 2: and went down the hall to her bedroom. The bed
Speaker 2: was made, the sheets smooth, the pillow plumped. She pulled
Speaker 2: back the covers and climbed in, and the mattress received
Speaker 2: her the way it always did, familiar and kind. She
Speaker 2: closed her eyes and thought about the loom, about the
Speaker 2: shuttle passing through, about the colors building row by row.
Speaker 2: The rhythm was in her hands even now, even in
Speaker 2: the dark, and she let it carry her down into sleep,
Speaker 2: the clack of the headles fading into the quiet of
Speaker 2: the night, the blanket growing even in her dreams.