Circle of Friends

Today I sat in a room full of women; they were my Quilt Guild friends. I was excited because it was my birthday so I went around the room making a point to speak to each woman, to tell of my birthday and do a bit of chit chatting, I marveled at the diversity of these women as I looked in to their faces and wondered what their story was. I knew many of the women but not all.
It was a festive meeting with a guest speaker who spoke on Woman’s suffrage and the fight to get the right to vote, she told of the long painful struggle that took seventy-eight years and the grit and determination of the suffragists was phenomenal.
As I looked around the room, I realized just how much I admired the women in my guild I can see their determination and tenacity in their faces. Their creative spirit is alive and well they formed a sisterhood that has reached out to around the world, the sisterhood that started hundreds of years ago continue to this day.
I am a quilter and antique quilt collector. Each time I find an unknown maker’s quilt I wonder what was the makers story, was she living in poverty; did she make the quilt to raise money to subsidize her family’s income or did she make it for someone special; did a harsh husband dominated her, did she have to work from sun up to sun down. Did she have children, how many did she bury, how old was she when she died? I question how someone could part with a family heir loam without honoring the maker.
The women in my guild have each made wonderful quilts they are works of art, but their quilts do not tell their stories. You cannot see the cancer survivors, or the widow three times around or the mother of an injured vet or the one who lost her son in an auto accident, the ex-marine cook. No, you do not know which of the women’s husband has cancer or the one with heart disease or the woman who was homeless and lived in her car for a year; you cannot tell who lost her daughter to breast cancer, and the who struggles with an alcoholic husband. You cannot tell which one has acute osteoporosis or the one raising her two grandchildren because of an addicted daughter. The face of the caregiver of an Alzheimer’s parent smiles and her hands dance as she talks; they all come to the quilter’s circle leaving their burdens behind and they come to share their gifts and knowledge and they help each other create quilts of beauty. They make quilts that say I love you, quilts that hug your soul. Today was a wonderful day because I was in the company of great women, ordinary, wonderful women who happen to quilt I belong to a sisterhood of quilters...with a few good men.