The persistent chirping of her cell phone irritated Debbie. Her friends knew she carefully guarded the earliest moments of her day, sitting in her garden, sipping her first cup of coffee. Only a scam call she thought as she blocked out the noise. But a second immediate call got her attention.
The caller ID identified her friend Jen and, as she quickly returned Jen’s call, Debbie suspected something was wrong. Quiet, levelheaded Jen would never interrupt Deb’s morning ritual. Jen’s voice wavered when she answered at the first ring. Before she even finished her first few words, Deb responded to the tremulous note in Jen’s voice, knowing her friend was in trouble, serious trouble. She put down the still warm coffee, moved through her kitchen, picking up her car keys enroute. Jen’s home was just blocks away and Deb would be there in minutes.
Debbie and Jen had met years earlier in an afternoon quilting class at the community center. Both had young, middle school daughters whose schedules suddenly abounded with after school meetings, band rehearsals and sports activities. Relieved from their school pick ups, both moms used the extra afternoon time to take on a new hobby, as they enrolled in a beginner quilting class. Neither woman considered herself a particularly talented seamstress, but they bonded over creative class discussions of patterns and color choices.
The two friends took different approaches to quilting as suited their decidedly different personalities. Jen, Debbie noticed, took careful, detailed notes in the class and fixated on measurements, always double checking before every cut. Debbie eschewed math, often eyeballing seam widths and blithely adding new fabric to a border when her guesstimates ran short. She preferred using simple patterns with even squares that allowed her to experiment with placement and color choices. She fanaticized about spending an entire day wandering through a fabric store, surrounded by texture, pattern design and color.
Jen dreamed of completing a large, complicated quilt using various challenging quilting techniques like paper piecing and appliqués. Her ideal day would be spent totally engaged in a creative process within her sewing room.
When the class ended, the two new friends surveyed the group display of completed, small quilts. Debbie noted that her borders seemed wavy as opposed to Jen’s precision, knife edge straight lines. Not surprised, Jen asked her friend if she had squared the quilt. When Deb feigned confusion, Jen smiled, understanding her friend had taken yet another short cut to the finish. Her questioning looks prompted Debbie’s Gees Bend explanation for irregular seams and both women laughed.
When the class ended, the now friends continued to meet regularly for coffee, often sharing pictures of their latest projects. Debbie sewed small crib quilts and quilted pillow tops always choosing batik fabrics and scrappy designs. Jen dove with abandon into queen size sampler quilts with multiple designs elements and techniques.
The women offered each other encouragement as well as realistic assessments. On one project, Deb suggested Jen incorporate red in her color complement to create contrast. Come shop in my stash Deb suggested, knowing her exuberant fabric collection encompassed dozens of reds. Deb always bought much more fabric than her chaotic quilt designs required. She knew Jen was far more disciplined and organized in her fabric purchases, never wasting time or money on spur of the moment decisions.
As their daughters grew through adolescence and careened into their teenage years, Deb and Jen’s coffee meet ups often moved from solving problems with their quilt projects to sharing lessons as solutions to life’s more prickly family issues. Sometimes it was Jen’s ordered approach that provided the necessary salve. Often, Deb’s whirlwind and chaotic experience raising three older boys provided just the perfect patch for a complicated puzzle Jen experienced with her daughter. Over time, the bond between the two women became unbreakable as they developed mutual respect for the strength of one another’s differences and approaches to life.
That morning Deb turned into Jen’s driveway, marveling as always at the carefully curated flower beds across property’s borders. As with her quilting, Jen’s sense of organization and calm permeated her every living space. Unlike Deb’s garden, there was not a weed in sight. No stray seedling would dare grow here Deb thought as she shook her head.
She assumed Jen would be on the rear deck and there Deb found her friend hunched over with her arms tightly wrapped around her. As Deb gently touched her shoulder, Jen lifted her tear-stained face and barely whispered to Deb that her husband Jake had left her.
Jen’s marital problems were well known to Debbie. Like other empty nesters, stresses that had been papered over for years now became blazingly apparent. Words never spoken in the presence of their child found voice. And, while devoted to their now absent daughter, they had increasingly grown apart as Jen retreated to her sewing room for hours on end. Shocked into silence, Deb knew nothing in her stash of life experiences could remedy this.
She wrapped her arms around Jen, encasing her in the silent comfort only a close friend could provide. This, Deb knew, was a life crisis that would need more than strengthened seams and ripped out and re-sewn stitches. The mistakes could not be quilted over to fade from sight. Jen’s crisis was a gaping, ragged hole that ruined the design of her life and no mere patch could correct.
Encouraging her friend, Debbie suggested another way. Jen would need to craft an entirely new pattern, one with bold colors and a fresh start, a creation entirely her own. They would do it together, she assured Jen, solving the puzzles one day at a time with no Gees Bend shortcuts. No matter how inspirational those quilts had been hanging on a wall, today’s reality required a blend of approaches that only these two women could bring. While the collaboration might seem uncomfortable to Jen, the final product would be admirable and life sustaining, no matter how long it took.
Together, she urged Jen, we will create something new, unique, and beautiful.
Dr. Christina Kales lives in Pennington with her husband Bob and dog Ginger. She is a quilter, better than Deb but not as talented as Jen. She teaches art history at the Evergreen Forum, CMAP, Princeton.
