Ten
There is a change in Molly’s phone calls with Travis. Pacing back and forth, the tiny silver phone glued to her ear, she talks to him at every rest stop, it seems. The shift in tone and emphasis is subtle but palpable. She is both more animated and more intense.
I don’t say anything, of course. What is there to say? They’re eighteen, and in love.
Give it time, I remind myself. The drifting-apart is not going to happen overnight. I picture the two of them like the huge layers of ice we get on the lake back home. All winter long, the frozen surface is strong and impermeable; the skating goes on for weeks. Yet in spring, the ice cracks apart, and once that happens, the pieces never fit together properly again. Even if the temperature drops sufficiently at night to refreeze the ice, it’s not the same; it’s rough and chunky, prone to breaking. The skaters all go home for the season.
Separation is rough on any relationship. On a pair who have barely dipped a toe into adulthood, it’s usually a death knell. They just don’t have the emotional hardware to sustain a love that depends on physical closeness. And I won’t kid myself. Those two were close. They were physical.
I can’t imagine Travis Spellman going dateless for movie nights or football games, not for long. Likewise, I don’t want Molly to be like a war widow at college, holding back from the social scene because of her hometown boyfriend.
That lack of availability, physical and emotional, is undoubtedly what will cause them to go their separate ways, as they must. Molly has a future ahead of her filled with brand-new people, challenging studies, a city she’s never seen before. Settling into college will take all her time and energy. Nurturing a long-distance relationship is simply not feasible.
Except, of course, that she believes it is. And here’s the thing about my daughter. If she believes in something with her whole heart, no one can tell her otherwise.
At a rest stop where we park to stretch our legs and use the facilities, she is pacing back and forth on the sere, dun-colored grass that has gone dormant from drought. The phone is still glued to her ear and her flip-flops kick up dust in her wake.
I wander along the walkway of the rest stop. It’s a pleasant spot, insulated from the noise of the interstate by a stand of thick trees, evergreens and sugar maples that are just getting ready to take on their fall colors.
The local historical society in this area has a craft booth set up at the rest stop, and I buy a bottle of amber maple syrup from a woman in a homespun apron and—I kid you not—a poke bonnet. The clear glass bottle is in the shape of a maple leaf, and when I hold it up to the sun, it sparkles like a jewel.
According to the information flyer that came with the syrup, the maple trees will put on a dazzling display of fall color. These country roads will soon be crowded with RVs and busloads of leaf-lookers, coming to enjoy the scenery so beautiful that it attracts tourists from the world over to view them each year. After the riot of color, the trees lose all their leaves and appear to die.
Yet it is then, in the dead of winter, that the maples are most productive. If you tap deep enough into the tree, sinking a metal tube into its most hidden heart, you’ll discover a gush of life.
The sap is drained through the tube, collected in covered buckets and boiled in huge vats to make maple syrup.
Who the heck thought of that? I wonder. At some moment in the unremembered past, someone walked up to a leafless maple tree, hammered a tube into its center, harvested the sap and rendered it into sweet syrup. What a random thing to do.
One thing I’d guess—whoever thought it up wasn’t a college graduate. She—I’m quite certain it was a she—was probably a mother. An ancient Algonquin desperate housewife. At the end of a long winter, her kids were probably bored and cranky from being cooped up in the longhouse, chasing each other and driving her crazy with their noise. They had no idea supplies had run low, that the men hadn’t done too well on the latest hunt. Pretty soon, the kids’ war whoops and giggles would turn to whining. Yelling at the older kids to keep the younger ones away from the fire, the woman strapped on snowshoes made of hide, with gut laces, and trudged out into the deadening cold to look for food.
How did she know about the secret inside the maple tree? Maybe the deer clued her in. During the starving season, the hungry animals stripped the bark from the trees as high as they could reach. Maybe the woman, her vision sharpened by desperation, noticed the glistening ooze from the flesh of the trees. Maybe she touched a finger to the sticky dampness, tasted a faint sweetness on her tongue. And the rest was history. An industry was born. The hunting party came home with their limp, skinny rabbit to find the women and children feasting on boiled cornmeal, magically sweetened with an elixir from the sugar maples.
I reach the end of the walkway and wander back. The woman in the poke bonnet is standing behind her booth, furtively smoking a cigarette.
Still on the phone, Molly notices me watching her and wanders over to an information board covered with maps and tourist brochures. She tucks one hand into the back pocket of her shorts and keeps talking.
Her face is bright with love.
Seeing her like this conjures up mixed emotions. On the one hand, I am proud and gratified that my daughter has a great heart, that she can give it away with joy and sincerity. Yet on the other, I wish she understood the difference between the passionate heat of first love and the deep security of a lasting commitment.
But there is no difference, not in Molly’s mind, and no amount of discussion—lecturing, she would call it—on my part will change her mind about that. Love is love, she’d tell me, and who am I to say she’s wrong? I can’t claim to be an expert. There is a part of me—and it’s not even a small part—that keeps wondering what my marriage will be like when I get home and it’s just Dan and me.
Agitated, I take a seat at an empty picnic table, which faces a lovely marsh fringed by cattails, the reeds clacking in the light breeze. The distant hiss of truck brakes joins the singing of frogs from the marsh.
I pull out the quilt, thinking I’ll add a stitch or two. The feel of the age-softened fabrics is oddly soothing. Yet at the same time, I am nagged by the sense that I wish I’d never started this thing. What a crazy notion, to think I could actually put the final touches in place in time for the journey’s end.
“That’s a beautiful piece,” someone says, and I look up to see a woman about my age, walking a scruffy little dog on a retractable leash. The dog ranges out to the end of the leash and then comes reeling back toward her, like a yo-yo on a string. The woman is checking out the quilt with a practiced eye.
“Thanks,” I say, recognizing the expertise with which she studies the project. It’s gratifying to realize quilters are everywhere. It’s such a universal art, beloved by so many women. “I’m making this for my daughter’s dorm room.”
She nods appreciatively. “What a great idea. Wow, are you hand quilting?”
“More portable that way. More variety.” This morning I stitched the word Remember across a piece made from my mom’s square-dancing dress.
“I’ve always thought crazy quilting was much more challenging than a regular pattern,” the stranger remarks.
“You might be right. At first, I thought it would make the work to go faster. Instead, I keep trying to force things together and changing my mind.”
“I like going slowly when I quilt,” she comments. “It keeps me in the moment, you know?”
I do know. And here’s what happens when quilting women meet. When one quilter encounters another, there’s always something to talk about. We go from being strangers to friends in about three seconds. I’ve seen this happen again and again, back home at the shop. It’s like the fabric itself is common ground, the pattern a secret handshake. Quilting women already know so much about each other. We get to skip over the petty details.
Within moments, I am giving her a guided tour of Molly’s quilt—the snippet of fabric from the tooth fairy pillow, upon which she placed her first lost tooth. The blue ribbon she won at the seventh-grade science fair, for her pond water display. A Girl Scout badge she earned delivering Christmas cookies to a nursing home. One square is decorated with pink loops of ribbon in honor of the time she raised a thousand dollars in a Race for the Cure.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m being fair with the milestones and memories I’m stitching into this quilt. It’s easy to block out a square to celebrate her little victories and happy times. But what about a square to commemorate her detention notes for skipping school, or the time she pierced her own navel and it got infected, or the night the local police brought her home, reeking of peach-flavored wine cooler? Why not remember those times? They’re part of her history, too.
“You’re making a family heirloom,” the woman remarks.
Ha, I think, vindicated. That’s why I don’t need those reminders in the quilt. “It’s not going to be finished in time.”
The woman smiles, leans back against the picnic table. “In time for what?”
“Move-in day at the dorm.”
“I have a rule. If it’s not falling apart, it’s finished.” She is about my age, I surmise, yet she seems wiser, and I’m not sure why. Her posture is relaxed, and she appears to be in no hurry.
I tell her about the shop back home, how I’ll miss it when it’s gone, how it won’t be the same, buying my fabric somewhere else.
“Maybe someone will take over,” the woman suggests.
“I sure hope so. I’m not optimistic, though. Most of the women I know who’d be capable already have other jobs, or they’re retired, or too busy with their families. It’s a huge risk and a huge commitment.”
“I hear you,” the woman says. The dog has finished its business in the reeds, and she calls out to a little girl who is playing on the swing set. “Amanda, we’d better get going.”
The dark-haired child runs over on chubby legs. “Five more minutes,” she begs in a voice every woman within earshot recognizes.
“One more,” my companion says, and we both know it will stretch out to five.
“Your daughter’s adorable,” I tell her.
“Thanks, but she’s not my daughter.” The woman glances over at Molly, her fleeting look filled with insight. “Amanda’s my granddaughter.”
Oh, man. She’s a grandmother. I don’t want to be a grandmother. I’m not finished being a mother.
Yet when she finally reels in her dog and calls to the dark-haired little girl, and Amanda runs into her arms, there is a magical joy in their bond. It’s sweeter, somehow, than motherhood, probably because it’s simpler.
“Drive safely,” I tell them.
“You do the same,” she says, “and good luck with the quilt.”