20. The Story of a Quilt

I taught school, once upon a time. I taught math to middle schoolers in a Catholic grade school, at least that was the last thing I did before I retired to have these kids. The year before I took the job, I'd had a student in my first grade class with Asperger's Syndrome. Very mild in comparison to some, but definitely in that spectrum. He needed everything to be the same. He needed to know what was coming next. And so I learned to be very, very boring. In a good way.

Math went like this, on a two week repeating cycle with no deviation: regular class Monday through Thursday. On the first Friday, we took a test, no matter where we were in the book or with lessons (7th and 8th followed the book, but 5th and 6th skipped around to build our own curriculum to suit). The second Friday, we worked on a project, which was year-long and themed according to year. Fifth grade did consumer math. Sixth grade was the math of sports (statistics, mostly, but some geometry and physics). Eighth grade was the stock market and economics. Seventh grade was 2-dimensional geometry and quilting.

The first quilt block the seventh graders made had to involve a mathematical concept--like the Pythagorean theorem or A=lw or something. Many were very very simple but they still got the idea across. The second quilt block they made was for a quilt to put together and raffle off at the school picnic.

The first year was, well, fine. The second year, they made enough blocks of a pretty 4-point star that we made two quilt tops to raffle off. I got the first one done in time and I remember being jealous when Olivia won it. But at that point I was hugely pregnant and tired and folded the second one up and put it away.

The school closed and life went on. The quilt top lived in my cedar chest with other unfinished projects. I liked it. I thought about that class a lot, who had been my first homeroom at the school, whose names were not lost to me even if I never saw them anymore--but I did, or at least parts of them. A few still came to church. A few had parents who came to church. I liked them. A lot.

This year, I found the quilt top in my cedar chest and felt bad that it had never been brought to the light. I thought about those students and how maybe I was betraying them by finishing it for someone else--but there's no school picnic and anyway, I did complete the first one and successfully raffled it off (earned over $500 on that raffle, too, not bad). I decided I'd done enough penance. And so had this quilt top. So I finished it. I backed it with a pretty celestial print and quilted it with little 5 point stars all over it. Gave it to Jake's sister. It's a twin sized quilt, not just a throw, although I don't know what she's using it for. In that deep blue with multi-colored stars, it could pass for Christmas if it needed to. I'm sure the class of 2002 would forgive me. It has a good home.