Elm Creek Quilts [12] The Winding Ways Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini Page A

mother’s scathing criticism through the years.
    Even Sylvia had not escaped Carol’s withering judgment, although Sylvia did not know it. In the early years of Elm Creek Quilt Camp, Carol had offered dire, unsolicited predictions about the likelihood that the fledgling business would fail, and she had warned Sarah about the imprudence of trusting her future to the whims of an elderly eccentric. To Sarah’s relief, Carol had changed her mind entirely after coming to Elm Creek Manor and meeting Sylvia and the others, her worries no match for the Elm Creek Quilters’ generous welcome and unconditional acceptance.
    If only that force of good had been in place on her eighth birthday, when her grandparents made the long drive to Pennsylvania to spend the weekend. Sarah much preferred to visit them in their small, cozy home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, especially in winter, at Christmastime. While her parents stayed indoors, Sarah and her grandparents would ice-skate on the pond, sled down a long, steep hill precariously dotted with pines, and build snowmen until they could bear the cold no longer. Inside, while Grandpa stoked the fireplace, Sarah would bundle up on the sofa under two or three of Grandma’s old quilts, munch cookies, sip hot chocolate, and watch through the window as snow blanketed the yard and the surrounding trees. But in May, Sarah had school and her parents had to work, so Grandma and Grandpa had come to them.
    On the morning of Sarah’s birthday, Grandma couldn’t wait for the afternoon birthday party for her to open her gift, so while Sarah’s mother was busy in the kitchen frosting the cake, Grandma presented Sarah with a large, ribbon-tied box. When Sarah lifted the lid and saw a beautiful pink-and-white Sawtooth Star quilt nestled in tissue paper, she was almost afraid to touch it. “Is this for me?”
    Grandma laughed. “Of course, darling. Do you see any other birthday girls here?”
    Speechless with delight, Sarah flung her arms around her grandma, still holding fast to the beautiful quilt. It was warm and soft, just like its maker, and it smelled faintly of Grandma’s talcum powder.
    “You didn’t need to do that,” Sarah’s mother said from the doorway, spatula in hand, the white rubber end covered in pink frosting. “I just bought her a new bedspread two months ago.”
    “A granddaughter deserves a handmade quilt,” said Grandma. “It was a joy to make.”
    “She’ll just spill something on it and ruin it.”
    “No, I won’t,” Sarah piped up. “I promise.”
    “Don’t you like the bedspread we picked out together?”
    Her mother’s warning tone signaled that she was thinking back to their shopping trip, how her mother had patiently taken her from store to store in the shopping mall until Sarah decided on a pretty pastel-striped bedspread. Then her mother had agreed to backtrack to the far end of the shopping mall, where they remembered seeing pretty flower-shaped pillows that matched the bedspread perfectly. Afterward, they had enjoyed lunch at a fancy restaurant instead of grabbing fast food in the food court. It had been a rare, good day, just the two of them, with no disagreements or bickering to spoil everything.
    Yet over her grandma’s murmured protests, her mother urged Sarah to say which she preferred, her grandmother’s quilt or the bedspread they had chosen together. Sarah hemmed and hawed, reluctant to hurt either of their feelings, unwilling to lie. When her mother would not relent, Sarah finally confessed that she liked the Sawtooth Star quilt best.
    Sarah’s heart sank as her mother snatched up the quilt and returned it to the box. In a voice as taut as a wire, her mother promised Grandma that Sarah would take very good care of the quilt, and then she carried it from the room.
    Sarah fervently willed another outcome, one in which her mother admired the quilt and prompted Sarah to thank her grandma for the lovely gift. It was her birthday, a day for