Re yesterday’s post: the woman knew she didn’t know how much she was asking so she was trying to find out if it was a reasonable ask. I suggested tie quilts because everybody could be involved in making however many and it would be more of a community outreach.

And because I was remembering the one we were surprised with and how much came from that.

Years ago there was just one girl in our ward finishing high school that year and the women decided to make her a quilt as a graduation gift; one is an easy number.

My daughter took her beautiful new pieced quilt to college and found herself with a roommate from a town in the Midwest that was going through a severe downturn.

Richard and I had lived in that state for a year during grad school: the next town over had had seven factories. Five had closed and two had cut half their workforces. I remember the Vietnam veteran dad who’d made a good wage pushing a union broom who’d never learned to read and suddenly had no way to get that income back. The ward there helped him set up a pick-your-own strawberry farm on his acreage so he could have an income while not having to pay anybody to harvest. I taught his ten-year-old, and I’ve long hoped things turned out okay for the four of them.

Sam’s roommate had a single thin blanket from Walmart and her family had zero funds for more. But she was there at college, with her whole future open to her.

My folks were visiting when Sam came home at Christmas. She and my mom went off to the local quilt shop and the two of them working together in great anticipation made a quilt for her roommate: to match hers, she told her, trying to avoid any whiff of my family has money that yours doesn’t. She told her, I’m paying it forward on what my ward did for me.