An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler by Jennifer Chiaverini

Author:Jennifer Chiaverini
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781439106686
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2003-10-21T07:00:00+00:00

Ten

Usually the end of spring semester brought Gwen a sense of deep satisfaction. Another school year completed; another batch of hungry young minds fed, although it might have been more accurate to say another batch of resistant young minds pummeled into submission. But not this year. Within a week, the day she had long dreaded and hoped for would arrive: Her daughter would be graduating, and after one last brief summer in Waterford, she would head off to graduate school at Penn. Judging by her own experience, Gwen knew that Summer wouldn’t be coming home much after that. She would soon think of Waterford as her mother’s home and Philadelphia as her own. Gwen would be lucky to see her more than a few times a year. How awful that would be, after seeing her virtually every day since she was born! Summer had had her own apartment in downtown Waterford ever since she began college, but she still came home several times a week to do her laundry, quilt, or borrow something. But there would be no more long heart-to-heart talks over cups of tea when a quick errand turned into a leisurely visit. Now the house would be an empty nest, a hollow shell, a lonely outpost on the frontier of motherhood.

“Now you’re getting melodramatic,” Gwen muttered as she tied her running shoes and began to stretch. She went jogging every morning, rain or shine. Actually, it was more of a brisk waddle than a jog, but at least she was moving. She had a favorite two-mile circuit through the Waterford College Arboretum that took her about forty minutes to complete. Other runners left her in their dust, but she didn’t let it bother her. Everyone had to move at their own pace, whether along a running trail or through life.

A mist shrouded the woods that morning, and Gwen’s breath came out in barely visible puffs as she ran. The only other sound was that of her footfalls on the wide dirt path. Spring was her favorite time of year in Pennsylvania. Other people preferred autumn, when the changing leaves covered the hills in brilliant color, but the renewal of spring soothed Gwen’s spirit like nothing else. Winter had been vanquished at last, and the hot, humid days of summer were not yet upon them. The regular school year had ended, and the summer session had not yet begun. These few weeks provided her with a restful interim in which to take time for herself.

Perhaps she wouldn’t go to campus at all today. She could work just as well at home as in her office. Or maybe she’d put her work aside entirely and quilt instead. She felt too nostalgic to work on her conference paper today, anyway. In the middle of the section on antebellum textiles, she was sure to go off on a weepy tangent about the clothing mothers sewed for their daughters before they parted forever. That would certainly make a fine impression on the review committee.

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