The Quilt with Forty Squares

For my sister's fortieth birthday, I secretly mailed a fabric square to forty people who love her and asked them to decorate it. Old friends, cousins, her college roommate, her kids' teachers, her neighbor of fifteen years.

The squares came back from all over the country. One had a hand-painted lighthouse from her best friend in Maine. One was embroidered with the lyrics to a song she sang at karaoke in 2003. Her son drew a dinosaur. Our grandmother, who is ninety, stitched a tiny red heart with her initials.

I sewed them together with the help of a quilting group at my church, eight women who adopted the project like it was their own. It took four months.

When my sister unwrapped it, she spread it across her living room floor and just knelt there, touching every square, reading every name. She sleeps under it every night now. She says it's like being hugged by forty people at once.