Thea Angeli

Scraps

I am little, and the piles of fabric tower around me, a maze of color and joy. I dig my hands into the buckets of buttons, feeling the cool plastic and glass up to my elbows. I press my face against the softest fabrics, the ones my mom says are for baby quilts. It smells of wood and cotton. At my height, the quilts on the walls are masterpieces, a museum I can carefully touch. I feel their fabric ever so lightly as my mom and her friends look at fat quarters and patterns. The snip snip snip of scissors and hush of women talking wash over me. We are in an Amish quilt shop.