Storytorch

At the American Quilters Society Expo in Des Moines this week, I bumped into a longtime friend of mine. She'd come on a bus from eastern Iowa to spend the day at the show. Born Amish, Sara decided twenty years ago at age 50 to become Mennonite. She sold her buggy and her racehorse Henry, bought a minivan, and learned to drive.

At the quilt show, Sara was getting around on a motorized cart. She was garbed as usual in a simple dress of solid color fabric, dark hose, black lace-up shoes, and a small, sheer-fabric bonnet, or kapp.

After bending down for an initial hug, I stood chatting with my friend, both of us catching up on each other's lives. Sara owned and operated a fabric store, and a farm, out in the country for many years, but she's retired now and lives comfortably in town. When I mentioned that my husband Mark and I are thinking about acquiring a dog, she described her two new kittens.

Mozart was rambunctious and overly focused on birds in Sara's feeder outside the picture window, yowling to get out and stalk them, until the arrival of Muffin. Now the two cats cavort happily in the play tube Sara bought for them. Sara tosses catnip toys through a hole in the top of the tube and watches them roll it over the floor for hours at a time.

"I hadn't gotten around to dressing them up until just the other night. My friend Bettina was visiting for the weekend, so I went down in the basement and brought up some doll clothes. Mozart hated it, just hated it, maybe because they were girl doll clothes. But we got some great photos!"

With a hearty laugh and a wave goodbye, Sara pressed a button on her cart and glided smoothly off down the aisle to check out the Art Quilts section of the show.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
Your friends will delight you.