The Great Surrogacy Quilt of 2010

As I ended 2009 amidst all the recent noise in the world over surrogacy, I quietly settled into one of the greatest craft traditions of quilting. Imagine me in a log cabin with a peaceful blanket of winter snow outside the window. A fire is burning. The skeletal trees sway  against the gray sky as speckles of snowflakes glisten and dance. The sound of my nieces and nephews laughter hum from the basement below. A mug of hot tea sits next to my sewing machine, steam swirling above it. My sister and sister-in-law pick up a thread and needle to pitch in. A picturesque scene. A framed memory that you want to extend as long as you can because in that moment you are in the blissful state of knowing something good is coming.

What I love about quilting is how it becomes another form of story-telling. Either the quilt squares narrate something or the fabrics come from a long history of clothing and scraps and family woven together to make something new.

This is precisely how I am living my life. I have to take all the scraps of the pass 3 years of infertility and make them into something new. I need to start 2010 with only one voice in my head, my own. Despite all the public debate, criticisms, and concerns about what my husband and I have embarked upon, I know that what is happening is a beautiful thing- I am finally making my family. I have pieced together a certain clarity and hope through the mess of loss and pain. Now more than ever I know that the thread that held this all together was surrogacy.

As I thought about gifts I would like to give A. after she delivers our baby girl, it dawned on me that a quilt telling her history of surrogacy would be the perfect project. Being able to document the babies she has brought to life felt absolutely right.