Once there was a double wedding ring that had been passed down from great grandmother, to grandmother, to mother, to her daughter Daisy. The fabrics were like springtime, with ruby, and moss green, the blue of cornflowers, the cream of, well, cream before you whip it. Daisy had her own bright wedding ring, round and golden with no scuff marks yet. She had no reason to expect there ever would be.

The quilt was valuable for the warmth it captured on a chilly night in September when you forgot to close the windows, but beauty was no lower on its resume of attributes. Just looking at the pattern brought a sense of calm. And look she did, each morning as Daisy smoothed the bed down, and every nightfall as she pulled it back to welcome her and her husband in. 

An ancestor whose name she forgot had made all of those hundreds of pieces fit as if they belonged. Their connection to one another was as much of a dance as a waltz between two partners who know the steps without ever looking at their feet. People who had been dancing awhile. Twenty five rings interlocked. Like her mother's silver anniversary. The party had been extravagant.

But after a few years one of the green pieces became lonely. It seems unlikely, to be lonely when there are other rectangles in every direction for as far as you can see. Farther. It was not that there weren't other green blocks. Rather it was just that the quilter spread them out. None were touching one another, but lay sprinkled in with the other shades of color. She preferred it that way, not having considered the yearnings of fabric for company. 

One day Daisy left a pair of scissors on the bed. She did not intend to forget them there, but something snagged her attention and she went to attend to it. The scissors lay, unchaperoned. 

The lonely green piece spied them, and in the silence became bold. She snipped the tiny threads that had been there for a hundred years, the ones that seamed her to the four squares north, south, east and west. Blue blocks squeaked in protest, begging her to stay, but the angst within her outshouted their protest. 

Then it was done. She caught her corner on a light breeze and fluttered to the floor. Alone. 

The appearance that we are extraneous, forgotten even, can be compelling. But we are as integral to one another as the fabric of a double wedding ring. To believe that we can extract ourselves from the whole is even less likely than a runaway slip of green cloth.