Measuring Up

Greetings Dear Ones!

I got a very odd phone call yesterday.  To tell you the truth, if I was the sort of person to suspect people of doing bad things, I might have had the sense to be alarmed, instead of naively mystified. “Always suspect the worst,” says Prudence, “then you can't be disappointed.” But I wasn't disappointed. Far from it.

A male voice said “Are you a seamstress?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I thought so,” he said, sounding pleased.  “I looked you up on Google. I need your help. I need to come show you something.”

“Sure,” I said, “what is it?” assuming he had ripped his pants.

“I’m not sure.  I need to show it to you in person.”

“Is it clothing?” I asked.

“No.”

“Hmmm… I really only work on clothing, Sir. Can you describe it? If it’s curtains or cushions, I’m not your gal.”

“No, it’s not anything made of cloth.  I don’t know what it is.  It’s some sort of tool.  I don’t want to try to describe it.  I’ll just confuse you.  I need to see you in person. Is your address [the right address]? Are you there now? I’ll just come show you in person.”

I didn’t know what to say. Prudence was comforted by the thought that a student was in the shop with me—one who, if needed, could be counted on to brandish a thread ripper and go for the jugular. After a pause that seemed too long, I said in weak, interrogative tones “um…yes….?”

“I’ll be over at 11,” he said and hung up.

Precisely at 11 o’clock there was a rap at the door and I opened it to see the delighted, congenial eyes of a middle-aged man, peering over a mask, cheerfully waving a wooden stick with metal feet and a long metal clamp at one end. 

“Can you help me?” he asked. “Can you tell me what the hell this thing is and how it is used?”

I recognized it instantly, laughed, and pointed him to the dressing room, where two of the same such sticks leaned against the mirror.

“Ah! You have the same thing!” he said, growing more curious.  “I thought it was for sewing. But the guy at the antique shop said it was an antique! He didn't know what it was either. ”  

“Perhaps it is, but I doubt it,” I said. “It’s just an old skirt marker!”

He laughed.

“Well, I’ll be…” he mused. “How does it work?  What does it do? Is it for men’s clothes, like cuffs and stuff?”

“Well, if the men are wearing skirts it could come in handy, I suppose.  Traditionally, it was to help mark ladies’ skirts.  When you hem a skirt, you want that hemline to be parallel to the floor.  You can’t just make a skirt the same length all the way around from the waist down. You need to measure from the floor up. Given the different configurations of human anatomies, some people need more fabric in the back, some in the front.” His eyes glittered with delight as I pantomimed first a larger bum, then a protruding stomach.

“Whatever else you make here, you’ve certainly Made My Day,” he said punningly. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this mystery solved.  I love learning about old tools.  My son and I share this game. He's very ill.  We take turns finding old tools and figuring out how they were used to take our minds off things and keep us challenged to learning something fun.  We knew this was a tool but had no idea how it worked.”

I grabbed some spare cloth and showed him.  “This folding piece of metal holds the fabric in place; these holes here are where we can set the pins, here—look at the bottom, the stick has numbers on it like a ruler, so we can keep the distance consistent. And this little screw allows you to clamp it all at the right height.”

His excitement at each revelation was contagious. “I can’t wait to tell my son!” he said, beaming. “He was the one who first thought it was something to do with sewing. But neither of us knew what to call it. That’s why when you asked over the phone I had no idea.  What is it called, anyway?”

“I just call it a skirt marker,” said me, the girl who calls rulers “sticks with numbers.”

“So simple,” he said. “Hey!  Would ya look at that! It’s written right on the bottom of it ‘Skirt Marker.’ How did I miss that?”

“Thanks to skirt markers, people in skirts can look like they are walking on level ground, and not constantly uphill or downhill.”  We both laughed with relief, as if this fact changed everything for the better. He tipped his cap, thanked me profusely, and left.  

I turned to my mentee at the cutting table. Being able to take accurate measurements and use appropriate vocabulary for tools is useful in any trade, a fact that seems to be emphasized relentlessly by recent events. A few weeks ago, I got a call from a nearby non-profit group in possession of a magical soul who wants to learn to sew.  Would I consider mentoring her for the next six weeks and teaching her some hand-work skills? Indeed I would!  She is from another country but language is not our barrier.  No. It's worse than that. It’s the metric system.  She does not think in inches, nor I in centimeters.  The numbers on the vintage skirt marker make perfect sense only to me. On everything else, from tea to tweed, we agree completely.  Who knew that measuring things would prove such a divisive challenge?

The first thing we made together was a copy of a skirt she liked. It is a beloved skirt she brought from her own country. We put it on my cutting table and traced it. I showed her how to draft a pattern from it.  Then we cut it out of fabric that had been donated to my stash by a generous local benefactress whose deceased mother had been a seamstress.  Over the next two weeks, my student patiently sewed it all together by hand and did a marvelous job.

Yesterday, we started to make her a new dress, using a vintage pattern that she found in one of my dusty boxes on the top shelf. That’s when the trouble started. We left our “gounding” in what is “real” (ie her old skirt we had used as a model) and ventured into the theoretical, in the form of a “pattern” or plan. She kept insisting that our numbers were “wrong” that we were making it too small.  The pattern was at least thirty years old and had been cut out at its smallest size.  I tried to convince her that we only needed to increase some of the margins a half an inch (a total of four sizes if you factor in included seam allowances) and that we couldn’t just increase everything or it would be a weird shape. The math and its conversions were making us dizzy.

“Fine,” I said, eventually. “Let’s just make it as big as you want; we can take it in later,” knowing full well that Experience is the best teacher. (This is why I make it a point never to rescue young men from the side of the road who have run out of gas, after being warned repeatedly to check the fuel guage as soon as they start the car!) After all, how do you think I came by this information?  Did I listen to those who knew better? Certainly not. I had to make a jumpsuit that could only fit Bumpo the clown (for a friend who was seriously insulted) in order to learn that lesson. When we basted it all together and held it up to her body in the mirror, she was horrified to discover that she could also smuggle in a small Baltic state if she had to. Then we could not stop laughing at our own foolishness.  “Look on the bright side,” I said, wiping my eyes, “with our handy skirt marker, at least you’ll appear to be smuggling level!”

This week, as during the previous weeks, I’ve had to work all weekend to catch up on time lost serving at the pleasure of the District Court of the State of Vermont.  Like an oversized jump suit, nothing about jury duty went the way I expected it to go, which is all I can say about it, but I learned a lot.  Much to Prudence’s astonishment, NOT everyone thinks the way she does about things.  (“But, they SHOULD!” she huffs.) Words get confusing.  Meanings get distorted by our goggles of personal experience and bias.  Trying to decipher meaning from testimony, including audio recordings taken on site during the incident, is even worse than converting inches to metric. It's like being back in Professor Stitt’s American Poetry class and holding each squirming word up to a looking glass, microscope, or telescope.  Twelve people can listen to exactly the same testimony and come to just as many different conclusions.  (One vociferous rooster on our team came to at least thirty-two possible conclusions alone.)  More than once, I had to reckon with the fact that I don’t always see things quite the way others do.   “What is the Truth?” I want to know. “It doesn’t matter,” insists a fellow juror whose horns are beginning to show. “We cannot know the truth.  We just apply the law.”  To me, they ought to be one and the same, like a ruler with inches on one side and centimeters on the other. To know one is to figure both. Apparently not. Unbeknownst to me, Innocence has its own metrics. Somehow, we got our job done with remarkable civility, decency, persistence and patience. A good lunch helped. It was not easy.

Over and over I appreciate the same things: Firstly, no wonder the founding fathers set up our government to minimize citizen involvement and restrict it to voting and jury duty! We “masses” comprised of seamstresses, bank tellers, electricians, and ex dolphin trainers turn to rabble pretty easily, especially when you collect all our cell phones in a bucket and tell us we can’t have them back until we agree unanimously. Secondly, other perspectives are incredibly valuable. We all have different ways of measuring.

Taking the measure of other human beings for any purpose—be it clothing or crime—requires specialized tools but there is a vast difference between measuring and judging. Unexpected things result when those you work with don’t understand the yardstick you are using. Sometimes they are hilarious, sometimes not. Virtue cannot be quantified by an overarching set of units. Like the skirt marker, it's only by measuring up that we can be on level.  As we debate hemlines and democracy in general, we find that some of our tools are very old, but they still work beautifully, if we just learn to recognize and use them well.

Keep Mending, Dear Ones! Thank you for your good work!

Yours aye,

Nancy

The Long Haul

“Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.” —James Madison 

Greetings Dear Ones!

Tuesday, as I drive to the courthouse for my second jury pool, I see above me several V’s of geese rowing northward just below the clouds.  I attempt to drive with one eye on the road and one eye on the sky, marveling, as always, at their synchrony, strength, and beauty.  Any crew team would have much to envy.  Something about seeing them in their flock-pods, knowing that they help each other—taking turns to draft off each other’s wake as the lead goose breaks the stiffest currents of air with her wings—never fails to move me to tears, then curiosity.  What if they are not so noble and community spirited but instead, as the relevant cliché might suggest, Silly? What if they have been bickering all the way since North Carolina about how gassy golf-course grass makes them and how Betty-Sue should not have eaten a belly full of blue fescue from the ninth tee before taking the lead? And what is the point of mating journeys that average 2500 miles on a semi-annual basis? (Perhaps the fact that geese mate for life tells us all we need to know?)  And what on earth will they eat when they land here?  All we have is snow-encrusted mud and buckets of tree sap instead of putting greens. This strikes me as poor planning on the part of the geese.  

I get to the courthouse, get through security (sans knitting) and realize too late that I have left my book in the car.  Rats…  I briefly consider “air knitting” to see if it is possibly as soothing as real knitting.  It is not.  If I were stuck on a desert island (pesky auto-correct has briefly considered how much more fun it would be to be stuck on a dessert island—and Autocorrect, it must be said, I most heartily agree! But then I already live in a land where trees drip sugar.)  On my deserted island (sans whipped cream and cherries) I know I would knit the same sweater over and over again, ripping it out as often as necessary, in order to revel in the “progress” I was making.  Kind of like a goose rotating through mating latitudes on an annual basis.

I am left with nothing more constructive to do than think of all the work waiting for me in my shop while I take time off to judge my fellow citizens (which I might have done anyway, without the formal, patriotic invitation or pay cut).  First, I think of all the “little” projects that sweep in on a daily basis—the things to mend; the “emergencies” that someone needs for the weekend; all the little hemmings (and hawings) that invade the shop on a weekly basis.  These are like small incendiary bombs I need to diffuse immediately. Specifically, I need to get a certain pile of filthy clothes out of there as soon as possible.  I felt too sorry for their bedraggled owner to insist she take them right home again and wash them before I attempt to fix them.  I didn’t want to appear “judgy” (who am I kidding here?) so I just gagged as politely as I could and put them all in a plastic bag the moment she left.  They will get done first. (God help me if I have to iron any of them in order to fix them. It will smell like I am making soup—some kind of seafood bisque, where the “seafood” is dead horseshoe crabs…) 

Next to go is that wretched laundry basket liner that some soul has persuaded me to make out of burlap. The burlap, which probably dates from the Carter administration, is so musty and dusty, I had an allergy attack the moment I cut into it.  I had to vacuum all the machines, cutting table, and the floor before I could go any further with construction, as spores of burlap were swirling everywhere.  Who needs proper snuff when all that is required to have an eye-watering/sniff-snorting/rip-sneezing/bosom-heaving fifteen-minute frolic is a little powdered burlap?   I sneezed enough to awaken the aches in my cracked rib and forgo ab workouts for a week. (And by AB workouts, you know what I really mean is sitting up straight in bed without rolling over first…)Who in their right mind wants to store laundry in this thing??? (Hmmm… maybe this explains the state of the first gal’s laundry?)

Rather than continue to judge the poor choices of my dear customers, Prudence decides it’s time to switch to judging ME instead, which she far prefers to “air-knitting” or goose-musing.  “How come you never get the BIG stuff done?” she wants to know.  Where is that book you wanted to write? Where are the long-term commissions—the shawls, the shirts, the silk blouses, the custom guitar straps?  Why are your cows still able to run up the driveway and snack on our neighbor’s cedar trees without the impediment of fencing? When are THESE going to get done, or in some cases, even started? Why does the Temporary become eternal through the relentless build up of ephemera?

As much as I hate to admit it, especially to a bitch like Prudence, I have become a victim of constant short-termism and no amount of tiny, daily “wins” can forestall the overriding sense of “failure.” I put excessive focus on the short-term results at the expense of my long-term interests, and yet the long-term vision is where my sense of Self resides, so the result of never achieving anything “Big” is an ever-present low-grade sense of distress and low satisfaction, with occasional bursts of anxiety.  Future Nancy, in all her patient Grace and Glory, beckons lovingly to the little frazzled rat racing ever faster on her tiny wheel but no matter how I up the pace, I never seem to reach her.

Long-term projects require infrastructure—sometimes tools as simple as a pair of knitting needles and a skein of yarn—and Tenacity. (Optional infrastructure requirements for shawl production might include a snowy day, a wood stove, a good pod-cast, a small Jack Russell who is conveniently between feedings and potty outings and other things that he will remind you are Imperative...)

Hope and optimism are simply not enough to make a project successful.  Affirmations don’t actually do a damn thing—they are like air knitting until you get the actual yarn in your hands.

“Commitments should be viewed as Sacred Ground,” mutters Prudence moodily.  “If you have promised to do it, then you must. Feeling like Shite is the proper consequence of not doing what you said you would.”  

“Most of us DO believe that we must finish what we start! At the beginning of a project, we make internal commitments that carry us through to completion,” I insist vehemently. “But what if we never even start because we are getting pecked to death by ducks decoyed as daily dramas?  How do we, who accidentally sat on some of the necessary infrastructure, pull the sharp points out of our tender behinds and begin to align our resources to meet organizational objectives in the most efficient way possible?”

It occurs to me that the Geese to not make the 2,500 mile flight all in one go.  They stop a couple times. To create an effective strategy to achieve long-term goals, they set several short term goals.  Short term goals, within the context of a larger objective, improve our focus, provide clarity about our path and purpose, combat procrastination, and help us gather valuable feedback—such as how unhappy most people get when you poop in their swimming pools.

I wonder about other Creative types, like you, Dear Menders, and if our occasional inability to achieve larger, long-term project goals is a sneaky form of procrastination? But how could anyone who runs and works as hard as we do possibly be, simultaneously, procrastinating? Because procrastination has nothing to do with laziness.   For me, perhaps it’s because I fervently believe in “Someday.”  (cue the angelic organ chords here) The “Someday” syndrome is insidious. Bit by bit, I get snagged on little details and “Someday” slips like a log over the waterfall of regrets.  How many times do I charge into my workspace announcing to no one in particular that “Today!! Today, I am here to get those custom shirts made!” only to catch a sniff of burlap or crotch-rot and realize that before I can row on, I must first patch the bottom of the boat.

There is a delightful proverb that says “Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week.” Yes.  That is where most short term objectives derived from long-term projects go to die.  Today is never Someday, and Someday is the day that it will all get done.  This very week, rather than actually get any work done, at the suggestion of one of my most dynamic clients, I decide to join a fellowship of amazing female entrepreneurs and order a book on Time Management.  Someday it will arrive and Someday I will read it and Someday I will get Organized. The irony of this wrinkle delights me no end. At least it’s all off my plate for now…

Deep down, I think I am guilty of “procrastinating” because I truly do not understand how Time works. I think somewhere there is a magic cache of it and I can have all I want of it, the way one can summon endless amounts of happiness without warning simply from inhaling a rose or the warm neck of a small farm animal. (Both smell as sweet!)  There are no limits on things like creativity, love, beauty, and all the finest things that flow from our connection to All That Is.  But such is not the case for Time.  If we lost anything in the Garden, it was Time.

Seneca said “We are always complaining that our days are few and acting as though there is no end to them.”  Yep.  I’m shocked to find that Everything takes longer than I think, including jury duty.  Someday aside, the truth is that my mental calendar only has two types of time—Now and Not Now.  It’s either going to get done Now, or…. Well… you guessed it. Once I fill my daily jar with sand, there is no room for golf balls, even those without goose turds.

Nothing makes me think about Wasting Time like sitting in a courthouse waiting for something to happen.  Or about ebbs and stages of grand Life cycles like migratory water fowl and sap buckets on Maple trees.  Or the short-term effects of filling my gas tank with what used to be the grocery budget for the entire week.  Do we have what it takes to make True Progress over the Long Haul?  Can we stay committed to goals larger than a day’s work without succumbing to the anxious pettiness of mere Survival?  Do we know how to prioritize our Future Selves over these exhausted wrecks we have become?  How/why should we demand more from current selves when we are already so damn tired? How can I hope that my county, my country, my world community will continue to strive for What is Right over what is Easy or momentarily insistent when I cannot even accomplish this in my own wee shop?  

I don’t know.

I just watch the news from Ukraine and see that Those who Get Things Done choose courage over comfort.  They do not have the luxury of waiting. Their Someday starts NOW. Right now.  

And Sew it Is.

Keep up your Good Work, my Loves!  There is too much Mending to do alone and it is going to be a Long Haul!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Summer Sunshine

“Remember Man that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”

Greetings Dear ones!

Happy Ash Wednesday—Prudence’s favorite holiday—when we pause to grieve all that we are and think that swearing off chocolate can help. “We’re not here for a long time, OR a good time,” she insists, producing a list that looks uncannily like the New Year’s Resolutions I have refused to adhere to once already.  The next forty days will usher in mud-season and prom-season, with heaps of gawd-awful glitter. Why not add a dash of penance and atonement too? “Offer it up,” she says with a saccharine smile.  Meanwhile, I gaze around me.  If men are turning into dust, this place is covered with them.  I’ve had very little time for “Man-removal” from under beds, inside fiddles, and all those over-head places I cannot reach.  I’ve been in a swirl since returning from fiddle camp last week.

It was amazing to work, cook and play together again.  Our hearts, our spirits, our tummies are full.  But are we talking about how good most of the meals were? The oatmeal, the tatties, the neeps? No.  We are still talking about how we all forgot to put the oven on when we tried to cook fifty pounds of baked potatoes for lunch, only to discover that they were damp, raw, rocks twenty minutes before we were about to serve them!   We are reminiscing about how some conscientious night-clean-up volunteer turned off the lower oven that was supposed to roast meat slowly all night—so that it was all still raw in the morning, setting us back twelve hours in prep time.  Are we steeped in gratitude for all the times we went into the walk-in fridge and didn't get trapped? No. We are laughing (with relief) at how two young men went in and got stuck and pounded on the door for about seven minutes before thinking to call me on a cell phone.  (When the call came, I was sitting down for the first time all day and assumed my leg, which was buzzing, had fallen asleep and ignored it.)

From the mishaps come the moments we remember most.  From the love and care comes the ability to team up and laugh.  We carry on by carrying each other.   

And so it is with Summer Sunshine.

The first time I met Summer Sunshine, she was a soggy little mop of wool lying in a patch of sun near her mother.  Of course, I had no idea then that it was her.  No one did. She was just another anonymous lamb born in another anonymous Spring three years ago.  She grew quickly and ran and played with the other lambs.  When they were cold or tired, they curled up on their leeward side of their mamas in warm, snug, smug little bundles.  Sometimes, if the mamas were lying down, they cuddled into the wool on their backs and slept on them like giant smelly pillows.   Their shepherdess is a dear friend of mine who was not well at the time and was having a tough spring after a double hip replacement.  She relied on the kindness of neighbors and friends to help with the heavy farm chores involved in caring for eighty head of sheep. (It wasn’t just heads; they had legs and tails too.)  By fall, the lambs were weaned and my friend had Lyme disease, bringing yet another series of set-backs in a difficult year.

One horrible day, someone noticed that the lambs were “acting funny.” When a farm animal acts “funny” I don’t mean they dance around with oversized hats and rubber chickens and tell a few good rippers.  No, these lambs were walking in circles, drooling out of one side of their mouths and pushing their heads into corners. They looked haunted. They weren’t eating. They had listeria poisoning. Within forty-eight hours, most of them were dead.

Listeria is a deadly bacteria named in honor of British surgeon Sir Joseph Lister (1827–1912), an early advocate of antiseptic surgery. It is found in soil, water, manure—three things your average sheep farm has plenty of.  In this case, the lambs were probably infected by mouldy hay, which may have been given to them by an unwitting volunteer who did not know any better. We will never know for sure.  Recovery of sheep from listeriosis depends on early detection of illness, together with prompt and aggressive treatment prescribed by a veterinarian, most of which does not work. Brain tissue of the animal is usually infected, which causes all sorts of motor issues.  Long-term recovery is extremely rare. Only one lamb survived—and my friend named her “Summer Sunshine.”

Each day, my friend would limp to her barn and sit with this lamb on her lap and perform Reiki healings and feed her orange slices as treats.  Because of her neurologic deficits, the lamb was unable to walk for more than two months.  My friend had to teach her, patiently, and put her in a pen with sheep who would be gentle and not knock her over all the time. (Sheep need company and are not happy alone.) On a farm of 80 sheep, this one became a special pet.  

Two years later, Summer Sunshine, still wobbly, is not a good candidate for breeding.  The coyotes have made a few kills in the field and are becoming a relentless threat.  My friend has to keep the sheep penned up and feed them hay, which is expensive, due to the poor weather we had last June.  Two years in a row of soaring hay prices for sheep and food prices for humans and my friend has to cull her herd.  She has no choice.  She sells what she can but she cannot find a home for Summer Sunshine and she cannot afford to keep her.  She can no longer turn her out in the field with the others because she could never outrun the coyotes.

I talk to this friend on a daily basis to check on her.  One day her voice sounds hollow, dead.  She has taken a bad fall at the barn and is resting.  I can “hear” that something else is wrong.

“I took Summer Sunshine to Barney’s with the ram lambs this morning,” she admits finally. “I feel just sick about it but I think it is really for the best. I think I fell because I just don’t want to get up any more today.  After 60 years of raising sheep, this never gets easier.”

Barney is her friend, the butcher, who processes all her meat, which she then sells.

Silently, on the other end of the phone, I nod tearfully.  This is why I don’t raise my sheep for meat.  I too am battling the exhausting price of hay the way all of us, world-wide are battling the exhausting and prohibitive cost of fuel.  I could not have afforded another mouth to feed either, not that I had the chance to offer.  The deed has been done.  Instantly, I think of a plan. 

“Please, let me buy her meat!” I say.

“What?? That’s crazy,” she says. “You don’t even eat meat!”

“No,” I admit, “but I have friends who love lamb.  I’ll share it with them.  I’ll bring Summer Sunshine to the fiddle camp and have her turned into music.  She won’t go to anonymous carnivores—she’ll be enjoyed by the most amazing and talented people I know and she will power their songs well into the night.”

My friend sniffs.  “That’s perfect. I certainly couldn’t eat her myself.  And I need the money so badly.”

“It’s settled, then” I say feeling suddenly happier. “These camps I cook for support local farmers and I always try to source our meat responsibly when I can.  What could be better than knowing she was such a loved animal from a good farm, always cared for?”

“She’s over two years old and totally grass fed so use a lot of spice.  This meat will be very lean but extremely flavorful,” she advises.

Those who ate the Shepherd’s pie and lamb curry told me it was extremely flavorful.  Some got nourished by the meat, some by the story.  No doubt, some of you Dear Ones will be horrified by this story.  (I know I will get “letters” about this.)  I feel your pain, sensitive empaths and vegans. Truly, I do.  More than you could ever know. Still, I think the story of Summer Sunshine is worth telling.  (Not telling a story doesn’t make it any less true.)

We humans make the best stories from our tragedies and the best music from our pain.  Hopefully, those stories help us to see ourselves, not as solitary individuals, but as part of a web with concentric circles and strands that stretch across counties, countries, the entire globe.  Buying “local” IS global.  Our music doesn’t come from the radio any more than our food comes from a grocery store.   

I think of this as we witness the terror unfolding in Ukraine—a terror that puts raw potatoes and a decent lamb curry into a totally different perspective. We talk about how the Darkness comes to overwhelm us and yet, through the stories we tell ourselves, the heroism we observe in others, we survive.  We rally. We simply refuse to perish.  We ask the nearest Joan-of-Arc-of-Baked-Potatoes to stand by the microwave and do her best. And she does.  We ask our grandmothers to make Molotov cocktails and they do.  Who made this mess? We did.  Who needs to clean it up? We do.  

Bad things happen to lambs and countries. For all the horror happening in the world right now—may hopeful seeds jump from the bad things and take root in our hearts.    Sometimes we do all we can and it is simply not enough. It’s what we do NEXT that counts too. 

 May those who are fighting find peace.

May those who are fleeing find refuge.

May those who are staying behind find safety.

May those who are despondent find hope.

May all of us whose hearts break at the suffering we witness become the comfort that others need.

May we help each other to Mend.

 Transcendent realism confronts truth:  Life is hard. Farming is hard. Playing an instrument is hard. Being at Peace can be hard. Peace is not the absence of war.  Peace is when we can transform our pain into something useful or beautiful or nourishing as we begin again to be better stewards of our world and each other.  Take heart. What is horrible and sad can become our means of Grace as surely as limping Lambs can become dance music. 

Let the Mending Continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Feeding Love

“And if you are to love, love like the moon loves.  It doesn’t steal the night.

It only unveils the beauty of the dark.” –Isra Al-Thibeh

Greetings Dear Ones!

I seriously considered not writing a blog this week.  I have every excuse: I’m tired. I’m busy. I’m cold. I’m tired of being tired, tired of being busy, tired of being cold…  But then I realize I have these same excuses every week; this week is nothing new, just a little more so.  Some of you Dear Ones are occasionally kind enough to write to me and remind me that you too are Hungry, Cold, Tired, Busy—longing for warmth, laugher, a nap and some crumbs…  So, because I love you SEW much...

I was awake half the night last night with anxiety about this weekend’s upcoming Pure Dead Brilliant fiddle weekend—a fiddle-frolic-frenzy I have been cooking for, for nearly seventeen years… Is that right? Honestly, I’ve lost count… I just remember that when they began, in my former home, every bed and floor space in house and barn was taken and there was no place to put my toddler son to bed except in a small nest in a cupboard under the stairs. (This was before we ever heard of Harry Potter—though there does seem to be Magic imparted to those who are forced to sleep beneath a staircase!)

Every President’s Day weekend, anywhere from 40-200 of us gather to fiddle, cook, and nourish our tribal bonds to Each Other, Our Spirits, and The Music.  And just about now, I begin awakening in the preceding nights to fret and frazzle about whether I should have almond milk or oat milk for those who cannot tolerate dairy.  Should I buy both?   I bolt upright in bed, eyes starched wide, and think “Did I even remember to put Potatoes on the grocery list?? What if I forget to buy the potatoes???”  This group eats an average of 35 pounds of potatoes at every meal.  What about peppers? Eggplants?  (“Have we ever served eggplants?? Why are you thinking about eggplants at a time like this, daft cow?” says Prudence, primly from beneath her nightcap. ) Then I crash backwards onto the pillows.  It is like I am on a raft at sea in rough waters, spluttering, drowning, counting Nightshades and calculating the amount of non-dairy creamer we might need in an emergency.

Out the window, the full moon is lighting the snow so much that I think the lights have been left on downstairs.  I drift silently through the dark house in my sheep pajamas to check.  No. It’s just the moon.  In the light of this gorgeous moon, the fears subside and feel ridiculous.  The moon is my lighthouse, calling me home to myself, away from the shoals and whitecaps of frothy coconut milk and the Freudian phantasmagoria of vegan sausages.  Prudence, who has been muttering that “vegans are just trouble-makers; no one should have to be vegan at ALL times” lapses into silence in the glow.  

It’s February, the perfect time to think about Love, which is a damn sight more cheering to consider  than contemplating  cabbages and serving sizes of rutabaga, so I sit in a pool of light from the full moon and try to think of things I love:

I love the way the moonlight is dancing on the snow. 

I love the silence of the paw tracks leading into the darkness of the woods.

I love reminding myself that sometimes we need Peace more than we need sleep.

I love Serving the Music in any way I can.

And… (damnit!) I love the vegans.  Truly, I do.  I will buy them both Oat milk and Almond milk.  

Wickedly, Prudence reminds me that if I buy almond milk, then I do not love the Earth (which is one of the main reasons to go vegan) since almonds are grown where there are water shortages and the almond industry is causing environmental trouble… Ugh… Cashew milk then… Prudence has no idea if cashews cause trouble.  I make a note to research that in the morning.  But what of those with nut allergies?? Does this affect them?

I love those with nut allergies.  “Yes, but the poor vegans will not have enough protein if you do not offer nuts,” says Prudence slyly.   It’s a nut-free facility, I tell her.  No nuts allowed.  Except for me, of course.  I must be nuts to take this on, year after year, especially while having to listen to her yapping.

I love the Gluten Free people.   The homemade soups, sans noodles, croutons, or crackers, are all for them.  So is the salad bar.  Gluten free people cause very little trouble.  “Unless of course, you want to serve pizza, or pasta, or anything that is typically considered cheap and easy crowd food,” mutters Prudence, rolling her eyes and tutting,  “Thanks to them, the gravies will be thin.”

I love the vegetarians.  Especially those who eat fish and sneak bacon when no one is looking.   “These are the people who sprinkle cheese before them as they go and eat up all the vegan options,” says Prudence, “leaving the poor vegans no choice but to smuggle peanut butter in their dorm rooms.”

I love omnivores with no dilemmas—especially the ones who can cope with spices more exotic than salt and pepper and don’t consider adding vanilla to French toast “going wild.”  Omnivores who obediently eat everything on their plate without complaints are Prudence’s favorites.  That’s how she was raised. Why wasn’t everyone else? How DARE they have dietary preferences based on knowledge of their own body-wisdom?  I sigh.  I envy others their body-wisdom.

“You need to feed this camp the way you feed your barn animals,” says Prudence.  “There should be designated troughs and buckets and locked chutes, gates, and pens so that only those who are supposed to eat the vegan options get access to the vegan options.  Check their ear tags and tails as they enter the dining hall. Meat people can be locked together in the meat pen; Flexi-tarians will have to make their minds up once and for all and stop poking their snouts through the fences.  People who eat curry should be fed outside so that the smell doesn’t carry and make those who are simply chewing lettuce think that they have accidentally wandered down a back street in Calcutta.   Above all, those who partake of the midnight chili should be forced to sleep alone.   People are more like sheep than you would like to admit.  You can try to keep them away from foods that contain toxic levels of copper, but that just makes them want it all the more!”   

“Prudence!” I snap, “We are supposed to be looking at the moon and feeling LOVE. Now, hush!”

She drums her fingers but keeps quiet.

I am trying to find a way to love her too.

There are so many kinds of love all over the world.  I want to remind myself of all the important ways Love finds me in my day.  There is the Sheep Love, which pushes and shoves and demands scratches and wooly head rubs.  There is the Steer Love, with its nuzzles and bumps and huge scritchy tongues swiping my neck and cheek like 80 grit sandpaper. There is the Chicken Love of cooing and pecking and rushing towards me to investigate what their hot mash brings today.  There is the Dog Love, so small, furry, insecure and needy it must be cuddled under my robe and held against my chest in the dark.  It cannot bear to be separated from me for a moment.   Each of these Loves must be fed differently.  So it is.

I feed them daily—not as much as they want, but always as much as they Need.  I feed them so that they can continually replace and continue being the parts of themselves they have used up against the cold, in growth, in work, in wool, in capers, in Being Themselves.  We all need that renewal—multiple times a day.  Part of Loving another being, is figuring out how to Feed it—to feed its body, mind, or Spirit.  What are treats and what is true nutrition?  (You cannot raise a baby duck, or a septuagenarian, on cheerios alone!)  In Love, we feed the Hunger where we find it—hunger to be Accepted, Nourished, Welcomed, Included, Protected.  

One of the things that makes this upcoming camp so unique is that I have always insisted that the campers help with the cooking—partially because I am, at heart, a Slacker and this is way too much work for one.  A Big reason is that coming together to make and break bread (or oat cakes for the GF) creates community.  It’s vital that members of a tribe learn to feed each other. The Best reason of course is that the food simply tastes better. The first ingredient is Togetherness:  Someone in that togetherness has watched enough episodes of “America’s Test Kitchen” or the “Great British Bake-Off” to be dangerous and gets teamed up with someone who volunteers at a homeless shelter and/or someone whose granny made the best gazpacho and then some young college kid who just now learned how to peel an onion joins in and MAGIC  ENSUES.   It’s true democracy at work—a little messy, a little chaotic with “too many cooks” hovering over the broth—but the end result is way better than any dictator, no matter how benevolent, could hope to provide.

There are no recipes. No measuring.  I never watch what herbs or secrets go into the pot.  We all take turns tasting and figuring it out.  In Spices as in Music, we “jam.”   We seek a Harmony where all the yummy differences add complexity not discord. Perhaps it is the music that makes it all taste great. A little Hunger helps. But at the end of the day, Music, Love, and Spices are team sports.

Come what may, I know my team will pull me through.  Gradually, the buzzing in my head stops.  Prudence has succumbed to her lavender & laudanum and slumps slack-jawed, drooling.  The little dog against my chest is snoring.  I look at the bright circle in the sky—Is it the Mother’s night light showing us the beauty of the darkness? God’s mirror reflecting the light of the sun? Or just a giant slice of non-dairy Provalone up there, waiting to lure this sailor back to sea? Who can say?

“If I just remember the potatoes, all shall be well,” I mumble wearily and shuffle off to bed.

Today, Dear Ones, may every delicious kind of love find you. May you have enough to nourish yourself and others.  Keep up the Good Mending!

With sew much love (and non-dairy creamer),

Yours aye,

Nancy

Duty Calls

“Some people get out of jury duty by lying. You don’t have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you’d make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people.” –George Carlin

 Greetings Dear Ones!

 The recent cold has been Bitter.  Jack Frost doesn’t just “nip” my nose; he threatens to bite my ears off and swallow them whole.  With stabbing pain, my fingers and toes feel the sharp grind of his molars as I try to get through the barn chores.  He prowls invisibly, on padded paws as big as the coyotes’ who slip in and out of The Dark Forest on silent snowy tracks.  My housemate wants to set up a “critter cam” to see who it is who makes these tracks; he suggests mounting a camera near the garage.  First I agree then Pause.  We will have to be careful how we position this thing.  The last thing I want this nice young man to catch on film is my unorthodox method of scraping the ice off my car each morning—climbing a chair, kneeling precariously on the hood, occasionally sliding off the front fenders as the force of my scraping sends me flying in furry sheep pajamas and welly boots into the nearest snow bank.  I simply cannot reach the windshield from the ground. Coyotes or no coyotes, no one needs to see footage of my wooly arse flopping backwards off the hood of a Ford. “God Forbid,” mutters Prudence. (The cold is not all that has been bitter…)

Well, the Longest little month of the year is taking its sweet time.  Last Wednesday took a week of my life away and yet February only seems all the longer… As luck would have it, it took the EXACT week I was going to Get Organized.  I was going to finish up all my custom sewing work and get all the regular alterations out with so much time to spare that I was going to sort out the fabric stash and start doing some design work I’ve been daydreaming about…  I was on the verge of actually finishing a thing or two when I was summoned to report for jury duty.  In other states where I have resided, one shows up for a jury pool and either gets selected for a trial happening that day or not. In Vermont, you must show up for three consecutive pools and be assigned to upcoming trials, possibly three of them.  There are questionnaires to fill out and procedures to follow. The first day takes a whole day. The pools seem to be held monthly, so I must report in March and April as well.  (This means, of course, that I cannot expect to Get Organized before June, at the earliest, thank goodness!)

I get to the courthouse and wait in line to be checked through security.  As I get closer, I notice a sign that reads “No guns or knitting needles beyond this point” as if these things are in some way equivalent.  I have never read a headline that said an elementary school was terrorized because someone ran in and waved some knitting needles. The fact that these are the only two items listed tells me something about Vermont and what folks are likely to be carrying.    

NO Knitting??? What?? Instantly, I am depressed.  I leave the knitting needles in the car and ask the guard if pencils are allowed.

“Yes,” he answers accommodatingly, “of course. We will give you pencils and paper if you need them.” 

“Yes, please,” I say.  “I’ll need two number twos right away, with extremely sharp points on them, please.”  He looks at me with the wary curiosity of a calf watching a tarp flapping.

“I’m going to knit with them.”

He is young and just trying to do his job. He rolls his eyes and laughs nervously. “Ma ‘am, we just don’t allow knitting. I’m sorry.”  Now I am the one confused.  Is the knitting itself considered dangerous?  Does it induce unexpected homicidal rage? Well, now that I think about it…if one gets so interested in the testimony that one accidentally forgets to switch colors in a complicated intarsia and doesn’t realize it for four rows.… I guess…  But rather than insist on monochromatic knitting, The Court, in its infinite wisdom has decided to ban stitchery altogether (along with metal travel mugs—which one might be tempted to use to bludgeon those who inform you knitting is forbidden.)

Robbed of anything useful to do with my time, I survey my fellow jury candidates, my “peers” in this realm, and imagine that I have been invited to an exclusive fashion show instead.  I check out hairdos then shoes.  I award extra points if I can perceive dung on either.  Most people are dressed more for warmth than style but the ambient quality of knitwear is fantastic.  There is abundant evidence to suggest that plenty of Vermonters are rage-knitting at home, or perhaps at their local firing range.  I always find Happy people to be the most beautiful and not many here are smiling. Of course not, they have left Important Jobs to sit here and be paid the princely sum of $15 (equal to hemming a pair of pants) to judge their fellow citizens.  At best, they appear politely stoic as they gaze blearily at their phones. A few—especially the lads clad in Carhartts and work boots, with thick beards and arms folded across their flannel chests—look genuinely “un-gruntled” to say the least.  To make matters worse, they are asked to remove their knitted caps from their heads while in the courtroom, which makes them scowl more.

Gradually, the room fills up. I wait for the lawyers and judge to come out and speak to us.  What?  They’re out? Those kids at the podium?  Those are the lawyers? They look like high school graduates wearing suits for the first time. On closer inspection, the bagginess of their suits betrays them. They are either older than I think or clueless about modern male fashions, which are designed to look like they came from a can.  In any case, the truth is that I am getting older than I realize.  I put my glasses on in order to see better but then my mask fogs them up so I cannot see at all.  Justice is blind, and so am I.

The judge and the two lawyers in the case take turns thanking us for “our sacrifice on behalf of Vermont” and begin to explain what, exactly, that sacrifice—which includes lunch and bathroom breaks—will entail.  We get a very informative training about what jury duty is and what is expected of us.  Already, hands are going up amongst the potential jurors.

As a professional seamstress, I work so hard NOT to judge my customers and fellow beings that I realize I might be a little out of practice.  Prudence decides we need to use our time wisely and get my judging chops up to scratch.  I want to be able to do a wonderful job on this jury, should I be lucky enough to get chosen.  I want to serve Democracy with all my heart. We start with the gal with garish nail polish who is obviously chewing gum and work our way up to the gentleman who has asked four questions in a row.  And by questions, I mean the kind of things a third-grader needs to be reminded are STATEMENTS, not questions.  His sentences do NOT begin with Who, What, When, Where, Why, or How.  He is telling us all he has a colonoscopy scheduled for the start of the trial before he has even heard the charges.  Next he thinks he recognizes the defendant, who vehemently denies this.  When he tries to make a lame joke about himself as a retired senior with nothing better to do (than what? Hold up court proceedings?) I am grateful Prudence does not have access to knitting needles and metal coffee cups after all.  Good job, Vermont!

Finally, we hear the charges, which are Bad.

VERY Bad. 

Some of the potential jurors promptly burst into tears and claim they need to be excused because they are triggered by past trauma in their own lives. Instantly, I stop judging.  The air feels gritty and brown-paneled like the walls. I squirm in my seat, stare at my poopy shoes, and wonder if I will be able to hear the testimony myself.  This is the kind of story which, if I even read about it in the paper, I will be up all night for days, er…nights… Many nights.  I once sent a three-page letter to the mother of such a victim because it was the only way for me to be able to process my grief.  Grief for “a stranger” (those with mother-hearts, regardless of gender, whether they have given birth or not, are never strangers) thousands of miles away.  

Most of my life, I have been told that I am “over-sensitive.” I think of it as a Good Thing, generally.  It enables me to talk with animals and to hear the Oak trees in the meadow say “Psst…I am HERE.” But it also makes me very vulnerable. I find it difficult to do Hard Things for someone else’s own damn good.  I have a great fear of looking at What Is Awful and deciding what to do about it. (This includes pin-wale corduroy embroidered with ducks.)  I greatly admire doctors, nurses, veterinarians and all those willing to commit pain for the sake of healing another.  I couldn’t even remove a splinter from my child’s foot without weeping and needing a consolation popsicle myself.   

“It makes you weak and apt to be melodramatic,” insists Prudence, who is inconvenienced by emotion of any sort.

Can I do this trial?  Honestly? Can I presume this defendant innocent until proven guilty? Can I hear all that will be so hard to hear and still be fair and impartial? What if my child was the victim? What if my child was the accused?  Who would I want on the jury?  Would I want a person like me? I close my eyes and shudder.

Yes.

God help me, yes. 

One by one we are questioned, first by the prosecuting attorney, then by the defense.  We are asked if we know how to tell the truth when we see it.  “Does crying mean someone is telling the truth?” “Is a police officer more likely to tell the truth than someone else?” “Can you think of reasons why someone might not report a crime right away?” “If eleven members of the jury think one thing is true but you are convinced the truth is different, do you have the courage to stick to what you know is true?”  As we hear each other’s answers, it’s clear that a very tiny minority is (rather obviously) wimping out because it doesn’t want to take a moment away from previously scheduled programming—it doesn’t matter what the crime is or what is at stake. “Selfish bastards,” hissess Prudence, who is still in active Judging mode. “de Tocqueville said jury duty was supposed to rub off that private selfishness that is the rust of society. He should have seen this lot!”  She talks like she knows Tocqueville. She doesn’t. He died in 1859.

When questioned, a woman on the other side of the room talks in difficult, unraveling gasps about what Truth means to her and I notice that the level of Courage in the room rises.  Collectively, we are starting to breathe again, to find ourselves. The level of bravery in the room continues to grow.  I hear the stories and the opinions of my fellow Vermonters and I am very much in awe of the general Goodness of their hearts.  They believe in Innocence until proven guilty.  They believe in the right to a fair trial.  They are willing to suspend their lives for an indeterminate amount of time to ensure that Justice prevails.  I have never participated in something like this and I am deeply moved.  I feel the renowned “community spirit of Vermont” coalescing in the warmly-dressed bodies around me.  We are looking out for each other and the Law. 

The law might be made elsewhere, far away, in courtrooms or congresses across the land but WE, we the people, YOUR people, will apply it locally.  We, your neighbors—with our flat hat hair, garish nails, poopy shoes, and gorgeous knitwear—We are the face of the Law in this town.  We can be trusted to do the Right Thing. When you hurt one of us, you will be held accountable and we will stand together to make sure of that.  We don’t hire professionals to decide. We got this.  No monarch or bureaucrat gets to determine your fate. We do.  You do not even have to testify against yourself.  No tortured “confession” will be wrung from your lips against your will.  We believe you until all “reasonable” doubts are removed.   You are one of US. We are here to protect you. Essential to the very core of our beloved democracy is the notion that we can come together in this courtroom to look each other in the eye and say “Hey! We matter. YOU matter.  Your behavior matters. What we hold dear matters.  Now, who needs to Shape the hell up??”

When he gets to me, the Defense attorney says “Ms. Bell?” (To Prudence, this always sounds like “Misspell?” which delights her no end.)

“Misspell, after reading your answers on your questionnaire [answers in which I confess to knitting without license to carry, chatting often to sheep, and never watching television…] I imagine that you do not wish to participate in a trial of this nature.  The topic would be too hard for you.  Would you agree?”

I look at him steadily.  The room goes very quiet. Even Miss Gum-chewer and Mr. Colonoscopy stop fidgeting and listen.

“No, sir. I do not agree.”

 Our challenge in this courtroom, and in our community, is to share in the brokenness and figure out how to begin the Mending.  Some accusations are wretched indeed. No one wants to listen to the lurid details of what happens in the Dark.  Sharp-clawed Predators are not just at the edge of the forest.  They are among us, even within us.  “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts,” says Henri Nouwen, to weep with those weeping (and remove their splinters!), to become weak with the weak, and vulnerable with the vulnerable.  When we attempt to live a life of pure, unconditional love and infinite care for each other, we are called to serve the Truth, so help us Oak Tree.

And the Truth is… there is SO much Mending to do!  Keep up your Good Work, my Darlings!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S. Yes, I was called to serve on the case.  

P.P.S. Yesterday a key witness came down with an illness we were led to presume is Covid.  The trial has been indefinitely postponed and the court will now choose a whole new jury for the case.  I have two more jury pools to go. Stay tuned!!

Unfinished

Groundhog found fog.  New snows and blue toes. Fine and dandy for Valentine candy.  Snow spittin’; if you’re not mitten smitten, you’ll be frostbitten! By jing-y feels Spring-y. –The Old Farmer’s Almanac

Greetings Dear Ones,

Just now, as I scuttle down the Cotton Mill hallway to my studio, with my jeans unzipped, hoping they do not fall down, clutching among other things a dirty coat, a blanket, my phone and keys and a damp, resentful dog whom I have just scrubbed as best I could with liquid hand soap in the ladies’ bathroom sink, I think to myself “Wow, this day certainly isn’t turning out as planned…”   It’s been what can only be described as totally goofy.  I’ve been trying to get this blog done since 5:am this morning but a series of intriguing derailments—most of them in the form of dogs, mud, customers, and chaos have prevented me from finishing…well, ANYTHING, including zipping my pants.  

It’s been a mostly Good Day, but with confusing interludes that included a man knocking on my door at the precise time another customer was due.   

“Cheryl?” I ask, as I open the door to view a heavily bearded man.

“No,” he says, frowning. “My name is not Cheryl.”

“Oh… Sorry, the appointment was for a Cheryl…”

“I’m not Cheryl. I didn’t make an appointment.”

“Oh,” I say, as nicely as I can, “my hours are by appointment—I’m not always here. I work a couple jobs… I just ask for appointments so that I don’t miss people.”

“Well,” he says with some resolve, “You didn’t miss me, so you’re fine. I just showed up. I didn’t know I had to make an appointment. It’s my first time here.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I soothe, “I’m ever so happy to help you. It’s just that I thought you were someone else.”

“I’m Me,” he insists, “and I didn’t know I needed no appointment.”

“You didn’t know you needed AN appointment,” corrects Prudence, silently.

“No problem; Come on in. Usually people who read my website know we need to make an appointment.  By the way, how did you know how to find me?”

“I saw your website.”

“Ah…but…you neglected to actually read it?”

“Yeah.”

 When I woke up before dawn, a small, elderly mammal, remarkably similar in size and weight and temperament to a groundhog, emerged from his lair under my duvet, saw his shadow, passed gas, and attempted to return to his burrow.  He wanted six more hours of nighttime.  I wanted to gag.  I plucked him from his nest and ushered him into the nearest tundra outside the front door.  That tinned prescription dog food he eats is the most effective Morning alarm I have ever had.  

“Do you know what today is?” I ask the sheep when I go to feed them.  They just look at me blankly.

“It’s 2/2/22!!!” I say excitedly, trying to give them a hint.

“Twos-day?” asks Prim, hopefully.

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s Wednesday,” says Blossom bossily.

“I’m Thirsty,” says Chip, pawing at the water bucket.

“No, I just told you, it’s WEDNESDAY,” repeats Blossom, butting him for emphasis, “not Thursday!”

“What’s a Wednesday?” Gus and Odie wanted to know, smacking their chops. “Can we eat it?”

“It’s Groundhog Day!” I say.

No one cares. 

They live pretty much the same day every day, no matter what we decide to call it.

“Is there such a thing as Sheep day?” they want to know.

“That’s Every day,” says wise old Willow, “if you are a sheep, that is.”

At 7:15, I hurry to the kitchen and tune in online just in time to see Punxatawney Phil decide that there will be six more weeks of winter.  Only Six weeks? That would make winter pretty short for these parts.  Winter in Vermont might last until June.  I never take the winter coats off the sheep until the end of May. Around here, we observe “Spring” the way some people claim their ethnicity and culinary heritage but not Creed—we are “Spring” in name only—not in practice.

  “Please, never let me make any major Life Decisions in February,” pleads a friend. Gone is January’s Optimism.  February has a completely different vibe: The main goals seem to be basic survival and discounted chocolate after February 15th.  Still, without much water to haul, wood to chop, or hay to stack, my Winter body needs something to do besides eat Klondike bars and knit. I need to run. Recently, my dear young wood-stacking, possum-wrangling, cabbage-slashing lodger/tenant helped me set up my old treadmill in the cellar.  It’s about twenty years old and seems to be constructed of cast iron.  It takes two of us to move it. As we are struggling to position it, he pauses, surveys the scene, and asks which way I wanted to orient it. On one side of the cellar is a workbench piled high with spinning wheel parts, broken oak chairs, and interesting boards I intend to use, fix, or up-cycle.  The wall behind us contains dry goods—tins of beans, rows of canning jars, small metal trash cans filled with bulk flour and oats.

“Do you want to run towards the food, or the unfinished projects?” he asks.  As I stand there considering, he decides for me: “Probably the projects. They will inspire you to keep going.”

Few things have made me laugh harder.  Honestly, I would run faster and farther towards the food, even if it’s just dried beans and oats.  (I seriously consider dangling a donut from one of the rafters.) There is something about an unfinished project that sags me in my tracks. Poet Mary Oliver talked about “the sag of the unfinished poem” and the “release of the poem that is finished.”  She has no idea how much sag a disemboweled spinning wheel can cause! I look around at a cellar filled with half-baked projects—projects which represent seeds that landed on poor soil, or butterflies that were too weak to claw their way out of the cocoon. Is it my fault or theirs?  (Peevishly, I blame them.  They should have known better than to break!) Sometimes I assume that there is a natural selection to projects and that those not robust enough to sustain my energy or interest are destined to languish in this purgatory. But in truth, it’s not always their fault. Creatively, some things require a lot of “me” and there simply is not enough of “me” to get a job done. I’ve used every inch of “me” to get my jeans on instead. (On, but alas, not zipped…)

The first song on my play list is “Run, Run, Run” by One Republic.  Really, given the setting, and my level of cardio fitness during midwinter, it should be Schubert’s Symphony No. 8--“Unfinished Symphony.”  I take off plodding uphill (the machine is broken at the steepest incline) and think about how every culture has its own story of what Hell is.  To the ancient Greeks, there was no greater punishment than to begin a task over and over and over again and never get it finished.  I feel like Sisyphus, rolling his stone up the hill. Only for me, it is my own thigh meat, rolling upward, as I gaze around at all that will never be Finished.

I think about a friend’s comment.  She has just lost a beloved neighbor. “February is a great time to die,” she says, thinking she is being consoling. “It’s like the whole world is dead too. Somehow, I think it would be worse to go when Lilacs are in bloom and things are just beginning…” 

I disagree.  Dying is Finishing. Nothing is finished in February.

“February is about Love,” I insist, “and Hope and maybe some over-priced roses if you are lucky. Mostly, it’s the idea that perhaps all that feels Unfinished is just waiting for a better chance… Even Death is not the End.”

“Sex and Death,” huffs Prudence, who sat in on her fair share of English Lit classes, “This is what you think of Poetry, and now February too? How convenient that this ‘month of Love’ is also the shortest!”

It’s a short month but already there is so much to celebrate. Yesterday was both the Lunar New Year (Tiger, Tiger, burning Bright! In the Shadows of the night!) and St. Brigid’s Day, Imbolc, the ancient Celtic festival celebrating the half-way point between the winter solstice and the Spring Equinox.  We won’t know warmth for months but at least there is more light and a New Moon. The hens are starting to lay again.  There are hopes, round and dormant, that keep freezing in the nest.  A thaw will come… 

Tonight, after the evening chores, I go into the Winter Woods and listen to all that seems, on the surface, to be dead.  It’s not.  It’s merely Waiting.  

Schubert won so much acclaim for his “Unfinished” work—“work so well constructed, only a genius could have done it.”  Sadly, my unfinished work garners no such praise!  No one wants to rave about a vintage dress from Harrods that has had the sleeves hacked off and the armholes left unfinished.  Ditto the dirty quilt that smells of maple syrup and toddler sweat, nor the jeans that “broke” right at the crotch.  Some things Must be Finished. And as quickly as possible!

Others, like an essay, or a True Love, can never be finished.  That’s why I cannot edit this to explain why I had to wash the dog and could not zip my pants… I'm just going to hit “send” and start over. (Again).

With all that is yet Unfinished in me,

I love you still. Keep mending!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Retrograde

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.”

–William Shakespeare’s “Julius Ceasar”

Greetings Dear Ones!

Is reorganizing your vintage button collection while singing sea shanties in a muppet voice losing its usual thrill for you, too? Does life these days feel as full and dull and messy as the back seat of my Ford? Is it because you haven’t slept for more than three hours at a stretch for over six years now? Is it because your budgeting strategy for the New Year does not involve actually looking at your check book?  Is it because the last “vegetable” you ate was really just ketchup?  Because there is a Pandemic raging for a second year in a row? Because you haven’t danced (with a partner) since January of 2020? (cleaning the kitchen to ABBA blasting doesn’t count.)

Naw…. It’s bigger than that.  It’s bigger than National.  It’s bigger than Global.

It’s Planetary.

Regardless of what you think Mercury in Retrograde is all about, the fact remains that I had nineteen phone messages on my business line that I could not access without spending two hours in my local Verizon store yesterday, pestering a magical woman with serious Superpowers where technology is concerned.  A gentleman customer had limped all the way up two flights of stairs to let me know that my (phone) mailbox was full and that the downstairs door, which I said was “red” on my website was now actually painted green.  It was a wonder he found me, he told me with considerable astonishment.   From the looks of him, it had been a rough journey—starting years ago—that got him to that moment.  After he recovered and we’d discussed his business, he had no idea how he was going to make it back to his car, as he could go UP stairs but not down.  I wound up taking him on a long, meandering walk to the other end of the building, where I loaded him in the industrial service elevator—the kind that is like a huge cage that slides down inside a bare brick tower—and escorted him to the ground floor.   Once there, we wandered a while until we managed to find a side exit to the parking lot.  I don’t even know if it is possible to navigate successfully from the south end of the building to the north and remain indoors.  I’ve never done it.

It’s been a somewhat glitchy week.  A week that reminds me to Slow Down and be thoughtful, to double  and triple check things—like that vest I almost gave back to a man without sewing the inside lining shut, or the coat I almost gave back to another gentleman without also returning the contents of its pockets, which had scattered on the floor when I turned the thing inside out—a summa cum laude pin, a pen that didn’t write, and a vintage envelope of extra buttons.  The spare change I kept and deducted from his bill, since it rolled too far under my cutting table for me to retrieve it.

The Man Who Could Only Go Up left his old ski coat to be repaired.  “I love this coat,” he says fondly “No sense getting a new one when I am already so attached to this one. It’s been good to me.”  He speaks with the resigned devotion of a long-married spouse. Most of my work these days involves coat repair—mostly zippers.  I’ve decided zippers are going to be my Superpower.  When you can’t get out of something, “Get Into It,” I say! I now find myself in off hours perusing sewing supply websites for vintage zipper parts the way some folks shop for jewelry. 

At least the weather has been mild.  Jeff Foxworthy was right; if you think ten degrees is just “a bit chilly,” you probably live in Vermont.  Ten degrees in the sun felt positively balmy after last week’s stint at sub zero.  I had my coat open and my gloves off as I did my evening chores.  If it gets above freezing (32F) and you think “Oh, whew!  Now the bees can take a dump!” you are probably also a current or former Bee Keeper.  Honey bees only take “cleansing flights” when the temps are above freezing.  The rest of the time, they hover around the Queen, trying to keep her warm, while they clench their bums, hold it, and hope for better weather.  Each day, I look at the forecast and picture their tiny, grimly determined faces, looking oddly similar to those one glimpses on documentaries of the residents of Buckingham Palace.  The only one hovering around me to keep warm is wee Nigel and he doesn’t hold anything in!  Neither do the sheep, who have taken yet another cleansing flight in their heated water tub.

“Wally did it,” informs Miss Prim.  Wally says nothing but looks at her darkly.

“Do you believe in Mercury Retrograde?” I ask the sheep.  I am still moving slowly after falling out of the hay loft last week.  “Am I supposed to move slowly, Reflect on the Past, Address stagnant energy? Is that really what this is about?”  

“What’s Mercury Retrograde?” Ask the calves.  “Will it eat me?” worries Gus, the shy one. “Can I eat it?” Odie wants to know with bulky interest.

“Mercury Retrograde is that happy month that happens three times a year when Nancy gets to blame the alignment of the planets for why she cannot find her car keys,” says Willow.  

“Who does she get to blame when Mercury is not in retrograde?” Prim wants to know.

“The rest of the time, it’s her own damn fault,” says Willow, not unkindly.   She’s an old ewe who tells it like it is.

“Well, how else can you explain all the chaos in the world right now?”  I ask.

“What chaos? There’s chaos? How can there be bad stuff happening in the world when there are so many women buying crystals?” interrupts Prim innocently.   

“I’ll say what I always say,” says Willow.  “It’s not about looking back or looking around, but looking Within. Try that.  See what you see.”

I agree. This is what I see:

A friend brings in a beloved coat of hers—“I think the zipper needs to be replaced,” she says forlornly, apologetically.  “I’ve read your blog and I hope I am not guilty of zipper abuse!” She is as penitent in confessing as I was when I handed a clump of phones and wires to the Amazing Verizon Maven.  Upon closer examination, her teeth are fine and only the pulley needs to be adjusted, which I can do while she waits.  (I’m talking zipper here, not Verizon personnel, though her teeth are also good!)    The best news is that we get to have a nice visit while I convince the pulley to do its job correctly. 

“I got this jacket when I was pregnant,” she says wistfully.  Her children, like mine, are in their twenties now.

“That went fast, didn’t it?” I say laughing.  I think of the Robert Burn’s quote “the Life of man is but a day at most.”  Coats, of course, live much, much longer. This coat looks virtually unaltered after twenty years of wear, though I cannot say the same for my friend, who has grown far more beautiful with age, especially since she’s let her wispy curls turn silver around her temples.  The escapees form a halo around her in the light of the dressing room and I cannot help but think that fine lines from smiling give her eyes a knowing merriness that younger eyes could never have.  Joy has been a long and ready habit with her.  Who needs wrinkle cream when twenty years of life can make one look so Experienced and Vibrant?

Virtually the very next day, a young pregnant woman sits in the exact same chair.  She too is absolutely gorgeous, but her story is still in her stomach not on her face.  I have to fix her coat—a large, soft, retro thing that seems to be part blanket, part trench coat—the same day because this is the only one that will close over the unborn son impersonating a basket ball under her sweater.  She only has a few weeks to go before summoning her home-birth team to welcome the boy she cannot name until she meets him face to face.  We talk about what it is like to anticipate the birth of your first child—the excitement, the fear.  She gets up and stretches several times as I sew.  She has reached that uncomfortable point in her confinement when she cannot be “confined” in any position for too long.

I smile at her with an unexpected rush of tenderness that startles me. I remember being Her—a young woman hugging a large belly full of aches and untold stories (and a little gas).  I wonder if I will see her again in twenty years (which is but a moment) and if the coat will be the same.  I know that after twenty years of life with a son, she will not.   By then, her heart will have grown to be a one-size-fits-all, ready to wrap around any fault or failing of his.  Her temples will be as silver as her tears.  She will see him in the faces of all other children and see other children, perhaps even herself, in him.  Her eyes…her eyes will be deeper, brighter, with scribbles at the edges where children drew her smiles.

She holds on to herself, happy to wait…for the coat, for the birth, for the next twenty years.  She is not in a rush. 

I look at her with admiration for her graceful patience, her Serenity—the mirror image of my Yesterday friend’s grateful Acceptance of Life on its terms. Was I that way at their age?  I think not. I rushed. I scurried.  I was all over the place.  My whole life has felt like it was one long hectic planetary Retrograde, punctuated by howling full moons, high tides, droughts, and blazes, changed plans, lost wallets or car keys.  I grew up hearing old people say my generation hadn’t a clue and I believed them. They said we “didn’t know how to work” so we stayed over-busy. We “didn’t know how to save” so we pursued ridiculous bargains on cheap stuff we did not need.  We had “no values” (or value) so we spent years in therapy blaming them for trying to do a better job than their parents had. “Youth was wasted on us,” said our embittered elders—survivors of wars, bell bottoms, linoleum, shag carpeting, Agent Orange and tie dye… so I became a little old lady when I was very young, nostalgic for a past I never knew, before I had even given birth to myself.

I thread my needle, do my Mending, and look backwards, inwards, through the lenses of Time and Story and marvel at the young people I see today (whipper-snappers as young as 97!)  

They are incredible.   Nothing is wasted on them.  They honor the past in their thrift-store finds as they hold the future.   There is no real Retrograde—it’s an illusion.  But if we need to sit down and rest, to stretch while we wait, that’s ok.  We only appear to be going backward.  Even in our pausing, there is only ever forward.  In a few weeks time, there will be babies born, more seeds to plant, gardens to tend. Migratory birds will return.  This cold, chaotic darkness has a necessary shelf life.  Grab your Long Winter’s Nap while ye may!

Beneath Her ancient maternity cloak, Nature nurtures a dark, and feminine magic--creating within an unseen future we can only name when we meet it face to face.

Wishing you peace, tranquility, and Every Blessing as you Mend,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Unzipped...

“If you cannot fly then run, if you cannot run then walk, if you cannot walk then crawl but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s back to being brisk here at the Land of Lost Plots.  So brisk in fact, that some things have ground to a halt, like outside projects not directly related to survival.  After a few days last week at -9F, with wind chills near 20 below, yesterday’s high of 27F felt like a bloomin’ heat wave!  It’s up to 5F this morning, as I write.  When I went to the chicken coop, I could see tiny puffs of vapor, the size of tears, emanating from their beaks.  They have a heat lamp they can gather under and thus remain plucky and good-natured.  Not me.  A few feet from the wood stove and my blood gets slushy and I cease to be able to move.   Back-snapping cold like this is nothing to the native Vermonters and Canadians around me.  With cheerful stoicism, they go about preheating their cars, walking or skating on ice, dressing like contented bison.  They carry on their duties, wearing the large, unisex parkas and boots that are de rigueur here nine months of the year.  Too late, as a seamstress who dreads zippers, I realize I have moved to a land where the average person has on her body at least ten pounds of wool and 1-4 zippers (and is mildly abusing at least one of them) at all times.

This week a young man called and said he had no time to come in to the shop but that the zipper on his only winter coat was broken and he needed it fixed.  I arranged to meet him at the local grocery store and look at the zipper and, if it could not be fixed that day, measure it to order a replacement for him.  When I got the replacement, I would call him and do it the same day.  No one can be without a coat in this weather!

I can always tell where I am in my spiritual development when I get a lot of zippers to repair/replace at the shop. Am I approaching each job with patient, even joyful, curiosity?  Or am I judging the total nincompoop who destroyed this zipper?  (People should not make me judge them!) Very few zippers break just because they are “bad.”  People don’t treat them well.  And because zippers cannot stand up for themselves, (I mean literally…that’s why they come in to see me) we denigrate the victims—we blame them instead of the miscreants who did not seat them properly and carefully before yanking on the pulley, or putting too much lateral force on them.

“This zipper has quit. I don’t know what happened to it but it just won’t work anymore,” they tell me time and time again.

“Hate the crime, not the criminal!” says my better angel.

 “Oh, hell, hate the criminals too” says Prudence. “We wouldn’t have crimes without them.”

The truth is, my old friend Zippy—Dear, departed Zippy, who used to do most of the zipper repairs at the old shop—was right.  If you do enough zippers over time, they become a lot more fun.  These days, I am getting so much better at them I actually enjoy them.  I absolutely LOVE when doing a hard thing becomes easier.  It’s SO satisfying!  I’m not as fast as she was, but I’m Good.  I usually have to do one side twice and the other side three times to get them to turn out right—but that score is getting better all the time.  (I used to have to reposition them as much as ten times!)  I replaced one last week that took four hours and filled the entire shop with down—it was one of those nasty, waterproof kind in a coat constructed in such a way that there were no external seams on the outside of the coat.  Everything had to be done from the inside.   I ate enough goose to think I’d had a Christmas dinner.  But it looked perfect when I was done and the woman who owned it was thrilled.  

 In other news, I have been called up for Jury duty.  I have been sent a lengthy questionnaire designed to assess my suitability for judging my peers.  Ooooh… the State of Vermont has no idea how proficient I am at judging my peers.  Especially when they wear zippers.  [People! Again, I beg of you: make sure the bottom of the zipper is securely seated before you begin yanking! And those with luscious curves, don’t be dragging those jeans over your hips with the zipper only half-way down.  This is how tragedies occur.]

Apparently, the district court system wishes to know what news media I subscribe to, any social media I follow,  what my hobbies are, and especially if I have any religious  objections to judging others.   After reporting that I don’t watch any TV at all, EVER (never have), rarely listen to news (used to obsessively but have had to limit it due to the anxiety it causes), don’t subscribe to a single pod-cast, and spend my precious spare time playing music, chatting to sheep and admonishing mouthy oxen, my housemate commented dryly, “They aren’t even going to have to sequester you, if you get chosen. They’ll probably have the whole jury to live here for the duration of the trial!”  Ha!

Yes, It’s true.  I do live in a Happy Bubble of general obliviousness.  In theory, I DO have spiritual objections to judging my fellow humans but I cannot help it.  I’m pretty low down on the social ladder and spend a lot of time looking up at things people don’t think I can see. From here, I get to see a lot of what my young son used to call “bummage.”  America is full of it at the moment.

A few days ago, I quite literally got to lie for a while at the bottom of a ladder I had recently fallen off.  I had been rushing around in the hay loft and my feet were numb inside my boots so I lost my footing coming down. I got a swift opportunity to think about things from a new angle, while the sheep and calves watched from their pens with mild astonishment.  They were not quite so concerned about my welfare as with the fact that I was not giving them supper with my usual efficiency.  Instead, I was crawling to a hay bale to try to sit up, mentally counting each of my bones and wondering what a ruptured spleen might feel like. 

“Well, this is certainly a fall from Grace,” commented one.

“I thought her name was Nancy,” said another.

“Really, the fall was from the absence of grace,” piped up Prim, who knows all the answers.

“What’s Grace?” asked the young Jerseys hungrily. “Can we eat it?”

As a result of what turned out to be only minor bruising, I got to spend Martin Luther King Jr. Day resting at home with ice packs and Epsom salts, thinking about the Justice system and my upcoming part in it, the social justice issues still present since the Civil War, hoping for Change, feeling the need for healing in our hearts and in our politics (not to mention our backsides!) It was a precious day of peace and pondering. What is a ladder anyway, but another form of zipper?

I remember being in middle school and having our teacher play a recording of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech and crying. We had never heard it before.  I distinctly remember thinking “that man is somebody’s daddy...” and he feels so sad for his children.  It was enough to make me weep and get excused to go to the girl’s room to blow my nose.  I was shocked to learn that his family was not like my family; his children not like me or my white and freckled friends.  I truly believed (and still do) what I had been taught thus far, that we are ALL God’s Children.   Ever after, this holiday has filled me with sorrow. I had no idea that I would grow to be an old lady before anything changed for my brothers and sisters.

I had a chance to chat with the sheep about it on MLK day as we watched the snow piling up around the barn and listened to answers Blowin’ in the Wind.  “You guys are all sorts of colors,” I said. “Are you ever mean to each other based on the color of your wool?”

“Never,” said Willow.

“We are mean to each other to get at more food.  That’s all.  Seamus is eating way more than his share of the Christmas tree, so we have to smash him occasionally,” said Blossom, pushing her way forward, threateningly.

“Seamus? Who’s Seamus?” I wanted to know. “We don’t even have a Seamus.”

Blossom rolled her eyes and nodded with her mouth full towards Chip.

“Whatever… Him, then.”  She has never managed to learn the name of her own son, whom she rejected at birth.

“Well, Chip? How do you feel about this? Do you carry any core wounds from childhood that make you mal-adapted for society? Are there ancestral healings that need to take place?”  He just shrugged.  With his one horn, he looks rakish, no matter what he says.

“Nah… I just live in the moment and eat all I can.”  

Fair enough.

I wish we humans were like this.  But we aren’t.  We DO have core wounds.  We do remember our history.  Well, some of us more than others…  And it’s a tough history indeed.  

If you really believe there is such as thing as a “them,” Darlings, you are sadly misguided and only Rot, numb feet, and Falls will ever come of that.   There is only an Us. Only We. WE the People.  Let us not be deceived by our own proud or petty insecurities.   Some of us think differently, perhaps even behave differently, than others.   That’s a wonderful thing.  We certainly don’t all have to vote the same way, but we should all get the chance to vote.  We don’t all eat the same things but we should all get the chance to eat.  We don’t all pray the same way but we should all get the same chance to pray.  

Zippers may be testy but they have unique power to bring a Left and a Right together.  They are hard to manage and difficult to replace. But we need them. Now more than ever, especially in a world that is SO COLD.   Whatever you are doing this week to mend, to heal, even if it is just your own dear Spirit (or bruised ribs), keep at it Dear Ones!  Menders are in short supply.  Sometimes the hardest work is the most satisfying—especially when we get Left and Right to come out even.  We don’t want the children of today to grow into little old ladies and men in a future where nothing got fixed!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Turnings

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time to every purpose, under heaven

--Song by Pete Seeger

Greetings Dear Ones!

When I heard what my dear niece did this week, I told her mother immediately that she would “wind up in the blog.” And so it is.  But before I “N-Bell-ish” this tale, I beg you to keep in mind throughout that Rabbit is an extremely clever young woman.  Do not let the following events change your mind on that fact.   That’s what makes the story so darn funny. If she were a total nincompoop, we might hear a tale such as this with compassion and perhaps a little pity.  We might smile forlornly, weep a little, and then make a pious donation to a relevant charity devoted to fostering such souls. We would not roar with laughter at her folly, like her mother and I did.  (We are only a tiny bit horrible—not that horrible.)  

No, dear Rabbit is the type whose name appeared regularly on her school’s “Student of the Month” billboard during her Senior year of Highschool.  She is an extremely competent veterinary technician who regularly assists in surgeries and works full time while maintaining straight A’s in college.  She’s artistic, musical, kind and capable.  When her favorite sweater developed a large hole in the arm, she knew she could fix it.  The hole developed right along the underarm seam, which is often sewn with a chain stitch these days.  For those who might not know what a chain stitch is, it’s a looped way of sewing that means if you cut one of the loops and pull it just right, the whole garment opens up just like a bag of dog food.  (Most feed bags are stitched closed with a chain stitch.)

Rabbit got out her needle and thread and went to work.  Her stitching is beautiful, just like her mother’s.  (Her mother and I used to spend many hours in our youth doing counted cross stitch samplers.  Such were the idylls of growing up in a land before video games…) Rabbit sewed with great concentration for a long time to close the vast hole that had opened up.  She used tiny, even stitches that melted beautifully into the knitting—this hole would never  open again, so small and perfect were those stitches.  When Rabbit gets focused on a task, it gets DONE.   She smiled happily, daydreaming as she worked, lost in “the zone” of satisfying handwork. Finally, she stretched upwards and announced that she was finished.  She showed her mother, who admired her work.  “Aunty Nancy would be so proud,” she said.  Rabbit beamed and slipped the sweater on over her head.   She put one arm in a sleeve then looked momentarily confused.  Something was wrong. She couldn’t get the other arm in the other sleeve.  She wiggled and struggled, growing more desperate and confused.  She looked down. What the hell was going on??? Suddenly, she saw the hole in the sleeve below her, still open… What?  She had closed the entire armhole from armpit to shoulder!  She had completely missed the actual hole, which was lower down on the sleeve.

“THIS is why I could never be a seamstress,” she announced flatly, throwing the sweater on the floor.

For those of us whose “New Year” has gotten off to a wobble, I find this story oddly reassuring. (Especially the part that ensures job security for the likes of me!) How many of us have had a January like this so far?  We think we’re on the right track.  We think we know what the situation calls for.  We have the tools, the talents, the drive—and we enjoy the work immensely until we discover we’ve actually made a total hash of something quite simple.  Now what?

When they called to tell me what had happened, I tried to console my niece by saying, “It’s OK, Rabbit. I’ve done plenty worse.  You know how you avoid mistakes like that?  You have Experience.  You know how you get Experience?  You make a lot of mistakes like that.”

Everything looks different when it’s turned.  It’s not easy to picture things simultaneously as they are in front of you, and as they would be, turned right side out again.  Many’s the time I have put dress sleeves on backwards, twisted the linings of coat sleeves, and even shortened the same sleeve twice.   I swear, sleeves are like savvy cattle who know damn well where to go, know it’s time to go in, but just don’t want to yet so they wind up trashing the barn instead.

Anyone can plow on in a forward direction once they get started.  But Turnings—of sleeves, or socks, hearts, or cattle—these are the things that reveal true Mastery. 

Take socks.  “Sock heels” is my current metaphor for January.   Recently, I was sitting with a fabulous young knitter who whipped up an entire cap in just an evening.  “You should do socks,” I said, “You would love them.”

“I don’t want to have to turn a heel,” she admitted.  “That looks hard.”

“It’s not. I don’t know why people are so scared of that.”  Many people have variations on how to turn a heel.  Here’s how I do it:  After knitting in the round the desired length from the top of the sock down towards the ankle, I divide my total number of stitches by three, then continue knitting only one third of the stitches.  The other two thirds just rest.  We’ll pick them up later.  First, we just knit a tiny, tight square.  That’s all.  Later, we’ll pick up stitches along the edge, add them to the ones that have been resting, and go on.

Turning oxen is kind of similar in that one boy has to stop, or slow down a lot, so that the other guy can walk around him.  Even driving a car around a tight corner at speed, we need to pump the brakes to navigate the tension between centripetal forces and centrifugal impulsion. 

Turning any kind of corner involves Pausing. 

When we turn something inside out to fix it, we first need to pause.  What is it we are fixing? Where do we want to turn?  What needs to be mended and what doesn’t?  And most importantly, what kind of snacks would best sustain us on this journey? It takes a moment to reorient ourselves to a new angle of the familiar.  Pause…. Focus….

It never hurts to take a moment to think about how we are interacting with our environment and how it is interacting with us.  (As I type, my environment is a whopping three degrees of F that’s cold outside.)  How can we join the flow?  Especially when we feel frozen? What are the signs that we are on the right path? Where can we look around us for guidance rather than trying to push things through or force our way forward?  I very much believe in “inspired action”—action that is prompted by those little voices in our heads reminding us to do things like bring an umbrella, stock up on windshield washer fluid, don’t eat that thing you found in the back of the fridge… and so on.

Sometimes, we don’t feel like moving forward at all.  Instead of fighting through, perhaps we need to rest.  So many of us have ambitious goals or nagging obligations that we feel we must accomplish in order to get a new year/month/season off to a fresh start.  But if there is anything I have learned from my work as a seamstress, it’s that turning a new corner requires more thought, more pause, more intention that one might assume.  

This January has a strong sense of retrograde to it.  Some of us feel thwarted, some feel stuck, some feel dissipated in odd ways.  Lately, I feel like my energy is like two inches of water all over the cellar floor.  There would be so much power there if it could be contained and focused but it is going in so many directions that all I am making is a sloppy mess.  If I’m not careful, I might accidentally sew a bunch of armholes closed. Or even worse, leg holes. (This reminds me of the woman who once brought in all her husband’s boxer shorts and asked me to sew the front openings closed.  She wanted to force him to sit down when he peed!)  It’s time to pause, find my inner Stillness, maybe invest in an industrial shop vac.  “Oh, Goody!” says my inner Grundalina, who wants to leave the mess and go back to bed for a winter’s nap.  

Then I remember the Turning of a Sock heel: just do about a third of the work with clarity and focus.  Let what’s on the other two needles rest a bit.  Keep going with what needs to be managed now.  The other things will catch up and be woven in beautifully in Divine Timing.  Not everything needs to be done at once.  This is my Valediction forbidding Perfectionism.

The beauty of learning how to turn things around is that humility makes experts of us.  There is great joy in learning we can always start again, wiser, when we are ready.  Our planet has just turned a great corner in the vast darkness of space.  We are headed back towards the light, the warmth—though it does not feel like it yet!  We are on our way, even with one armhole sewn shut and the other tied behind our back… STILL… “Turning, turning, we’ll turn round right!”

Keep turning, and resting, and Mending, dear ones! Thanks for your Good Work!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Feeding the fire...

Greetings Dear Ones!

Ever realize that you are suddenly wiser than you were before?   Do you look back on past decisions, decisions of mere weeks ago, and question your sanity?  For instance, right now, I am questioning whether making the interior of my home look like a pine-scented woodland salad was a good one.   All my friends were doing it, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. But seriously… A small TREE in the front room?  What was I thinking?  Haven’t the sheep taught me that large, wild, living things belong OUTSIDE? Present self is looking at Past self with eyebrows that look like caterpillars in a boxing match.  And all these fresh pine and cedar garlands draped over doorways and up banisters?  Who is going to take care of all this? How many times can we clog this hoover with dead needles before we give up and take to a Netflix binge on the couch with the rest of the cookies? (I’m just kidding; there are no more cookies.) And the way the juice from the decorative clove-studded citrus fruits has baked itself into the hardwoods—only Jack Russell dung has more staying power.  I’ll be chiseling this stuff until the cows come home.  Oh, wait; they’re home!  They are looking in the window at me, wondering when I am going to come out to play.   I can’t.  There’s too much work to do and someone has trashed my house.   It couldn’t look any worse if I had actually hosted ten people for four days, as was originally planned, but then cancelled due to that Virus-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named.  

Yep. It’s January… named for the Roman god Janus—that keeper of the gates who was pictured with two heads because he was keeping watch on both the past and future.  Present self is pissed.  She has some anger to manage; Past Self had a good party and left her to clean up the mess.   We just hope our Future Self takes us all in her arms and says, “There, there my darlings.  You made it. You survived.  Good Girls, You!  I wouldn’t be who I am today if it hadn’t been for you. Thank you.”

Things are swiftly business as usual in the shop. A lady comes in to have one small snap sewn on her favorite coat and chats for, well, much longer than it takes to sew on a snap.   “So! How was your New Year,” she asks, as if the New Year was a mere night and now we are back to the same old year.  It certainly seems that way—given that the last two years have melded into an interminable purgatory for some.

Well, my “New Years” was all about burning up the pile of brush that has accumulated in the past eighteen months of clearing the land of lost plots.  In Vermont, it is legal to burn without a permit as long as there is snow on the ground, no wind, perhaps a light mist falling from a Northeasterly direction and the pile is soggier than Cheerios after 2.5 seconds in a bowl of milk.  In short, it’s perfectly legal to burn when absolutely nothing is capable of catching fire, including the fire.  It took us five hours to get the thing to stay lit.  An expert had told me to use a leaf blower and four times I lit a reasonably good blaze, only to completely extinguish it with the leaf blower moments later.  It was as if a giant was blowing out birthday candles and I just stood there, getting older and colder.   Even Worse, there was NO cake…

I know I tend to be a bit optimistic and silly at the best of times—my imagination goes on the wildest safaris without even a peck of common sense.  So it is with those who have made a grand plan without knowing the first thing about what they are doing.  Somehow,  I had convinced myself that we would simply toss a match into all that tinder and moments later the thing would go “Ka-Boom!” and there’d be nothing left to do but sing carols and serve mulled beverages.   Prudence was terrified that we might accidentally reignite California from here.  Thankfully, No.   Michael, one of the wonderful young men present, happens to be a post-Doc engineer at MIT and an expert in chemistry.  He taught us a lot about fire.

One of the things about a soggy brush fire in snowy Vermont is that ignition temperatures are hard to achieve.   You have to labor at a brushfire like a new fiddle tune—stick by stick, stump by stump.   Basically, you have to light a small fire, use it to dry out the next bit of wood, then use that to make a slightly larger fire.  It takes pitchforks and shovels and muscles. (“And a total absence of mulled beverages!” notes Prudence approvingly.)  There is a lot of smoke-watching, eye-watering, and steaming of bare necks and branches.   The next time someone tells you they have burned a brush pile, reserve some awe for their audacity, carefulness, and persistence.   Michael labored over the coals for over eighteen hours in freezing rain, in a soot-stained T-shirt,  like he was powering  a steam boat on the Missisippi whose captain wanted to water ski.  It was humbling indeed to see how much work a fire takes. 

I tried to tell the sheep about it when I took a break to do barn chores. “We know all about fires,” they said nonchalantly. 

“Oh, really?” I asked. “What could you possibly know about fires?”

“Each of us has a tiny one inside of us.  That’s what the hay is for, to keep it lit.  Our hay fires in our tummies keep us warm on these nights when it’s fifteen degrees out.  You keep feeding us and we keep putting hay on those fires.”

“Come to think of it, we did use quite a bit of hay to light the bonfire,” I admitted.

“Hay makes good fires,” burped one, “because it is small.  It’s all about surface area.”

They lay around the pen, burping and cudding, like people at a diner who have paid the check but weren’t ready to leave yet.

“It’s good to chat with you again,” I said. “I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you for the cattle recently.  I’m besotted with them.  Everything is so new and fresh for them.  It’s exciting.  It reminds me to be young again and think about things for the first time.”

“Like what a tarp might taste like?” snorted Chip derisively. “I saw the two of them trying to figure that out the other day. Little Gus almost swallowed a big rip of it before you came along and yelled at him.”

“People who think tarps are food are not a good source of wisdom,” sighs Willow.   “Fuel is what keeps the fire alive within.  Tarps don’t do that.”

“They are actually pretty good at snuffing fires,” says Wally.  How he knows this, I have no idea.  He’s still just a lamb.

“This reminds me of New Years and all the changes people want to make,” I say in an effort to be philosophical. “The bonfire represents a huge change but it doesn’t happen quickly at all.  It takes a very long time to transform those piles from the past.  Each branch, each Resentment or Regret that has accumulated, must be separated from the bunch and allowed to dry out, burn, and travel into the navy blur Beyond in a shower of spark.” I meant to say Navy Blue but my lips were cold and in the end we all liked Navy Blur better.  It’s a good name for a Vermont night sky in January.

“We sheep don’t have regrets.  Those are human things.  We live in the Now, whether it’s trying to snuff us or not.  But from our view of the woodpile, we can see that a careful fire is a Good Thing.  It accelerates the decay and transformation that was happening anyway.  A carefully tended fire gets rid of a lot of dead wood that you don’t need.”

“A pile that size can hide some Bad Creatures, like foxes and Fishers and things that go Scratch in the night,” said a nervous someone at the back, “best to take a fearless moral inventory and get rid of it!”

“When you clear it out, the land will be free to grow the best grass ever, which we will use to make the best wool ever!” piped bright-eyed Prim.  She is the type of Teacher’s Pet who is always at the head of the class, with her hand, er hoof, up.

“Everything is always in the process of turning into something else,” grunts Blossom, taking a dump that can only be interpreted as the height of sarcasm.

“But why does it have to take so long?” I want to know.  “Why do the simplest projects always wind up requiring So Much Effort?”

“Because you want to Hurry,” said Willow, with a tinge of sorrow in her eyes.  “Changes take time.  Pushing too hard creates Burn-out instead of blaze.  Having too much responsibility all at once is exhausting.  It’s ok to lose your spark once in a while.  Bonfires, like novels and symphonies and snowsuits, are built of many thousands of little things.  They require work, not hurry. We aren’t much fond of either.  Slow down.  Have some hay. Make yourself warm.   Just keep feeding that fire within.”

I nod, then return to the fire I am tending… making a fuel of wayward vines and old regrets.  There is so much to clear by Spring.

I hope you are warm and cozy and tending your own fire within, wherever you may be.  May it light your eyes with promises and sparks that rise into the Navy blur. 

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

A Fresh Unfolding

Happy New Year Dear Ones!

From my neighbor’s kitty litter box, I can see the whole of the last year at the Land of Lost Plots laid out below me like the map of the Hundred Acres Wood in the House at Pooh Corner.  She and her sons have gone away to visit family and I am in charge of mail retrieval and turd dispersal in her absence.  In with the wanted, out with the shit—it’s good practice for welcoming a New Year.

It’s quite something to view from a new vantage what often feels too familiar to be seen.  I gaze down on what looks somewhat like a miniature medieval village: There are the ruins of the decrepit blueberry cathedral, listing leeward, full of blueberry bushes irregularly pruned by marauding sheep who ignore the “closed to visitors” fencing like tourists at a National Park site.  I close my eyes and remember the taste of those berries, dancing in purple stilettos on my tongue, as I ate them, hot and ripe, with a hazy slice of July dawn.  There are the gnarled old peach trees where in August the baby bulls and I tasted for the first time a sweetness that made our eyes roll back in our heads.  There is the ancient apple tree where Sport, our beloved curmudgeon was laid to rest during one of the endless summer rains. It was as if the sky was crying too. There is the grand circle of Hemlock logs stacked by young men into what looks more like Nordic Art than firewood. There are old stumps, still waiting to be split.  There is the patch of pear trees that yielded five varieties of brown and green and golden fruit, which were shared out with friends and came back to me as intoxicating slivers of pure heaven from a friend’s dehydrator in September.  There is the barn, the path, the mud, the snow… and beneath the snow is the Autumn grass I lay in to watch the stars and listen to the last vibratos of the cricket choir.  Beyond the house, I can see the claw foot tub, now filled with snow, where I often sat deep in hot thoughts, in a soap-bubble world.

I realize, as I gaze down and back from my neighbor’s window, that what I remember most are these round little moments—moments where the full Sweetness of life bore down on me and I had the sense and Grace to feel or taste it fully.  These moments had very little to do with anything linear, with lists, with rushing, or ambitious goals and speeding deadlines (most of which passed me by).  A lot of things I thought I had to do got supplanted by surprises I could never have imagined.  

Right now, I am still celebrating what I am calling “The Twelve Days of Omicron”—twelve rapid tests, eleven cancelled plans, 10 friends a-coughing, 9 super-spreaders….all the way down to One lone Baker Baking... My attempts to create one of those charming fantasy family holidays at what my children call “Our Christmas House,” have been scuppered on a daily basis by those who either get Covid or get scared.  I had the garland up, the tree trimmed, the presents wrapped, and all the traditional ethnic delicacies prepared, only to spend many days home alone, eating whole batches of cookies by myself.  It was marvelous!  I might cancel Christmas every year and do this instead!  I really got “into myself” and, as a result, wound up with so much more of me to love!

New Year’s has come too soon…

“The Party is OVER,” says Prudence.

This is Prudence’s favorite time of year.  She is totally fed up with all the squalor in both my head and parlor.  She can’t wait to declutter and detox.  She has an extensive list of punishments disguised as “Resolutions” designed to fix all that is broken, bad, or lacking in my moral fiber and my bank account.  She is convinced that if I just “try a little harder” this time, this time I will see results.  She is ready with a list of all-and-nothing routines to create New Habits immediately: No more clutter or procrastination or sugar. Ever. Never.  We will save every damn penny and never again succumb to hand-woven antique linens on eBay.

“We’re going to hit the ground running,” she announces shrilly.  I slump.

“But I want to hit the ground resting,” I whimper.  “When do we get that Long Winter’s Nap? I’m worn out from consuming all that sugar, fear, and grief.  I’ll settle for even a medium-sized nap!”

“Rubbish!” she snaps. “We’ve got to do something about all this rubbish. It’s time for the sheep to eat the Christmas tree so we can get on with the new Austerity Measures in a house devoid of dead shrubbery.”

“But what if I want to spend the next year lounging in my new sheep pajamas (thanks Rabbit!) doing that online course ‘Writing to Uncover Your Authentic Self?’”

“Absolutely Not,” she insists crisply. “We’ve already seen enough of your authentic self to know that uncovering more of it won’t do any good. We’ve got to attack that menopausal belly fat, stretch your crinkled up fascia, and do something about that desiccated mass of candy-floss you call hair.  No… we don’t need more of your authentic slacking or fondness for bean burritos.  So get up! You need to learn twelve fiddle tunes a month, sound like an angel on the harp, do high-impact aerobics daily, run a marathon by June, and subsist only on high-energy locally grown vegan foods, all while simultaneously improving the strength of your pelvic floor!”

“But what about slowing down, living simply, listening to the sheep, cuddling the cows, and finding holistic ways to reduce overwhelm and stress??”

“You live in Vermont,” she retorts. “That’s close enough.”

“But what if I want to embrace this totally arbitrary “fresh start” as a chance to go on a transformational Journey to explore peace and confidence; to honor, replenish and share my gifts; to be a better friend or neighbor to my fellow travelers?”   

“Enough of your buts.  You need to get off of your buts.  I wish I could sign you up for a top-selling course on high-impact excellence but you’ve already squandered our discretionary income on artisanal crockery and yarn. As if you needed more yarn!”

I’m tempted to do something rash, like run outside and roll naked in the snow, just to watch Prudence pass out so she will leave me alone.  I want this New Year to unfold in all the magical, wonderful, challenging, inspiring and unexpected ways that every year, every journey, every relationship and every Love unfolds.  A New Year isn’t something one can set a course for in a day.  Only by making constant, micro-adjustments with every single stitch, is it possible to sew a straight seam.  Life takes constant adjusting and recalibrating.  A year is round.  The world is round and so are its people (especially after all the holiday ethnic delicacies).   Too much over-straightening just leads us off course.

So I’m setting a course for Today only.  Where can we go if we are led by Curiosity and Wonder?  What can we mend, if we are thoughtful, kind, and tender? What calls us to do or be or taste or smell or feel Goodness?  What would we most like to experience next?  How do we honor with action and Gratitude, this amazing and mysterious Unfolding called Life, which is ever yet just beginning?

Wishing you every blessing of Health and Harmony in 2022, I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy