Greetings Dear Ones,

I am sitting at the laundromat crocheting a new finger-top to a pair of mittens for a customer while I wait for the machines to get done masticating my laundry. This is a new laundromat for me and I am all charmed up because it only takes quarters—not those new-fangled credit cards that you charge up, then misplace in a pocket of the shirt that just got locked into the machine… The twenty dollars’ worth of pirate’s booty that the coin machine spits out is as hefty and reassuring as pieces of eight. I am tempted to set sail for Bora Bora immediately. Who would spend such a heap of treasure getting crud off of clothes anyway? How droll. I can’t remember the last time twenty dollars worth of coins has made me feel so giddy, so Rich, so Invincible. But dutifully I feed the coins into the eyes of the machines and my soiled clothing into the open mouths and begin the long wait.

I love laundromats. I love getting everything Clean & Sorted all at once. It does something almost as positive for my soul as for my wardrobe. Out the big picture window, the sky smolders a smoky grey above a hillside ablaze with oaks and maples in full glory. Each leaf is like a scrap of flame as it flutters. The mittens I am working on are shades of purple and green and complement the scene outside.

A woman waiting nearby sees me working and says, “It must be nice to be able to do that,” nodding towards my crochet hook. “I could never do anything like that. I just haven’t got the time.” I peer at her quizzically. We are both sitting at a laundromat. I’m going to sit here with busy hands and she isn’t. Which one of us, exactly, has More Time? “Well, you’ve got some time right now—I’ll show you!” I offer. “Oh no…” she stammers hastily. “I’ve tried before. I just can’t do it. I don’t have the patience.” Prudence raises her eyebrows but says nothing. NOT having patience is one of the anti-virtues most likely to prompt her to get a run in her tights. She also has strong thoughts about people who make Excuses instead of Efforts but at least she has the sense to take this rare opportunity to shut up. “Patience” is a funny concept. Personally, I don’t have the patience to sit still with idle hands! It drives me batty to go somewhere and forget my handwork.

The woman watches the yarn inching through my fingers, drizzling itself over the hook into tidy coils, like the watery sand-mud of a drip castle at the beach, then hardening into a firm line of neat, tight stitches. She sighs. “It sure must be Nice…” she says softly. There is something about her wistfulness that melts me. She feels a certain call, a certain yearning to be a Maker but she keeps churning up reasons why she cannot do it.

Normally, when I hear comments like “it must be nice…” (which I hear quite a lot actually! “it must be nice to be able to sew…it must be nice to be able to spin… it must be nice to be able to fix your own clothes for free…”) it brings to mind my Least Favorite Fairy Tale. Perhaps you have heard it?

It’s a Grimm tale called “The Three Spinning Women,” first published by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm in 1812, and it is certainly grim, in every way. Firstly, there is a daughter who refuses to spin flax so her mother beats her. A queen, rolling by in her fine carriage stops and asks what all the ruckus is about. The mother, embarrassed for her lazy daughter, lies and says she cannot get the daughter to cease her incessant spinning and that the squeaking of the wheel is driving her nuts. So the queen tells the mother to let her take the daughter back to the castle with her, where she can spin to her heart’s content. “I have plenty of flax for her to spin and there is nothing I like so well as the sound of a spinning wheel in use. I am never happier than when the wheels are humming!” (I heartily concur. This is the only part of the story I agree with—the pleasantness of humming wheels, that is, not the kidnapping of other people’s daughters.) Back at the castle, the queen tells the terrified (yet still lazy girl) that if she spins three huge rooms worth of flax, that she shall have her son’s, the Prince’s, hand in marriage and one day inherit the kingdom. “I don’t mind if you are poor—for Cleverness and Industry are dowry enough.” (Ok, I agree with this line too.) So the poor girl is locked in the first room with all the flax and cries herself to sleep. (“We HOPE she is regretting her Laziness,” insists Prudence. “I’ll bet she’s saying “It Must Be Nice to be able to spin flax now! If only I had bothered to learn, instead of frittering my time away on Social Media and Sit-coms…”) The girl cries for three days because that is the rule in fairytales—things happen in threes. On the third day, three kind fairies show up—one with a big foot, one with a big thumb, and one with a big lip. They tell the girl that they will spin all the flax for her if she will agree to invite them to her wedding, call them her aunts, and seat them with her at the table. She agrees. (People who are desperate and lazy will agree to pretty much anything.) So the kindly “Aunts” spin all the flax for her and she gets to marry the prince. As promised, the Lazy Bride invites the Aunts to her wedding, where the rude, outspoken prince questions them about their “deformities.” The one with the big foot says her foot grew large from treadling the wheel; the one with the lip says it grew from having to moisten the flax with her spit; the one with the thumb says it grew from the flax rushing through her hands as it was being spun. The Prince is aghast. He bans his new bride from ever spinning again because he wants nothing to spoil her beauty. And they all live “Happily Ever After.” Yeah, right… (sound of retching noises from Prudence)

There is just so much that is annoying about this fairytale.

Yet I cannot help being fascinated by the idea that the constant spinning had somehow “deformed” the three aunts. As a fellow spinner, I can say that different parts of our bodies DO come to “embody” the wisdom that comes with many repetitions. There IS such a thing as “muscle memory.” Understanding how to do something and being able to do it well are two completely different things. For example, my left foot “knows” how to treadle the wheel but it can’t—I am completely “Right-footed” in much the same way that most people can only write their signature with their dominant hand.

Being able to “Do Things” is NOT nice. When people comment, “It must be nice…” Well, No, actually, it isn’t. People who can do or make things have been at it a long time. They have sacrificed parts of their body to endless repetitions that create deep-tissue “knowing” and change their bodies and brains forever. There is a tailor I know whose hand-sewn button-holes are a work of art. I long to be able to sew buttonholes like he does. But whereas I have only done mere hundreds, he has done thousands. Therein lies the difference.

People who do things well make them look “easy” and effortless—like it might be “Nice” to be in the middle of a flow like that, with such economy of effort for such a rich result. Because hard work eventually looks “easy” people begin to think it is “nice.”

Last weekend, I watched a friend dancing at a fundraiser for our favorite public radio station in Boston. She was floating about the stage as if she was weightless, as if she were reaching down with her feet to hit the beat on the deck below her, instead of pushing up off the ground. She dances as if most of her body is the liquid representation of Sound. Someone next to me commented, “Wow, imagine dancing like that! It must be nice to be able to move with such grace…” I nodded. What I did not say to the admiring stranger is that my friend has been in a horrific two-year battle with Lyme disease to be able to move at all. It’s not just Nice that she can dance like that—it’s miraculous—AND she earned every bit of that miracle through her own daily persistence and the strength of her spirit.

Writhing behind her on stage sat my son and his merry band of music-makers. Each slice of their fiddle bows cut open a vortex between worlds for pure notes to enter, gush, splash and splatter all over the slickened dance floor. I stared with pride and awe. I envied their ease with their instruments, yet I know there is nothing “Nice” about being able to play like that. All creativity begins as some form of self-defense. I have heard him for YEARS, practicing until the wee hours of the morning; driven to claim his Powers; striving to create his identity through Skills, rather than the jeers of misguided middle-school peers who labeled him differently as a result of his learning style.

What it comes down to is that there are two kinds of people: the Makers and those who marvel and say “It must be Nice.” What the Makers do is love the thing they do more than they love their own comfort. That’s it. They embrace the inconvenience of doing things badly in order to begin to do things well. They take the time it takes. They risk. They grow. Their change their bodies with their minds.

The now-done laundry before me is a harvest I pick over critically, deciding what to cull and what to keep. I can’t help thinking of the line from poet David Whyte, “anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you” as I sort.

Our bodies DO change by what we teach them. What we have to do to them over long and patient hours is not the least bit “Nice.” We are not “deformed” as in the fairytale, but we are Re-formed in our own image of ourselves as Dancers, Doers, Makers, Givers. That which brings us Alive can’t help but make us Bigger. “Beauty” might be something girls in fairytales are born with; Magnificence isn’t.

Autumn is the season of fires and farewells, a time of hoarding away or discarding in the liminal space between the tender, languid riot of Summer and cold Permanence of Death. Is there something that you think would be “nice” to do? Is there a part of yourself you see in someone else’s habits or craft? Plant that bulb today and one day it will shine a Light from within. You DO have Time. Grab it, Claim it, Pummel it by the hours, bit by bit, until you know the full Meanness of what it is you have accomplished. And someday, someone might look at you doing That Thing it is you have chosen to do and say “Wow, it must be nice…” and You, with your big feet, your big lips, your thick fingers and aching toes will say, “Damn…It’s NOT Nice. It’s MAGNIFICENT.”

Be well, my Darlings! Thanks for your Good Work. I love you Sew Much!!!

Yours aye,

Nancy