“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

–African Proverb (with love to Liz)

Greetings Dear Ones!

Thank you for all the heartwarming and encouraging comments I got about last week’s entry about cooking in the PDB kitchen. My favorite—the one that made me slap a knee and howl out loud—came from a reader who signed herself as “a retired camp cook and lifeguard, some of the best years of my life.” She said, “I have to ask one question (I can hear you screaming, my apologies) why would one want to peel carrots and potatoes?” Ha! (It’s like she knew…) Why indeed? It would have taken too long to explain in the last blog, but this VERY debate occurred at the kitchen sink where two volunteers were assigned the task of peeling potatoes. The compromise was “somewhat peeled” potatoes so that those who don’t like lumps in their mashed potatoes would not have too many. (When you can’t please everyone, please no one!) Since the carrots were to be roasted, in hindsight, we probably should not have peeled them, but we had an enthusiastic team of peelers. Who were we to deprive them of their peeling joy? Besides, I did not actually supervise that; I was back at Costco then, trading sixty pounds of coffee beans for ground coffee, since we had burned out the motor on the grinder after one batch.

My dad always said that “a camel is a horse built by a committee.” We definitely served out our share of camels last week. I donated all the uneaten camels to a food kitchen that serves hot meals to the homeless and delivers to shut-ins. The rest were fed to livestock. Many, many beings were grateful for our gross miscalculations and gross leftovers.

When I was explaining why we had so many “options,” the head chef stared at me in amazement and said, “We have too many hungry people for all these options,” and mixed the leftover vegan mushroom and regular mushroom soups together in one pot. There was enough to serve a warm soup for their entire lunch crowd the next day. Sometimes Unity must vanquish diversity.

Pondering food “camels” makes me think of my favorite wedding dress of all time. A mutual friend introduced me to a customer attempting to knit her own wedding dress. A knitted wedding dress? I was curious and excited and a tad jealous—I wish I had thought of knitting my own wedding dress back in the day, though such an endeavor might have made the betrothal last longer than it took Ulysess to find his way back home after the battle of Troy.

“Knowing you, your “train” would have been unraveling balls of wool following you up the aisle,” says Prudence.

The bride to be comes to the shop with balls of finest wool—she’s been knitting for months the most exquisite lace. It has the lustre of silk. Her knitting is perfection. This is the kind of knitting I rarely do because it requires intense focus, counting skills, strong visual awareness, pattern recognition, and the kind of household that does not include random visitations from incontinent baby farm animals. This kind of knitting is like advanced calculus. It’s the difference between a delicate souffle and a grilled cheese sandwich. She has the “skirt” starting at the waist and it is about the length of a mini-skirt by now, reaching mid-thigh. While she is not especially tall, we both agree that it is a long way to the ground yet and each time she goes around the circle, she must increase by eight to ten stitches per round to keep the circle expanding. For those who like math, if you double the radius (the number of rows) you must double the circumference (the number of stitches in that row) to keep the circle flat. The skirt needs to be a circle, not a “tube” so that it has the correct drape and swirl. (A bride is not a tube of toothpaste!) If math is not your thing, picture this: she is at the top of the mountain going down; her first few laps are quick but every time she goes around it, her trail gets exponentially longer. Suddenly, there are downed tree limbs, thorns, rocks, snags…ferocious mountain goats…have as much fun with this image as you want. This dear, ambitious knitter has a vast monadnock to descend on two sticks. Bravely, she has been shoveling yarn from one needle to the other and seeing ever less progress. She is in the wilderness and needs to make it out by the wedding day which is now only a matter of weeks away. Even if she parks herself on a port-a-potty and has all her meals lovingly hand fed to her by concerned volunteers so that she can do nothing but knit lace during her waking hours, she is not going to get down this mountain alone before the wedding. She has come to face the fact that if she wants to have what she wants, she cannot do it alone.

She needs help.

This is a fear-filled and tragic place to be if one is Creative. Have we not all been in this same wilderness at one time or another? The choices become abandoning the dream altogether or bastardizing it—letting other “parents” raise our orphan—allowing the dream to take control of its own destiny on a journey we had not planned for it and become the thing it Must Be instead what we wanted it to be. (I think there is a Greek term for this.) We must admit those who want lumps in their potatoes to work alongside those who despise lumps. We, who have spent hours designing and dreaming of creating the sleekest of racehorses, must contemplate creating a camel, as those with grubby mitts wrest the pristine silk from our exhausted fingertips.

Enlisting help, for certain people, myself included, can feel like abandoning the self, instead of including others. Needing others’ help can feel like weakness or failure, rather than opportunity for collaboration. We take a break to beat ourselves up a bit—the “Prudence” character within us puts on her boxing gloves and says things like “You should have started sooner! Of course you could not pull this off! What were you thinking?” Her knockout punch is “You’re a slacker but you’re all we’ve got. You cannot trust these people. If you want it done right, you must do it yourself!”

There is another terrifying possibility: it could turn out better than you ever could have dreamed. You’re NOT invincible nor irreplaceable. (Camels are actually pretty awesome creatures and infinitely superior mounts when one must traverse a desert of self-doubt.)

All it takes is the courage to be Open.

I’ve read a LOT about relationships over the years, and my own personal experience lends veracity to this concept: They’re Tricky! Apparently, the most successful relationships contain some basic fundamentals—#1, we need to be emotionally fit, with a low degree of neuroticism. (As a person who has pulled all-nighters to finish lace shawls on deadline, I’m not sure I qualify.) (“Certainly not!” agrees P.) People need to be Resilient, Resourceful, Open-Minded, Curious, Compassionate, Ambitious, Supportive, and above all, Excellent Communicators. In short, the best relationships are being had by the Best People.

“This is really not fair,” says Me, pouting. “What about those of us who get Defensive, Hurt, Misunderstood, Disregarded, who feel Overwhelmed, Unworthy, Unchosen, Unseen, Neglected?”

“That’s just step One,” says an inner Literature professor from the 1980’s, whose angelic tones I still hear occasionally. “The Problem is always the Start of a story. The core predictor of any story or relationship is the ability to resolve Conflict, no matter what that conflict might be. If you are in Conflict, you just have yet to finish the story.”

My favorite conflicts are always those that can be solved with More Yarn.

The Bride-to-Be has plenty of yarn as well as a gorgeous vintage silk gown. She had intended to wear it as a sheath beneath the fully knitted lace wedding gown. Together, we devise a new plan. After I alter the gown to fit her better, we decide to affix the knitting she has completed directly to the gown. The gown will be the foundation upon which we display as much knitting as possible. We even find a use for her swatch—the thing all diligent and serious knitters knit first to establish their gauge of stitches per inch. (Not doing this step is how I once came to make an Aran sweater that could slip-cover a Volkswagen.)

“Do you know anyone else who can help knit?” I ask.

“Oh, yes!” she says. “I have loads of friends and family members who all knit.” (Let’s pause a minute here and reflect on how Lucky is she!! What a blessing! To be a flower raised in such a garden of clever, patient people!)

“Can they help?”

“I think they would love that!” she says, relief beginning to melt the furrow on her brow. We notice that her lace pattern has a recurring leaf motif.

“Can they knit just leaves?” I ask. “If we had a bunch of leaves, we could stitch them randomly all over the dress and that would fill up the blank spaces.”

“Yes! I will give them yarn and a pattern for just the leaf.”

Weeks later, she returns with bags of leaves and the skirt she has extended as much as possible. The maidens and matriarchs have been hard at it, producing a gorgeous foliage of love made visible. No two are exactly the same. We have tiny leaves from those who knit tighter; we have loose leaves from those who knitted in a more relaxed way. Some are neat and smooth; some are as lumpy as half-peeled potatoes. Some folks were able to make many; a few contributed only one. Together, we take these tributes made in kitchens, parlors, waiting rooms, and all the dwelling spaces of many lives and map them out across the bodice, attach them to the skirt and fashion a border for the bottom. It comes together in a totally gorgeous fantasy of loving collaboration. It looks nothing like her original vision but it’s breathtaking. When she stands before them all, to pledge lifelong love and partnership to her Beloved, the blessing of their hands will be upon her—literally—in mute testimony of what Support really means. All her women-folk are with her, not just in spirit, but in the work of their hands around her waist. Is there a better metaphor for a bride on her wedding day?

This bride inspires me. She allowed her conflict with Time to alter the story she had started—in which everyone oohed and ahhhed about how talented and capable and clever she was en soto—and make it infinitely and Magically better en familia. She surrendered. She allowed them to see how humbled she was by her limitations, how aware, how resilient, how open she was to invite participation and investment from her community. And they stepped in to help her Shine. The result was utterly Magnificent.

The whole thing moves me to tears. Still.

She allowed herself to be clothed in Love, instead of Ego. I can’t think of a better camel upon which to ride off into the sunset of Happily Ever After!

Blessings, Dear Ones, on all you do this week to Collaborate, to Share, to Hear, to Heal, to Preserve Hope through Helping. Keep Mending! Thank you for your Good Work!

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy