“If the Mud ain’t flyin’, you ain’t tryin’” –seen on a T-shirt

Greetings Dear Ones!

I can tell by this client’s area code and his drawling way of speaking that “he ain’t from ‘round here.” I very much hesitate to ask people where they are “from” because, as someone who has lived so many places and felt like an outsider in most of them, I know how questions like that can touch deep nerves and wounds around “belonging.” Something about his broad and cheery smile emboldens me. I ask. He’s from the deep south, been here since September. “Welcome!” I say. “So… How do you like Winter?” He grins even more brightly and gushes “I love it! It’s just like the movies!”

“Well, you got here just in time for one of the most Wintery Winters in a good long while. It’s been a long, proper winter.”

“I know!” he says gratefully, “I hate to see it end.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “This isn’t the end. This is just the start of Mud Season. They overlap. Sometimes until June.”

Mud season is not so much a season as a personality disorder that grips the state of Vermont between the first “Thaws of delusion” and the height of Black fly season.

As a seamstress, I have seasons of my own. I measure time not in months but in zippers, glitter, and the emotional states of people trying on their summer clothes with their winter bodies. Right now, we are all in a mood best described as ebulliently over-heated and frosty.

From the knees down, everything from seamstresses to pick-up trucks is an earthy, committed brown that refuses to recant. Man is not Dust; he is MUD, and to mud he shall return. What is mud anyway but humidified dust? Pilgrims enter the shop like abstract paintings whose feet and paint are still wet. They scatter the floor with the clay pigments of their journeys. I sweep and sweep but the floor continues to lie there—unsanctified. It has accepted its fate. We are all just collaborating with dirt in every form now.

Meanwhile, naked Maples stand stoically—their navels tapped with miles of IV tubing, as if entire forests are on life support. They empty their arteries for our pancakes. Emotionally, we are the ones on life support, in need of vast quantities of buttered hotcakes to survive our wanderings in this wasteland, eating like bears who’ve just woken up. Caffeinated beverages help but not enough. Syrup soothes. We need the sweetness given by these trees. I put it in everything from salad dressing to succotash for, just as ‘man cannot live by bread alone,’ neither can woman eat pancakes at every meal. (I’ve done extensive research on this, personally.) “This explains the Winter Body,” mutters Prudence snidely.

This part of the year, even though it is only three months in, feels like mile 11 of a half marathon. This is not the glamorous beginning where we are all fresh and looking cute in our spandex running gear and full of energy drinks and optimism, nor the glorious finish where someone hands you a banana and tells you you’re amazing. No, this is the stretch no one likes to talk about—the loneliest miles where no one is cheering for you, you are questioning your entire life and wardrobe choices and there isn’t a porta-potty in sight. We are not so much running as plodding desperately to a subtle soundtrack of suction noises. Every step is a question followed by a brisk negotiation with our nervous system. Will this foot come back up? Will it still be wearing a boot? For the first time in 58 years will my legs perform a perfect split? If so, do I have the ambulance on speed dial? Questions like this define the average morning voyage to the barn.

Inside the shop, a variety of ragged Ski jackets line up like grim soldiers who refuse to believe the war is ending. Zippers have been blasted by chairlifts and the abusive lateral force of winter bodies trying violently to navigate endless layers as they enter and exit a vehicle. One by one, I take my scalpel and cut gently along their stitches, remove all their broken teeth, and replace them. Neither of us can bring ourselves to discuss the horrors they must have seen in the field.

On Monday, the first prom gown arrived. It is green (my favorite color) so I forgive it for its sequins and shimmering optimism. It looks wildly out of place next to the shattered Carhartt jacket and the bombed-out jeans smelling faintly of woodsmoke and grit.

This is “March.” It is the only month that is also a command. “It needs to be!” says Prudence, “otherwise, you would just wallow over British sit-coms from the seventies and get maple syrup in your knitting. You need to MOVE. Get on with it!” I hear this in my head each time I fill out a work order for myself and date it: MARCH!

And so we March—both freezing and thawing, celebrating and enduring. One customer comes in wearing a T-shirt on a thirty-seven-degree-and-sunny day and hands me two down coats. “I won’t be needing these for a while,” she says breezily, “Take as long as you like to fix them.” Another comes in thirty minutes later, all bundled up in mittens and layers of wool. It is now thirty-seven degrees and cloudy. These are two completely different climates in Vermont.

None of us has any idea what to wear. Not a single one of us.

Closets across the county look like anything from archeological digs to crime scenes as residents rummage through their thrifted bargains and regretted choices, searching for something that might work for a day that will start at 27F degrees, peak at 52F degrees, and finish with a light dusting of snow just in time for the evening commute. The goal is to look as fashionable as possible while still being able to amble in a gulch. A bride comes in Muck boots for a fitting saying, “I have not yet bought any shoes.” From the top down, one belongs in a ballroom—but underneath, she is ready for the bog. I can’t help wondering if she means this literally. Does she mean ANY shoes? Or just shoes for her wedding dress? It’s hard to know. This time of year, the thought of anyone wearing anything other than wellies or mucks seems absurd. One of my favorite things to do when I am at the grocery store is to count the number of people wearing knee-high waterproof boots. (It’s most of them.)

As a seamstress, my job is to project confidence in people’s choices and to give them the miracles they require, even when the laws of physics are involved. Proper footwear is as important as hemlines that skim the earth safely. True Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder; it’s also in the ability to remain upright while processing from pick-up truck (or Subaru) to the altar.

Constant Temperature swings are a problem—creating a sense of bi-polar mania in the inhabitants. We shed our layers with reckless joy as soon as it’s a degree or two above freezing. We shovel a path to the grill and barbeque as if we are at the beach. “Yes,” tuts Prudence, “as if your idea of a beach includes snowbanks covered with parts of the driveway and a palpable sense of betrayal. As soon as the sun dips, we “beach people” are hermit crabs stuffing our soft winter arses back into those too-hastily-discarded woolen exoskeletons. This is why Flannel is the state uniform. If nothing else, it’s as emotionally supportive as pajamas we can wear in public. Unless it’s July, you can’t go wrong with flannel.

The mud, of course, is NOT content to remain outside. It follows us everywhere like a puppy making messes on the floor. I open the rolled-up cuffs of jeans needing to be hemmed and it is there. I find it on the elbows of coats, the hems of skirts, and sometimes even in my lunch. “All sinners must eat their peck of dirt before they die,” reminds P. I notice the way fabrics respond to mud is how so many of us respond to criticism. Some absorb, some resist, some shed it without a second thought, and some will never be the same, no matter how long they soak in a tub of warm water and listen to self-help gurus discuss “boundaries.”

I know it sounds like I am grumbling here but I absolutely love this season. From within, I hear Marcus Aurelius cheering us on: “If something external distresses you, the pain arises not from the thing itself but from your judgement of it!” There is no glory in the lack of adversity. There’s something almost heroic about Mud Season in Vermont that folks who only experience ice as “something in a glass” while toasting “here’s mud in your eye” never get to experience. I’m proud of us. We squish and slip our way through burlesque days that feel lined with banana peels, yet every well-placed step is itself a triumph. We keep going. Even as we mend the coats we dream of not needing and witness the youth trying on prom gowns with wooly underwear, We March.

People who say “I’m SICK of Winter” bug me. We live in NEW ENGLAND, for heavens sakes! What did you expect? Roses in February? (ha!) Besides, it’s not winter anymore. It’s Mud Season—this limerent Lenten time of anticipation, preparation, perhaps even contrition, and that earthly, earthy, (downright muddy!) swirl of What Shouldn’t Be mixed with What IS that strengthens us for What’s to Come (which, let’s face it, is Black Fly Season).

To me—this is a time of Poetry and seams. Seams are about joining things together at their edges. (“Goodness knows, Girl, you are ON the Edge!” insists Prudence.) We are inhabiting many edges in the fabric of our days. Sometimes those things go together naturally, sometimes not. Sometimes the result is plug ugly, sometimes stunning. In March, all kinds of weird things go together—like mud and ice, T-shirts and parkas, maple syrup and knitwear. “Marcus, tell her again how she is just a tiny soul, carrying a corpse!” pleads Prudence.

Corpse or Parka, whatever heaviness you may be carrying with you on your winter body in the mud, if you happen to pass a tiny sewing shop with a floor littered with thread and March madness, come on in. Just wipe your boots first. Or not. At this point, it hardly matters.

Keep slogging, Dear Ones! Onward MARCH! You got this! Thank you for your Good Work muddy boots and all.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy