Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s 5:am and there is a pervasive smell drifting in the open windows. An adolescent skunk has been hanging around the chicken coop for about a week now, trying to get in and eat their food, their eggs, even the chickens themselves. He’s also feasting on all the peaches that have dropped from the trees in the orchard. This little crisis-center-masquerading-as-a-homestead is covered with food and all of Nature has been showing up to “share” it with me. I thought I was a happy homesteader “living off the land” but it turns out I am actually the annual event coordinator for a multi-species food festival—a free, all-you-can-eat buffet for the entire taxonomic kingdom of southern Vermont. I’m competing with every phylum, class, order, genus, and opportunistic little scoundrel within a fifteen-acre radius in our own version of hunger games. At the bigger end of the spectrum are the bears and deer. Smaller robbers include squirrels, bunnies, bugs, and the entire order of Rodentia. It’s a race to fill my baskets and buckets in that narrow window between the time a berry ripens and when the entire hillside has heard the dinner bell. For someone who has been told she is an apex predator, I am surprised to find myself wrestling elbow to elbow with fruit flies. And the fruit flies seem to be winning!

It’s also time to fill the barn with Hay. And there are several bales of wedding gowns in the shop with urgent deadlines dangling from their hangers. And I am behind on everything else.

So! Life is busy!

And yet… I took the entire Tuesday off last week to attend the funeral of a dear little lady in Westerly Rhode Island. The church was surprisingly crowded for someone who had spent the last seven years in a nursing home. She passed away six weeks shy of her hundredth birthday and had outlived all her siblings and most of her peers, but she had done so much good in this world, there was a church full of younger generations to commemorate her loss. She had only one daughter, and that daughter had no children, so all these people were not bonded by blood, but by Joy. It was inspiring to say the least. She had lived a full life fully, contributing time and energy to a breath-taking array of community services and charities. We all showed up to celebrate her life and express our profound gratitude for the Gift of knowing her.

I always sit at such ceremonies and think, “damn, I need to step up my game!” It’s humbling to see how much good some people can do by doing “little things” all the time over the course of a life. I love seeing how others are loved by those they have served. It’s Right that we should pause in our labors and gather, celebrate, mourn, and most importantly, Learn from those who are ahead of us on the path.

On the way home, I learned that Dolly Parton had died that same day. I cried just as hard for Dolly as I did for Aunt Whinnie. As I said to my sister, “I know we are getting older and people pass on, but it never occurred to me that Dolly Parton could die!” We had grown up listening to her music on the radio, never admitting to our friends how much we secretly loved Country Music, which was not a cool thing to admit back then. Kenny & Dolly’s “Once Upon a Christmas” album has been the soundtrack of our family Christmas since 1984. In 2012, my dad bought nine copies and put them in our stockings so that we could have the music for our own children. I can’t imagine celebrating without singing “I’ll be home with Bells on!”

A lot of the quotes from Dolly could be said of Aunt Whinnie, though two more different creatures never roamed the earth. Just the thought of Whinnie in high heels, make-up or a push-up bra makes me giggle uncontrollably. Rhinestones would not have suited her, though I hear she was a pretty good square dancer back in the day. The only thing about her that glittered was her eyes, alive with wit and humor. She was a stern minister’s daughter who summed up the past as “Oh well,” and the future as “Time will tell,” living carefully in between, in a somewhat bleak New England “Now” that was always more serviceable than fancy. She drank Schlitz lite beer (just one per night, every night) and liked her hamburgers like herself, small and plain—just a bit of meat on two buns, no ketchup, no relish.

Internally, she and Dolly had a lot more in common. They were both relentlessly hard workers who knew exactly who they were and they lived fully as themselves, on purpose. And they didn’t care much what other people thought of that. They may have delighted many people, but they did not aim to please them.

In the week since that day, I have been pondering these two lives—one so large that the guards at Buckingham Palace paid tribute to her, and the other so small that twenty-five pews could hold all those who remembered her. Both did a lot of Good in this world. Both are my heroes and teachers.

My biggest concern is Balance. This world just lost two extremely Good people. Who will bring the light and muscle now? Who will do the Work? Who’s going to Mend all that needs mending, do all that needs doing, dream all that needs dreaming, and sing all that needs singing? When a big tree falls, it stops living for itself and gets cut and used to light and warm the Winter for others. It allows all the little trees to grow up into the space it used to occupy. There’s a whole lot of sky pointing to the empty space we need to fill. And it might take a lot of us, doing our fierce little “Little” to fill such a gap.

Even though Dolly Parton was an enormously beloved icon for the ages, none of the things she was best at required fame or fortune to do. She was kind; she was hard-working; she was generous; she was honest. She lived a life laced with self-effacing humor and genuine humility. She was deeply in love with her own spirit. I cannot tell you how much I love her for that. Her assertion that we need to be who we are “deliberately” rings true to me, in all my mess and distraction, as something I can cling to as a North Star—or in her case, a Southern Star.

From what I can tell, Dolly herself would admit that she could not be “Dolly” without her team. (Let’s pause a minute and spare a thought for her seamstresses—those proportions from the narrow shoulders to generous bosom, back to itty-bitty waist are a nightmare to fit properly!) She relied on a lot of hidden “little” people, people just like you and me and Aunt Winnie, to work hard in the shadows of her rhinestones to keep the Dreamer in Chief’s dreams coming true.

The truth is, I struggle with who I am “authentically” because most of the time, I do NOT do it deliberately. For example… I attended Whinnie’s funeral in open-toed sandals. Just as I was running out the door to begin the journey to the church, I noticed how scandalous my toenails looked. I needed to hide them but didn’t want to change shoes. Quickly, I slapped a little red polish on the three toenails of each foot I could see. I did not take the sandals off. The hidden toes remained unpainted. I rushed out to the car and sped off. When I arrived at the church, our dear Hermit of Hermit Hollow asked what had happened to my leg. The back of it had bright red streaks across it like I had been flogged. I must have rubbed my wet toes across the back of my leg as I got in the car. No amount of spitting and rubbing could get the varnish off. I only succeeded in making the whole leg look inflamed. “Oh well.” I guess I’m showing up as “Me” again, (sigh) now a me that looks like I am into shades-of-grey kink.

I am authentically a bit of a mess at the best of times. I care enough to go to an event, just not enough to take the time to clean myself up properly. May I repeat, I do not wish to do this “deliberately.” (I cannot imagine I am supposed to carefully paint the backs of my legs with stripes of scarlet on somber occasions.) (Big boobs are not in my repertoire either.) But I can own who I am, stripes and all, and that’s the lesson I take away. “Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves; we shall never cease to be amused!”

The day after the funeral, a brand-new customer calls at eight o’clock in the morning. She does not know when her appointment is. I am picking blueberries and cannot take the call with sticky fingers. Her appointment is not today so I don’t fret about it—I tell myself, “I open at nine,” thinking I’ll call her then. I continue with my chores. She calls again at ten, when I am in the shop, and leaves a curt message. “You did not call me back. I have cancelled my appointment. You do not seem very professional.” She ends the message by saying “Have a nice day” in a way that indicates she wishes me 24 hours of a hellscape in which I sew continuously without bobbin thread.

I hear her tone and feel a swift hit to my solar plexus. The Pleaser in me is wringing her hands and wants to cry. This is BAD, very bad. My ears feel hot. Shame billows.

My inner teenager wants to punch this woman in the throat. She knows what area code this person is calling from and that no one from OUR area would ever treat anyone like that. “She can go fry ice,” she says. Prudence is horrified.

“We need to grovel,” says the Pleaser, “we need to drop everything and get this woman in here and prove to her we are amazing and loveable, and worthy, and enough.”

“Horse shit,” says the teenager, stamping her foot, “Don’t you dare. She’s not even a customer; she just wants to be. Leave her.”

“It’s OK to pause, ground yourself, reconnect to your Intentions,” says a kinder voice with a mysteriously southern drawl. “Unkind people need more kindness, not less.”

I consider my heroes. Bad stuff happened to them all the time. They weren’t great because stuff like this didn’t happen. They were great because when it did, they rose above it and still managed to be Kind without abandoning themselves. I can see Aunt Whinnie shrugging her shoulders and letting it all roll off her back. “Some people are just like that,” she says.

Dolly says, “Girl, Just Be Honest.”

“I honestly want to punch her in the throat and watch her go into a pop-eyed squiggle,” insists the teenager.

Dad looks directly at the teenager and says, “The world has an abundance of jackasses; it doesn’t need one more.”

“Rage is a Weakness with its own kind of muscle. Stop strengthening the rage, embrace the weakness. That’s true strength,” says the Kind Voice.

I take a deep breath and text the woman. I say, “You are 100% correct. I am not very professional, and I am sorry this has affected you so personally. I am a human, working alone, trying to juggle more work than I can handle at times. I’m a talented seamstress with an artistic temperament, not a skilled executive, hence my reliance on my website to help organize my appointments and send client reminders…I wish you the very best in finding someone to work with who can better serve your needs. Kind regards, etc…”

She returns an equally kind, mollified, response. She admits that normally she would go on social media and smear my name and business but she has changed her mind. She wishes me the best of luck. This time, she means it. I can feel the difference. The insulted and ruffled teenagers in both of us settle down.

Kindness has won the day.

Owning my weakness feels like new strength.

It’s a start. (Maybe next I’ll see about those toenails.)

A lot of us think that Grace and Goodness are scarce and temporary commodities, like peaches or blueberries, and that we need to claw and fight all of Nature for what we claim as “Ours.” The truth is, we can have as much as we want, any time we want, because The Well is within each one of us. Generosity suits us.

I don’t need to behave like a skunk. I own the Tree. The tree is Me, bugs and all. Thank you, Dear Teachers!

Keep Mending, Dear Ones! We need each other now more than ever!

With Sew Much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy