Patching things up

Greetings Dear Ones!

I may not look it to the casual observer, but I am a deeply empathic person.  When you watch those Psych 2 Go videos on Youtube and they talk about people who have a paranormal ability to apprehend the emotional state of another individual, that’s me—particularly if the “individual” is an animal, a tool, or an article of clothing.  I am a native speaker of goat, sheep, spinning wheel, chipmunk, and dog—including a highly localized dialect of surly Jack Russell whose vocabulary consists mainly of things that could never be said on prime time T.V. (No wonder he still doesn’t have his own Taco Bell commercial.)  Pretty much anyone can tell what kittens are thinking—but I know why the tractor trembles...  I can hear pants weep… 

So when a man brings in his favorite shirt and asks me to mend it, I take one look at it and can tell it is not just exhausted, it is severely clinically depressed.  Another victim of Covid.

“I loaned it to my girlfriend—well, actually she just kinda borrowed it because she liked the way it smelled—and I think she ate some kind of food in it and slopped it all down the front and then tried to scrub the stains out and these holes appeared,” he says pointing to the damage.  While Prudence rolls her eyes and tut-tuts behind the scenes, I peer at the holes in the shirt with interest.  I have seen such holes before.   A woman used to bring tank tops to us at the old shop with holes that were very similar.  She always giggled and told us mice had eaten her clothes.  “Those silly mice,” she would say chirpily, slapping the table and laughing as if she lived in a Disney movie where they were supposed to be sewing her ball gowns instead of gnawing through her grundy under layers.  She thought it was simply adorable to be the butt of one of their little jokes in the way that nervous nerds often find themselves sucking up to rats in middle school.

The holes in the threadbare fabric of this shirt are neatly snipped, as if by tiny scissors.  No sponge, no matter how vigorous, did this damage. “What happened to you, poor baby?” I croon mentally to the shirt.  I surpress the urge to cuddle it and hold it up to my ear to hear the answer as Prudence wrinkles her nose disapprovingly.  Even through my mask I can smell the thing. The girlfriend might like the way this shirt smells but we sure don’t!  This shirt needs a hot sudsy bath and a week in the sun. (Hell, who doesn’t?)

I study the shirt carefully.  It’s a nice shirt, all in all, though ancient and threadbare in spots. It was made from Indian cotton, softened with age to the texture of micro flannel, in a striped pattern that hasn’t been popular for many decades, if ever.   The original reds and blues have faded to macho pinks and purples.  Thread in the seams looks overweight, too robust for the fineness of the fabric.  This shirt was originally something hippie and organic looking, with the sturdiness of denim but in its old age it has the texture of gauze.  You can read newsprint through parts of it.

“Can it be fixed?” he wants to know.

I hesitate, then answer slowly, “Well, I can mend it.  That’s a little different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I explain. “I’m pretty sure that by “fix” you mean ‘return to its original condition.’  That I most definitely cannot do.  I can’t close these up with seams or darts.  They are in weird places.  It would not look right.  And I cannot darn them with invisible weaving because the fabric is just far too fragile.  However, I could make a neat little job of patching them.  But patches are patches and are not going to be subtle.”

“You can’t just sew it?” he asks.  But what he really wants to know is if I have a magic wand that can miraculously make all this go away so it will look like it used to look.

“No.” I say, “I cannot just sew it.  I can create patches but we are going to have a really hard time matching this fabric—new fabric won’t look right—and the shirt is going to have a kind of thick spot where the patches go that will seem stiff or lumpish.  In fact, it might look terrible.  The good news is that patching clothes is super trendy—nothing looks more Woke than fixing clothes instead of throwing them away. I’ll do it by hand with stitches that look like the mice did them after they snacked on it first. ” 

He bites his lip, considering.  I can see how emotionally attached he is to this shirt and how increasingly vexed he is with his woman.  He does not want patches.  Meanwhile, I discover, much to my delight, that the shirt has pockets and they are lined with the same fabric. 

“Hey!” I cry, “We can use the pockets for the patch fabric.  I can harvest a little from one pocket—you don’t need both of them, do you? I can replace it with a different fabric and you’ll never know.

The man shrugs.  The Shirt sags and looks even more defeated.  They don’t want this change to happen, even if it is a change for the better.  They want everything to go back to the way it was before Grundalina’s cousin got around to straining her vittles through it and leaving it for mice to eat.  

“We can’t turn back time.  We need to make a plan,” I say briskly, effectively announcing that his mourning period must come to an end.  “Maybe you want me to make something else out of it—a pillow, perhaps, to salvage the fabric and the memories? You can take it away and think it over if you like.”   My shop is small and we are reaching the ten minute mark. I don’t like my appointments to drag on too long during a pandemic.  He looks so appalled at the notion of turning the shirt into a pillow that I try not to giggle.  

He decides to have the patches done and leaves. 

Now I have this ragged old shirt to fix.  It’s like a velveteen Rabbit it’s been loved so much.  Loved and… quite frankly, abused.  Nothing I do will make it look like it used to.  But NOT fixing it is not an option either.  It reminds me partly of every broken heart I’ve ever had and partly of my country.   What do they have in common? Serious mending must be done.   And it might not look pretty for a while.   Our stitches will be visible, so we need to make them say what needs to be said about our art.  We can turn the patches into decorations, even badges that say: “We’ve been through something and we’re better now.  We were too valuable to throw away.  Someone cared enough to stabilize the trauma so that no more damage could occur.” 

I feel for this shirt.  I feel for that man.  Hopefully, by the time he comes back to pick up the shirt, he will have come to terms with his delusions about how long things can last.  Time and Pizza sauce take heavy tolls.  Every shirt is just as mortal as its wearer.    

What I love best is when someone comes along and takes a stack of ragged shirts like this and turns them into a soft blanket of caring for a new generation.  It takes guts to release what Was and create a new vision for the future and what is possible.   I look down at my own shirt and realize Grundalina has been at it again.  There is a trail of salad dressing that indicates my messy habit of taking giant bites of things while not paying attention.   The stains are not going to come out of this shirt either.  I suppose I could leave it for mice to eat, or I could imagine something Better.   So it is with the fabric of our shirts, our flags, our souls. 

Remember to hug a veteran today!  I thank each of them, and each of you, for your Service and good work, from the bottom of my patched up heart.  Let the mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy

For the Greater Good

Greetings my Weary Dearies,

I did a bold, noble, perhaps heroic, perhaps even patriotic thing this week.  It wasn’t easy but I gritted my teeth and did it anyway.  I did it for the good of the future, the good of the world, and my country and a very special little girl.  I won’t receive a medal or any kind of reward for my Noblesse.  It’s quite likely I squandered time that my alter-ego “Grundalina” could have spent lounging on a couch binge-watching “The Queen’s Gambit” and snacking directly out of cardboard boxes and “family size” bags of dehydrated potato parts.  It’s a risk I simply had to take.  Maybe Santa and St. Peter weren’t even watching and doling out the points… Perhaps it was all for naught…. Still, I willingly exchanged a bit of my earthly existence to do it and I don’t regret it:

I taught a six-year-old girl to knit.

Teaching six-year-olds to knit is like the pain one inflicts on oneself while jogging.  You tell yourself that Actual Good is coming from this dreaded activity that feels so immensely good to Stop doing.  You feel exhausted and relieved when the session is concluded and you tell yourself that embracing pain on your own terms gives one a greater capacity for dealing with pain that occurs not on one’s terms.  Acts of perseverance increase our resilience.  Choosing to endure “what must be done” builds Character.

The little girl, with eyes as dangerous as the knitting needles she brandishes, is a total Character.  I adore her.  She is Little Miss Ravenlocks,  the next door neighbor of an elderly friend of mine whom I visit regularly.    The little girl and I are the only ones allowed into this friend’s house, wearing masks of course, during the pandemic.   Little Miss Ravenlocks visits my friend every day and they color and draw and take nature walks and tend my friend’s sheep. A few months ago, when my friend’s sheep dog died, this little girl, who had learned all the commands from watching the dog, took to running the sheep in for her.  “She is as good as any Border Collie,” says my friend proudly, “and she responds just about the same to the whistles.”   Her school is closed and her mother, currently working from home due to Covid-19, has to fit in home-schooling around a demanding job.  Both are grateful that she can escape to the farm next door to play and run.  She has been begging to knit for a while now.

I don’t have the foggiest idea how to teach someone to knit in a socially distanced way, especially a six-year-old who is part Border Collie.  So It’s not long before we are tangled together, hands, fingers, yarn, needles.  I decide to teach her the European way of knitting, so we can keep the yarn behind the left needle, where it will cause less trouble.  My hands hold hers as I teach her the nursery rhyme that goes with each step:

“In through the front door” (poke the needle in the next loop),

”Round to the back,” (pick up a new loop of yarn in the back),

“Peek through the window,” (bring new loop through the old loop)

“And Off Jumps Jack!” (slide old loop off the needle.) 

Again and again we poke and peek and jump together. “In through the front door, round to the back, peek through the window, off jumps Jack!”  We have put six stitches on the needle, because she is six.  Each time we finish the row, we count and pull.  Our piece gets longer each time and she vibrates all over with glee, like a puppy asking to have a ball thrown again.

“This is way more fun even than I thought it would be!” she says, visibly bouncing on the seat next to me. “

“I’m so glad,” I mutter, as we struggle to get another batch of Jacks jumping.  The thick, fuzzy yarn splices easily and her loose stitches are hard to keep on the bamboo needles.  Unless they are suddenly way too tight and then that little bastard Jack refuses to jump at all.   We have been chanting and chasing Jack for another ten rows when I decide she can go it alone now.  She is pulling on the needles and becoming restless and Prudence has had about enough of Jack and his capricious ways.  Prudence just wants to grab the needles and do it all herself.  I tell Prudence to go sit on the couch and commiserate with Grundalina.  It’s Little Miss Ravenlock’s turn. Children don’t learn from telling; they learn from Doing.  We need to get out of her way.

The bright eyes gaze at the yarn in her hands.  It looks different, alien, without my hands there, over hers.  Instantly, she forgets everything.  “How does it go?” she wants to know.  “I think I forget.”

“Nonsense,” I reassure her. “You did not forget.  Your brain just got a little tired and the screen went blank while it thinks this out.  Say the rhyme and let your hands stay still.”  She does.  She knows the rhyme perfectly. 

“So, what comes first? How do you get in the front door?”  She is frozen, staring.  She shrugs her shoulders.   “Why don’t we take a small rest?” I suggest.  “I promise, you’ll remember after a wee break.”

But she does not want to rest.  “I want to knit a scarf for my daddy,” she insists, panting. “And then I’m going to make some mittens for Mommy.”  Clearly, she has a lot to do before she has to go home today.  The Border Collie in her has no time for rest.

“You are going to be a wonderful knitter,” I tell her confidently.

“I’m very good at this already,” she says with aplomb, momentarily oblivious to the fact that she is stuck and awaiting instructions. “AND did you know I have FIVE best friends?”

“That’s wonderful,” I say.  “I can see that you have very skillful little fingers and a lot of dexterity—that means your fingers like to play with tiny things—but what is going to make you such a great knitter is that you don’t want to quit.  That is an amazing thing in any learner.  The Best Knitters are very patient and persistent.  Knitting a scarf or some mittens takes an awfully long time.”

She shrugs and wiggles happily at the news.  “I’m going to knit for everybody!”  She looks at the ball of yarn I have given her.  “How did you know that Red is my favorite color?”

“I guessed.  And it’s one of my favorites too, so I had some lying around that I could share.”

She hugs it.  “I’m going to make so many things out of this!”

I do not have the heart to tell her that she’ll be lucky to get a ratty little pot-holder or two out of it.  There is not much yarn.  She has no clue that one needs multiple skeins for projects—two for socks, nine for sweaters, and four for a shawl.  She is too busily full of generosity and idealism and enthusiasm.  She is going to get this Jack character to behave on the needle and then she is going to slip-cover everyone she knows in wool and Love.

I look at her and smile.  I have been her.  I have had those same thoughts.  Every creative person does.   I know that, even if her tiny hands falter and forget the stitches, she is already a Knitter.

She slips all the loops off the needle by accident.  “Ooops!”  she shouts, “Aaaagh! Now what?”

“You tell me!”

“Put them back on?”

“Clever girl!”  Little Miss Ravenlocks re-inserts the needle deftly through the loops and begins the rhyming again.  She manages to knit a whole row by herself. 

“See?” I say, “You did not forget.  Your brain was just chewing.”

She arches an eyebrow and gives me that look that well-brought-up children give grown-ups who are weird but they are too polite to say so.  

“But I am afraid I will forget,” she says.  “What if I forget?”

“Then I shall simply teach you again!” I say. “Only next time you will learn faster.  Most people have to learn to knit several times before they get the hang of it.  You can have as many lessons as you want, as long as you think it is fun.”

“That reminds me,” says my friend, who has been listening from a nearby chair. “Her mother wants to pay you for doing this.  We’ll send her home tonight with a note saying how much you charge and she’ll send over a cheque for next time.”

I look at the girl, whose dark head is bent over her knitting, which is now a tangled mess, and I announce in bold, theatrical tones “But I am SO expensive!  I charge a LOT.”  The little girl looks unconcerned.  Her parents can afford it.  I continue “But I cannot take money from grown-ups.  I only charge my students.  Little Miss Ravenlocks is going to have to pay for this all by herself.”  Now, I have her attention!

“But I don’t have any money,” she says blithely.

“I don’t charge money,” I say ominously.

“Then how can I pay?”

I explain.

“I just paid you. I paid you in good time, yarn, and needles.  Now—someday when you are a fabulous knitter—you must teach at least one other person to knit too.  And then we will be even.  You have fifty years to do it. Make it fifty-three.  Do we have a deal?”

“I’m going to teach FIVE-- my five best friends!” she says excitedly. 

“I’m only charging you to teach ONE,” I say.  “And it doesn’t have to be soon. Just Someday…when you are a little old lady like me, take a little person and teach him or her to knit.  It’s something we have to pass on.”

“Like the virus, but in a good way,” she says.

Yes. Precisely.

“But what if I teach five.  Because they are all my best friends and I don’t think Ashley even knows that knitting exists.  She’s going to be so surprised,” she says with emphasis.

“Well,” I say, “The more you teach, the richer we all will be!”

Gradually, the light fades and it is time to walk her home and tell her that she must NEVER run with knitting needles and that they need to be kept in a safe space at all times.  She nods and scurries away on blurry feet that barely qualify as “walking.”  “I need to get home and practice,” she calls from the darkness.

Later, I get a text from her mother, which reads “Thank you so much!  I heard you are getting all the money she makes teaching others to knit!”   I guess this savvy little six-year-old sees me as the originator of some pyramid marketing scheme—or the Fagan of knitwear! Ha!

Giving someone who has the energy of a Border Collie two sharpened sticks and asking her to keep them pointed in the right direction is as big an act of Faith as anything I have ever done.  But, bless her, she listened.  She was ready to learn.  Prudence and Grundalina survived.  No one gave up—And we all shared in triumph.

Today, as our country (and the world) waits with bated breath for our election results, it does my heart some good to think that Little Miss Ravenlocks is at home, cajoling that rascal Jack to make his jumps, oblivious to the world we are creating for her.  (I hope we can clean it up before she finds out.)  As soon as I finish this blog, I’ll pick up my own wool and needles and make something lovely out of all this stress that needs to go somewhere. Binge-knitting is one of the more socially acceptable numbing behaviours I can turn to at a time like this.  I am tired of “doom-scrolling” through messages that physically hurt my stomach to read.  I am tired of the rhetoric that is so filled with hate and I’m so bewildered by people, some of whom I love dearly, whose logic does not match my own.  In a land where so much is deeply broken, we need Menders, Healers, Cooks, and Fixers.  The politicians aren’t going to fix it, no matter who wins; WE are.  It’s up to us, Dear Ones! It’s time to create the kind of world we want to live in. (Mine is where every six-year-old learns to knit!) 

Our country is a mess and we have serious work to do. Yet, admitting that we have problems is a fantastic act of optimism because it allows for the consideration that “Things could be better.” Yes! Now how? What would that take? Are you willing to pitch in?

I know, deep in my heart, that if we put our left hands and right hands gently together in the middle and handle our sharp sticks carefully, we can create Something…um probably something pretty dreadful, much like a six-year-old’s first scrap of knitting, but it would give us all the hope of Something Better—that’s how it is when we are just learning.  Let’s not quit.  Maybe our first project could be a crummy little pot-holder for this Melting Pot that is boiling over…

I love you SEW much, no matter who you voted for. I honor your right to choose.  Now let’s reclaim our Dignity and get to work.  Let the mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Get thee behind me, Milk Dud!

“I can resist anything except temptation.” —Oscar Wilde

Greetings Dear Ones,

Halloween looms, yet I have not a single costume to sew.  After nearly eight months of universal mask wearing and depressed candy bingeing, does such a “holiday” even have any relevance in 2020?  Who knows?  I plan to dress up like a witch anyway and dance widdershins around a campfire of weeds and brush made from clearing the Land of Lost Plots.  I’m not sure there will be treats—or even what a “treat” means these days.

Three hundred and sixty-three days a year I am very anti-candy and will tell anyone within earshot that it is poison. Years ago, we were known as “that house” that gave away storytelling cassette tapes or cds to trick-or-treaters. (Yes, I said cassette tapes! That’s how long ago it was…) My inner child, however, is pestering me. “What,” she wants to know, “about the Milk Duds?” She has become obsessed with these nasty little sugar scabs after years of raiding my children’s cauldrons and confiscating them because they were “bad for their teeth.” Snickers, Reeses, Dove chocolates—all notoriously bad for children’s teeth and must be donated to the nearest self-sacrificing mother stepping up to do her bit for the sake of her children!

Now, when I buy candy… um… “for the neighbors,”  (yeah, that’s it), I pick out all mini milk dud boxes and stash them safely in my laundry cupboard.  After all, I really wouldn’t like to endanger anyone’s denture work during a pandemic when it’s so hard to see a dentist! I would never suffer anyone to undergo pain I would not endure myself. I’m noble like that.

Recently, a fellow traveler, weary of isolation in the time of Covid, asks me an intriguing question: “Where do your emotional calories come from?”  What “feeds” you, nourishes you, and keeps you strong in times of trouble?”  I pause and consider those Milk Duds.  What does she mean?  Does she mean “treat” calories or what might be considered emotional Kale? Given the choice between kale and a Milk Dud, kale is not really the thing I would consider a treat. Yet, I feel very good when I eat it and I eat it all year round, growing as much of it as I can in the garden and then purchasing the rest.   I feel disgusting when I eat Milk Duds and allow myself to have them once a year at Halloween only.  This year, I cannot decide when, or even if, I will eat them.   They are still in the laundry room, hidden away in their little basket.   Do I eat them as a reward?  A reward for what?  If I am feeling well and doing well, why would I want to give myself a stomach ache and then feel awful? Or do I eat them when my resistance is low, when I feel like I’m failing everything anyway, and I feel terrible already?  How will doing this help lift me out of the rut? And yet, I LOVE Milk Duds so much!  What then, exactly, is a treat for me? I hoard my little stock of toffee sugar clots in rebellion against the idea of permanent deprivation, while my inner child threatens to fling herself off the nearest bridge if she doesn’t get her way. “I am a Grown-Up, damn it,” I insist petulantly.  I get to decide stuff like this. I am “allowed” these Milk Duds, if I truly want them, no matter what Prudence has to say about it. I don’t even have to wait until October 31st.  But when? And Why?

It brings me back to the over-arching notion of what good self-care means for me.  In some ways, I believe that self care involves doing all the things I am supposed to do for myself –things like eat kale; be on time for appointments; pay bills and keep to the budget; keep the kitchen tidy and stocked with more than just popcorn and Tabasco sauce; make sure dog poop gets picked up before someone tromps it all over the house like a shoe-shaped shit-stamp… These make life more manageable on some level but I don’t necessarily consider them as “filling some need”—more like their absence creates more need, or an unhealthy environment.  I hate to exercise but I feel better if I do. Caring for my children, for others, for the house, for the garden and the sheep and chickens—yes, these all “feed” me in some way.  But they are also chores that drain me too.  

Some things—like playing music, dancing, knitting, sewing, spinning wool—these are things that feed my spirit—but doing them takes time away from other things.  Singing, praying, being outside—these are things I can do without much fatigue but other things fall into a swinging sort of space where they drain or nourish me depending on me, on them, on the day, and the overall load.  If things can be done with leisure, at a pace that suits me, such as weeding, ironing, cooking, or cleaning, they can be extremely nourishing and fulfilling tasks.  There is nothing I like quite as much as settling into a Saturday afternoon’s ironing or mending with Brian O’Donovan’s “A Celtic Soujourn” or a good podcast like Trad Café on in the background while I take my time.  Keeping domestic things in a reasonable balance is the wholesome “Kale” of my emotional life.  There are a few elements of my life, while quite good for me, that are so depleting they cannot be sustained for very long: Each day, I find I can run for no more than 30-40 minutes, and I can only write for about 2 hours. Then I must wait until the next day for the tank to refill.

I think about the question, “what feeds me?” and it is so depressing to look at my life, as it is now, and realize that very little emotional food does not come with some sort of fatigue or “cost.”  The chaos embedded in this lifestyle means that if I do this: _______________ (insert deeply fulfilling activity that causes my soul to blossom) then I am not doing that:_____________(insert obligation which ensures the survival of civilization on some level, or at least the prevention of tooth decay…) and then some little neglected thing flares into a bonfire I have to stop everything to put out.  While I tend to one “bonfire,” of course, by default, I am neglecting a host of other little things which are themselves turning into bonfires as we speak.  Eventually, I find myself lurching from crisis to crisis, burned and dazed, with my eyebrows singed off,  because I let the general management of things go in favor of  some little “Emotional Milk Dud” I needed that wasn’t part of a healthy plan.  These “EMDs” come at a heavy cost.  They, like real Milk Duds, cannot be daily fare.  Or so I tell myself, with a familiar, sinking, deprived feeling.

I think about how much I love Milk Duds, the real ones and the emotional ones.  I think about how being so fiercely wedded to my own schedule  ensures that I cannot contribute to others out of sequence, nor ever, do I have the time available to let them contribute to me in ways I am not the boss of.   This feels like too much Kale, too much perfection with nothing “perfect” about it at all.

I think about my dear friend, who died of cancer the year before my own life, as I knew it then, came tumbling down in the rubble of divorce.  We used to talk about when she would give up fighting.  She was consuming nothing but raw juices and herbal supplements at that point, in a last ditch bargain to be able to see her kids graduate high school, to attend their someday weddings, to hold her grandchildren, or sip red wine in jazz cafes.  She said “Any day now, when the doctors give the signal that nothing more can be done, you and I are going to go to New York city to be like two big hungry caterpillars who eat their way around all my favorite menus and memories.  I want to taste everything bad for me just one more time.  I can’t wait until all I eat is ice-cream.  Not just any ice cream, either—the slow-churned homemade stuff at Rota Spring Farm, where the cows hang over the fence and watch you...”  And we would both sigh and continue our sugar-free bargaining for “something better” than having what we truly wanted, as life ebbed from us both.

We never made it to New York.

Even scarier than the ancient Celtic idea that the dead get to roam the earth for a night, or fears surrounding the upcoming election, is the idea that we spend a lot of time Alive yet not daring to Live.  In our loneliness and lock-downs, we remember those Milk Dud dance partners, those Milk Dud late nights until dawn, those Milk Dud impulses and the cavities they inevitably brought our teeth, morals, or hearts.  Despite our abstinence, Rot sets in around the longing to taste them one more time. We feel deprived.  In a world more-than-usually obsessed with avoiding Death, how much poison are we allowed in order to “Live a little”?

At its core, Maturity seems to be about Trust. Trust is the foundation of our ability to transform ourselves.  If we trust ourselves, we treat ourselves better.  If we trust each other, we treat each other better. Can we trust ourselves to do the best things? Make the best choices? We have some big choices coming up. Do we know what to cut out and what to allow without creating tyranny? Do we live for Today or put it off until Tomorrow? And HOW are we to deny, reward, or comfort ourselves when that sweet, golden Darkness calls from the Laundry room cupboard?

I’m Curious.  How are you treating yourself, Dear One? Where is your daily nourishment? What is your “kale”? And again, the question that plagues me still: “When can we eat the Milk Duds?”

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Twisted

“Don’t be looking up at no sky for help. Look down here, at us twisted dreamers.” D.B.C. Pierre

Greetings My Dear Ones!

It’s been a delicious fall—with golden, crunchy cornflake days and milky swaths of stars at night, seasoned with sweet apples and the scent of falling leaves.  Yum! The Maple trees are in full glory and my commute to work makes me feel like I live in a brochure for some elite university. But the nighttime temperatures are dropping now so we in New England are moving into the next steps of our annual dance: trying to avoid putting on the central heating until November 1st.   We wear more layers than a Kardashian wedding cake and tell whiners to “put on a sweater; rake some leaves; have some hot apple cider; move the wood pile from one side of the yard to the other…” all of which are traditional ways of getting warm here.

The cold makes us sleep better (as does the stacking of wood and cleaning of gutters) but when we start waking up with red noses in the morning, we know a few other things are happening as surely as we know the Kardashians are going to need more wedding cake. And despite all our thinking, planning, hoping, and doing, the gates are not yet shut on 2020—there is still plenty of time for things to go awry…get twisted…and Life may take us on turns we do not expect.

The rams are feeling amorous.  It’s Tupping Season. The cold weather charges sheep libido and makes normally tractable, pleasant fellows beat their horns against walls and behave with all the rationality of linebackers trying to smash a line of scrimmage.  The ewes, like a bunch of weary, middle-aged housewives, roll their eyes and brace themselves for The Inevitable with the stoicism of Queen Victoria who advised her married daughter in Russia to “just lie back and think of England.”  While a fellow shepherdess friend and I were going over bloodlines and arranging marriages, her ram bashed his way out of his pen and helped himself to a few ewes who were not on his list of eligible girlfriends—so Spring is going to bring a few surprises!

The first whiff of cold also makes Otherwise Rational people begin to fantasize about disposing of all of their disposable income on highly specialized gear so they can spend endless trips sliding down mountains encrusted in precipitation. That is, the mountains will be encrusted in precipitation—the people will be encrusted in things like down, quivit, alpaca, gortex, and smart wool. (Is there such a thing as dumb wool? I think not!)  They need garments created in labs or packed with rare animal fibers, and very expensively glazed boards on their feet so they can ride in thrilling vertical circles all day until it’s time to guzzle hot toddies by the fire and boast about how many circles they managed and how smart their wool was.

In my little shop, a horror has arrived—the first down jacket that needs a new zipper.  Of course I will do it. I can. I MUST.  But…. If just a teaspoon of that down escapes, it will make the entire shop like a snow globe for a week.  Down has the magical property of expanding in every possible direction with the speed of a curse.  It’s as unmanageable as a ram below 40 degrees. Any seamster reading this is nodding her/his head.  They can already taste the down I will be eating until Prom season arrives and replaces it with glitter.  If there is a prom season this spring… (Who would ever have thought I would miss glitter!) (On second thought, I still don’t!)

Another young man arrives with a fun puzzle.  “I bought this [name brand] jacket at a ski swap last year and I’ve been meaning to get it fixed.  It’s an awesome jacket!  I mean it’s [name brand] for [naughty word]’s sake!  You can’t beat it.  I can’t figure out why it was so cheap.  It looks perfect on the outside but I can’t get my arm in one of the sleeves.  It’s so weird…Look…” he says getting the jacket out of his bag and trying it on. “One arm goes in great, see?” he pops his hand through to the bottom of the sleeve and waves at himself. “The other one doesn’t.” He struggles and struggles to jam his right arm into the sleeve.  “I can’t figure it out…it just won’t go in!” He takes the jacket off again and starts to explore the sleeve from the cuff end.  “I can get my hand most of the way up from this end…” he flips the jacket over and inserts his hand at the shoulder end “and most of the way down from this end….but I cannot get my hands to meet.  Something’s in the way but there’s nothing there. I can’t figure it out! Weird, eh?”

The young man is so taken with this mystery that I say nothing for several moments, enjoying his amazement and his continued explorations with the fond tenderness of a mother watching a baby try to get a clothespin out of a milk bottle. I wonder how many hours this enchanting activity has already occupied him at home.  I have seen this exact problem once before in a manufactured jacket and accidentally created it myself many times.  It will be stunningly easy to fix. I can’t wait. 

“The lining is twisted,” I say.

“What do you mean?” he wants to know.

“The inner lining got twisted when they put the jacket together.  It’s easy to do—I have to be careful every time I shorten the sleeves on any jacket with a lining that I don’t do it by accident.  Don’t worry—it’s an easy fix.  All I have to do is cut the cuff off, untwist the lining, then sew the cuff back on. Simple.”

“But the cuff isn’t twisted,” he insists. “It looks perfect. It’s a [name brand]!”

“Yes, I know,” I say, “because it is not twisted on the outside! It’s twisted in the inside.”

His eyes widen.  He is wearing a mask but beneath it I know his nostrils are flaring and he is pulling back like a stock animal I am trying to load on a trailer he refuses to board.

“Never mind,” I say, “It’s alright.  I know what to do.  Come back in a couple hours. Both sleeves will work and you’ll have gotten yourself a real bargain of a skiing jacket.  It’s going to look perfect, just like it does now, only you’ll be able to get your arms in it.”

Reluctantly, he stops trying to poke his hands through the sleeve and hands me the jacket and departs. 

It always amazes me that people who come to me for help often get stuck in the act of asking for help because they want me to admit they cannot be helped, that this mysterious affliction is one inflicted upon them by the gods.  I have been summoned to marvel and condole, not actually assist.   Many people are caught in the indecision caused by not fully understanding what their problem is to start with, or thinking it is something else instead.   I think of the gurus who tell us “Your life is the physical manifestation of the conversation you are having in your head.”

Some of us are twisted. 

We are unable to recognize solutions to our problems because, fundamentally, we don’t even understand what our problems are!   We just know that something is Unmanageable.  Inside, beneath a [name brand] exterior of “perfection,” we can’t get from top to bottom without a glitch.  We’re Stuck.

Lots of things are getting twisted these days—not just sleeves but Words, meanings, intentions.  There is a sly seduction to noisy storms and flashes, tempers spinning “truths” such as some people choose to shape them.  It can feel counterintuitive during a time of what feels like crisis, panic, and genuine emergency for so many others for us to pull back, hunker down, and find a way to let ourselves untwist yet it is absolutely necessary to cut ourselves off, momentarily—from whatever holds us twisted—so that we can let gravity gently untangle us, so that we can find our right shape and place, so that we can be more effective when we re-enter the fray.   If we are unclear of our purpose, our passions may be used against us and we will fight only ourselves.

No matter how perfect we may appear on the outside, we are no actual Good to anyone if we are twisted on the inside.  We are utterly unable to fulfill our purpose and intentions.  When only our mouths function and our minds, hands, or hearts don’t or can’t—there’s some deep work we need to do.  

Ultimately, what keeps us warm and decent is what is Inside, closest to us. Once we fix that, we can weather any storm that comes our way.  We might even get to have the fun we set out to have.  One thing’s for sure, Spring of 2021 is going to deliver some loveable surprises! (at least in one barn I know…)

May you be warm and cozy and treat yourselves and others Gently in the next weeks! May we all have Love and patience for those who are Stuck.  As an exhausted mother of toddlers confided recently, “Screaming at them just doesn’t work.” Keep up your Good Work my Dearies and may the Mending Continue!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Getting Grounded

“Where are we? We are in the land of poo—duck poo, cow poo, sheep poo, goat poo…in fact, it’s the British Museum of Poo!” from “Nanny McPhee”

Greetings Dear Ones!

Dawn comes darkly through the heavy mists these days.   The Connecticut River, which is a mere two miles from my easterly-facing windows, drools and turns drowsily beneath its duvet of feathery fog.  The leaves are turning and sleek and cheeky chipmunks are getting very fat.  They scurry everywhere on their little errands.   The grasshoppers are starting to sleep off the last of the summer wine and the bug choir is losing faith in itself.  A few stark trees have already begun a bare-armed revelé in their opening ballet against the sky.  In these sharply grey and golden days, my mind naturally turns to poo.

There are ten little pullets pooping in the mudroom off the kitchen and they are incredibly stinky—it’s time to get them into the chicken coop, which needs to be winterized.  I need to get all the sheep dung out of the back of the car—since the eight-mile ride from Hermit Hollow had  a laxative effect on these wooly ruminants, who treated the vehicle like a moving port-a-potty.  And I can’t wait to harvest all the “compost” (a.k.a. poop) out of their old shed and put it on the future garden spots here…

I am not afraid of poo.

I am a Seamstress, a Shepherdess, and a Mother.  These jobs often require one to deal with a bit of poo, though Prudence thinks we should not discuss this.  I tell Prudence to take a whiff of her smelling salts or pass out.  We haven’t had a good blog about poop in a long time. I’ve been obsessed with the attempt to elevate or encourage myself (and anyone else who cares to listen) during these pandemic times which feel so alienating and disorienting.  I’ve tried to see the Good in everything and extol us to reach Higher, work Harder…blah…blah…blah… This is what I do when I am Afraid.  This is all well and good but sometimes, when things get especially crazy, it’s good to ground ourselves in some richer, um… Organic Material.   It’s wonderful to realize that we are Organic Beings who occasionally (don’t tell Prudence!) actually take a dump ourselves.

I realize that this is a sensitive subject for some who, like Prudence, don’t want to admit these things—sweet, polite, oblivious folks who report demurely to a porcelain closet every now and then to relax on a specialized chair with their pants down while they scan their Facebook or Instagram feeds in order to fill their minds with ca-ca.  So!  If you are one of these people who don’t like poopy talk, read no further. Tune in next week for something cleaner.

Turn back now.

You have been warned.

The following is a true story. It happened to a woman I know intimately—a bosom friend, shall we say.  She had just moved to a little farm in Vermont and awoke one morning to discover the power had gone out.  Power, as we all know, is that thing that enables one to Flush a Toilet.  Think about it.  In every sense of the word, this is Truth, metaphorically, metaphysically, and literally.  It may not seem so to the uninitiated, since toilets do not appear at first glance to require electricity, but they DO require water and power is what brings the water from the well.  In the olden days, that power came in the form of pioneers with buckets, who pooped in outdoor privies so it didn’t matter anyway. Today, electricity drives the pump which pipes it straight to the house.  It is quite possible to flush toilets as long as one refills them with water but if a woman has not pre-emptively gathered buckets of water, or prepared an emergency cistern, she may not be able to flush her toilet.

This is a harrowing revelation to one who normally avoids sugar and dairy products but spent the previous evening feasting on warm apple-dumplings slathered in ice-cream, washed down with raw hot cider—which were now having the same effect unpaved roads have on sheep in a Ford Explorer.  Add a bean burrito for lunch the day before and you can appreciate that she had a SITUATION brewing.  She scanned the horizon for Pioneers with buckets but none were forthcoming.   She thought about using the toilet anyway and leaving the lid down until the power returned but she had no idea how many hours, days, or weeks that might be.  She would most certainly make the house smell worse than the chickens in the kitchen were doing.  Workmen were coming to the house that afternoon—what if they needed to use the bathroom?  What if someone discovered what she had done? It was beyond mortifying to consider.   She was going to have to think of a different Plan.

She did what she does best and tried to ignore the situation—occupying her time by phoning the power company to see when the downed lines might be restored. She listened to pleasant muzak while on hold and tried to distract herself from The Situation.  For a while, her bowels complied.  Eventually, the rumblings could not be ignored. She hung up and thought with panic that she might be forced to knock on a neighbor’s door and beg access to her “water closet.” Then she realized the power was out all over the hill and no one’s wells would be pumping any water. They were all on individual septic systems.  Besides, pre-dawn, before the roosters are up, is hardly normal calling hours even for the best of neighbors, nevermind those on the verge of incontinence.

“If only I had an outhouse,” she thought, glumly clenching her flannel-clad buttocks.  What good is an old-fashioned farm in Vermont without an old-fashioned outhouse? Or at least one remodeled in the image of a trendy “composting toilet,” like those cool kids in Brattleboro have… (Note to self: you must add “outhouse” to the list of things to build here.  Something quaint but functional—with at least two or three holes cut in the plank, and a tiny one for the cat—just like Puppa had when he grew up.)

“This is what comes of drinking too much raw cider,” she thought bitterly.  Raw cider, as all country folk know, turns to scouring powder in the body and is more effective than any colonoscopy prep for making a person whistle-clean from end to end.  She could tell that the countdown had started.  She was on her way to a major blow-out.

Then she had the good fortune to remember the stories of a Dear Soul who travels the world doing incredible nursing and triage for sick children in war-torn countries like Syria and Serbia.  Many’s the time this Dear Soul has had to dig a small hole and poop into it because there is no other sanitation facility available.  It seemed crazy to have to do the same in a non-war-torn part of the back yard—but a great relief to not be shot at, unless deer season had started… had it?  Should she wear an orange vest?  There wasn’t time to find out.  Bathrobe flapping, she put on her wellies and dashed outside.

Where was the shovel? She couldn’t find the damn shovel.  Oh, yes.  She had left it in the blueberry patch when she had been transplanting bushes.  She started to run and then realized it was safer to do a stiff-legged goosestep sort of thing instead.  She made her way to the blueberry patch and looked with interest at the large holes that had been excavated when she moved the former inhabitants to new locations.  This one, right here, would be Perfect.  But no!  It was in direct sight of the neighbor’s kitchen window!  That would never do.   Why had she gotten rid of all the weeds? She was as exposed as a gazelle on the Serengetee . She would have to go somewhere else, where no one could see her.  She took the shovel and darted urgently from place to place around the property.  It was hard to find the Right Place.  One was too hard to dig, others were too close to the house, many had too much nearby poison ivy even to consider… “Who knew it was so hard to find a decent place to take a dump outside?” she marveled.  “No wonder the dogs can’t manage it…”

 In the nick of time, she found a place where the earth was loose, the trees were dense, and astonished chipmunks were few.  As her answer to Nature’s Call echoed down the valley, she got in touch with her inner Victorian who would have been appalled at doing such a vile thing inside a home. (The first indoor plumbing was in cellars, not the “decent” part of the house.)  That’s what outdoor privies are for!  We are supposed to do this outside.  In the long history of human civilization, crapping indoors is a relatively new trend—a blip—a fad.  And she realized her shame was just a story she was telling herself—shame that echoed all the way back to the very first seamstress and her fig leaves—but was probably just some marketing propaganda from a porcelain salesman.  The morning sun crested the hill, warming her backside as she planted her feet firmly in the dirt to hold herself up.  It felt good to be Grounded in the earth. Nature is not something we gaze at during Leaf-Peeping season.  It’s something we ARE.  How Wonderful to be Alive! Outside! Taking a crap in a vast, sacred garden…How wonderful to feel the sun where the sun don’t shine.  (There is nothing quite like the sun hitting a moon.)  This ruggedly optimistic middle-aged woman found herself giggling and stretching, expanding with relief—barely resisting the urge to scratch the earth triumphantly with her hind legs, like a cat covering scat. Taking a shit outside turned out to be the best thing she did all day.

If there’s one thing that 2020 seems to be good at, it’s throwing us each a little bit more than our share of doo-doo. Some of it is even of our own making.  It’s ok.  Powerlessness leads to panic, panic leads to Surrender,  Surrender leads to Serenity, with a touch of poison ivy and concern for our neighbors thrown in for good measure.  It’s like the whole 12-step process in a single squat.   We keep learning humility. We keep finding our balance and getting grounded.  And shit keeps happening!

Have Courage dear ones.  We are of the earth and to the earth we shall return.  May the trees and flowers be all the richer for it.  Keep Merry and Gentle and keep up your Good Work!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S. As soon as she entered the house, the power was back on. Of course it was…

Stupid Smart Tools

Greetings Dear Ones!

After all the drama around the shouting match that was woefully and inaccurately entitled a “debate” last night, it is wonderful to write to you this morning from the peaceful quiet of the new sheepfold here at the Land of Lost Plots, where animals don’t act like people!   Well, not rude people. These wooly darlings are placidly munching, burping, and cudding like they are the cool kids at school—those nonchalantly gum-chewing fifth-graders who know where the water cooler is and don’t have to ask to go to the lavatory.  They own this place and they know it.

Getting them here safely was a trick. Sunday, as I drove away from Hermit Hollow with a car full of sheep, and one stepped on the automatic window button, put his window down and jumped out, I made a mental note to check my PCI (personal craziness index). It just might be getting above normally acceptable levels, even for me.   I might need to make a few changes before, as one elder Hermit warns, my whole existence begins to resemble the 1999 Serbian sensation “Black Cat White Cat” (a movie which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, but nevertheless, one doesn’t want to live that way!)  With three sheep in the vehicle, air conditioning and music blasting, and one running loose down the driveway back to his beloved hut at Hermit Hollow, it certainly seemed that way. (Perhaps he simply wasn’t a fan of Scottish fiddle music?) Transporting all four a mere eight miles, in two trips, with the subsequent application of child safety locks on the windows, took more than three hours.  I later took a bath and completely changed colors.

The whole weekend was wildly productive yet exhausting.  My children and two of their friends helped excavate a mountain of debris and trash from two stalls in the back of the barn.  Seeing that rather daunting pile of junk made me think about the difference between what is holding us vs. what is holding us back.  Often, it’s just a series of decisions. What is useful? How can things be sorted, repurposed, or re-homed in order to minimize the amount that would enter a landfill?     In the process, we came across some wonderful tools—rakes, shovels, an antique planer, and multiple broken gizmos for manicuring a “lawn” that now resembles a Covid hairdo with brambles and burrs.  I noted with some amusement that the simpler a thing was, the more likely it was to retain its usefulness.   Complicated isn’t always better.

Monday, I left my newly restored old-fashioned barn and headed to a current job I have taken as a contractor-seamstress.  I have my first Corporate Gig! It’s so exciting!  It’s in an extremely smooth, square building that has been polished inside and out. I have a magnetic name badge and everything.  My inner space-traveler is thrilled that locks click open with a wave of this thing.  It’s only programmed to work until 8:pm so I have to make sure to be out before then or spend a long night wandering fluorescent hallways hung with somewhat questionable modern art.

Along with masks, mandatory temperature taking, and other Covid-19 precautions, they have installed clever devices at the bottom of the doors so that no one is required to touch doorknobs in this place. Once I figure out how to open a door with my foot, which makes me feel like that T.V. horse, Mr. Ed, trying to count to four before I smack myself in the face with the swiftly opening door, I am to sit in the corner of a lab and sew whatever needs to be sewn.   One of the designers is a man who has spent more than forty years working in the garment industry.  He created and maintained the textile machines that resulted in the 1980’s craze for “Cowboy wear” spawned by the popularity of the 1980 hit movie “Urban Cowboy,” starring John Travolta.  Their shirts were sold in Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue and worn by presidents Ford and Carter and Ronald and Nancy Reagan (who wore matching shirts).  He shows me a picture of actress Goldie Hawn, on the cover of Newsweek, wearing one.

I lift up the cover of the sewing machine and am vastly relieved to find that it is a very uncomplicated, old-fashioned, no-frills Bernina.  I exhale audibly.  The woman training me looks at me inquiringly. I explain, “I’m so happy that I am already familiar with this machine.  I was worried it was going to be some new-fangled thing I couldn’t use.”  I scan the lab and see so many machines that confuse me.

“Oh, no!” she says, “ we aren’t allowed any smart machines here. No computers. Nothing that could be programmed or copied.  Stupid tools only.”  I smile inwardly.  I have never met a stupid tool.  Even the most uneducated blind-hemmer knows when it is Friday, or when you are working on a delicate silk that should not be chewed to bits.  They are about as dumb as sheep who can open windows when they choose.  In the end, I hardly use the Bernina—the thing I do most is use a needle and thread—stone-age technology.  This suits me just fine.  Hand sewing is one of my greatest joys, though even a needle can get the better of me if I am not careful!  It absolutely cracks me up to find myself here, in a sophisticated laboratory full of state-of-the-art equipment, being asked to “sew.”  Scientists and engineers are designing specialized clothing and my job is to help make prototypes.  “I’m not kidding you,” says an engineer handing me cloth that has been cut by lasers, “you have no idea how hard it is to find people who know how to sew—I mean really sew.” (He means with needle, thimble, and thread.)  I guess we cannot create the new without the old.

Hands busy, my mind free to roam, I ponder the elegant simplicity of old tools and return to the weekend of barn cleaning and the look of utter joy on a young woman’s face as I taught her how to use a sledge hammer.  She had been painstakingly removing old, bent nails from a bit of rotting fence—hearing them squeak like mice as she pried them from their holes with a nail grabber.  It was a dainty, awful business.

Some situations call for Dainty. Others call for SMASH. “A Lady must be prepared to do both,” I explain as I show her how to whack the boards from the backside of the fence. “You must summon a delicious Rage.  Think of something you wish to release from your life. Get Mad at it and Swing!” I hand her my heaviest sledge.  She pauses, smiles, coils from ankle to wrist like a wet towel being wrung out, and gives an impressive Louisville Slugger to the nearest board.  It shatters in a most satisfying way.  Laughing, we stoop and scoop the shards with our gloved hands.  She looks at me with eyes filled with layers.  “You feel your own power, don’t you?” I state more than ask.  She nods, beaming, wordless.  I gesture broadly at the rest of the fence, which is sagging under the weight of vines in the afternoon sun. “Smash away!” I say.  And within moments, six eight-foot sections of fence are reduced to rubble for the burn pile.  We scrape the Past away with rakes.  We can start fresh—rebuilding with smaller hammers now.

Two hours later, I have taught her how to use a come-along and we have a taut, shiny new mesh fence attached to the old, black locust posts, which stand like Stonehenge in a circular paddock around the back end of the barn.  I’m so proud of her!  Now she can build a good fence and use Tiktok. I can only do one of those.

My reverie is interrupted by the arrival of an earnest young man from some part of the building devoted to making sure people have filled out surveys.  He is here to help me download an app on my phone so that I can sign into a company website and then get two codes sent to two locations so that I can cross-qualify to get into the survey.  They need to be absolutely Certain that a random stranger is not getting into their system to fill out daily two-page questionnaires about Covid-19-related symptoms or risks.   Naturally, my phone, being a very Smart Machine (far smarter than I) does not behave.  It does the equivalent of putting down its window and jumping out of the car.  While the kind young man is trying to sort this out, he is asked for a password he does not have.  “Try asking if it is an Amazonian Swallow or a European..” I suggest.  He is puzzled.  He needs to scuttle back to the mainframe in the cellar to figure this out.  And… to retrieve a password.  “Men have become the tools of their tools,” said Henry David Thoreau long before there were such things as cell phones.

I put my thimble back on and continue to sew and daydream about how exciting it is to have a clean barn.  Within moments, the young man has returned with a printout of things to try. Touching my phone with a thimbled finger does not work so he takes the phone from me without asking.  As his moist fingers poke at it repeatedly, I make a mental note to sanitize the phone thoroughly when he is done. “Why doesn’t your phone work like normal phones?” he wants to know.  “Probably because I spoiled it when it was young,” I say.  “I was lax and let it get away with stuff I shouldn’t have.  Now I can’t control it. It’s like a nasty pony who has learned to bite.”  Learning that my phone is recalcitrant and cheeky is not news to me.  Rather than disinfect it, I make another mental note to flush it down the nearest toilet instead.  That is, if I can paw my way out the door and find one.

Meanwhile, I’ll just keep using my old-fashioned skills and tools and doing what I am doing.  To stay sane in a world that increasingly makes no sense, I personally don’t think we need any more “new” tools or techniques. Sometimes, we simply have to keep doing the things that got us this far, the things that will ultimately get us where we want to go.  We need to put our hands and hearts to our older, most simple tools and just keep going.  Let’s revisit Kindness, Patience, Integrity and Civility while we're at it.

Looking around at the current state of our country and the current state of our world, it’s not even a question of how smart or stupid our tools are—How smart or stupid are we ? Can we use any tools we have to create something better than we’ve got now?  Oh, please…

Let the mending continue!

Yours Aye,

Nancy

Just

Greetings Dear Ones,

I confess.  I hate the word “Just.”  As seamsters and tailors, we heard the word “just” nearly every day: It “just” needs a stitch or two; it “just” needs a tuck; it “just” needs a new zipper…  and these items, in order, are a child’s woolen sweater from the 1970’s that has been completely chewed by moths, an ornate pair of jeans with heavy top stitching that needs to come in two inches at the waist only (not the bum, she needs all the room she can get in the bum), and a down parka from L.L. Bean that has three linings.   I “just” want to smack these people who say “just.”   “Just” is a way of minimizing their desires to make them look more manageable—as if we have no idea what they are really asking us to do and could be convinced by their blithe, blind, and cheery optimism. 

These people have no idea how their choices are impacting others.  Don’t get me wrong—I have no problem doing this work for people—I love this work—it’s why I chose to go into this business. (Ok, not really…I chose it for the glamour, fast cars, and sex appeal! …um…They’re on their way, right?) I just get irked when people think they are asking for a little, when actually, they are asking for a lot.  They think something “just” is something minimal.  It isn’t.  “Just” has other meanings too…

When we think about how our choices are impacting others, that’s when we get to the heart of a similar word: Justice.    Both words come to us from the Latin root: jus, or justus , meaning “law.”  (Laws, of course, are those things other people should follow.  And a lawyer, according to Ambrose Bierce, is “one skilled in circumvention of the Law.”)  “Gimme a break,” says a bellicose man with whom I was working yesterday. “Everyone knows Right from Wrong. Everyone.  We think of Justice as the morally right and fair state of things.  But we wouldn’t need it if everyone just did the right damn thing. They know what to do. They just won’t do it.” Clearly, this fallible aspect of humanity thrills him as much as treading in un-bagged dog poop.

But what is the “right damn thing?” What is “fair?”  To treat everyone “the same” is not the same thing as treating everyone fairly.   If one man needs his trousers hemmed four inches, shall I trim all trousers four inches? That would be absurd, though it would definitely simplify my work!  When one of us has a headache, we don’t all take aspirin. (Unless of course, that person is Prudence! In which case, we should all take valium.)

Justice is like medicine that seeks to help a body balance itself into healing.  I tried to tell my children when they were very small that medicine had magic powers that only grownups could understand—it was too dangerous for children to touch—that’s why I had to keep it locked away.  My very sensible young daughter short-circuited my long-winded explanation with this gem: “Mummy, I get it.  Medicine is stuff that if you take it when you are sick it will make you healthy but if you take it when you are healthy, it will make you sick.”   Yes. Precisely. Take it from a four-year-old:  Medicine is only to help the body recover its balance.

Justice is the quest for balance.  Charging too little for our work is just as unethical as charging too much.  I met a man yesterday who showed me pictures of his wife’s craft projects.  “She could charge money for this stuff but she doesn’t know how,” he said sadly, with the look of one who sees needed revenue escaping out the door in the form of gnomes made from clothespins.

We are all trying to achieve our balance.  In the shop, what is out too much must be taken in, what is in too tight must be let out, as people notice the shifts in their own equators.  Balance is not static—it’s fluid and continuous. 

A younger person I am extremely fond of calls me for advice.  I tell him to talk until he is done talking and to listen carefully for his own wisdom as he speaks. He does. At the end of it, without a single word from me, he has come up with a plan he feels good about.  He is sure he knows what to do. He feels like he is embarking on the Right Path. It is a hard but noble and virtuous path.  I am proud of him but I am biting my cheeks to keep from giggling.  I have given him no advice.  He pauses, senses the mirth, and asks what is funny.   I tell him to call back in 48 hours and I will tell him. This frustrates him but he agrees.  He calls in less than 48 hours and admits he chose a different path.  “Well, that’s why I was laughing,” I admit.  I knew that path would not be a long one.  It seemed a steep and joyless route.  In choosing it, he was struggling to disconnect his feelings from his reasoning.  Nothing dooms a path faster. Intuition must balance logic.   “I’m glad you chose the difficult mess that is Joy,” I tell him sincerely, “rather than the straight and narrow.”

“Do you think I am stupid?” he wants to know.

“Finding your truth involves a lot of mistakes,” I say. “Mistakes are not stupid in and of themselves.  I won’t think you’re stupid until you keep making the same ones over and over without learning.  That’s the only thing that can ever be called stupid.  Make amends when you need to and keep learning.  And no matter what, say Yes to Life when it calls.”

To me, that’s what justice is.  It’s not making things “fair” or equal or even.  It’s not even about righting wrongs, which is often impossible. It’s about seeking the Truth behind wrong turnings, mis-guidings, and “mis-takes” (taking what we should not have taken).  Sometimes, we need help around mending things we should not have broken.  This is where laws, traditions, precedents, and the elders’ wisdom are helpful—not necessarily so we can make as “new” but so that we can make “better.”  (I can’t help thinking of that meme that says “I want to be fourteen again so I can ruin my life in different ways.  I have new ideas.”)

Yesterday was the Autumnal Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere.  Night equals day.  For one brief time, the scales of Light were balanced.  (I fell over anyway.)  We enter the zodiac of Libra—symbolized by the scales of Justice.  It’s time to harvest what we need and return the rest to the soil from which it sprang. 

I love the stark boldness of the seasons here in New England as Nature changes her face. The maples are causing a riot of color on the hills as chilly night caresses  on their bare legs send up their flaming blushes. I celebrate the coming longer nights, even as I lament the lack of sunshine.  Thorn-torn and ragged, I am tired of the heat of summer, of chaff on my neck from mowing, of fingers stinging green with weeding.  I am ready to be done with poison ivy! I welcome the prospect of sitting by my kitchen wood stove, knitting, spinning, dreaming of the gardens to come.  (Dreaming of gardens is my favorite part of gardening.)

There is still a lot to clean up first. Life is messy and there are consequences for our actions—like leaving that hoe where I could step on it.  We live, evolve, and grow by continually shaping each other through our choices.   The way I Give is influenced by the way you Receive (or refuse to); the words you choose are influenced by the way I listen (or don’t).  Like my dear young friend, we discover truth at the pendulum swing between wrong and righteous behavior.  Righteousness with no compassion can be every bit the problem that Compassion with no righteousness can be.  We need balance. 

We are like garments needing to be whole: We need a left.  We need a right.  There is no sense hating one or the other. Both are necessary. We need our male and female energies. We need our heads and hearts to partner.  We need intuition and logic to inform each other.  We need to come together as a whole and balance.  Not so that we can stand perfectly still and “just” look pretty.  But so we may Dance.  

Let the mending continue!  Thanks for your Good Work.

Yours aye,

Nancy

A Fourth Dimension

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” –Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Greetings Dear Ones!

There is a blur in my peripheral vision these days—a streak of something flashing past.  I’m pretty sure it’s called “September.”   I am in a constant hurry but September is outstepping me.  I’ve taken to eating my homemade breakfast sandwiches in the car on the way to work to save time.  Only, I’m going to have to stop this practice because I’m getting way too much fiber; I’ve absentmindedly eaten nearly three paper towels in the last two weeks!  

A frazzled customer enters my shop and says “I read your blog most weeks and I know that you hate working on grotty, dirty jeans, so I’ve washed these for you.  I don’t want to wind up in one of your blogs!”

“Thank you,” I say, “That is so kind of you.”

As I watch, she pulls them from a plastic bag. They are still WET.  My eyes widen.

“I see you washed them, and that is just marvelous, don’t get me wrong… but you didn’t think to dry them too?”

She hangs her head.  “I didn’t have time.”  We both laugh.

“I’m going to wind up in the blog, aren’t I?”

“This very week,” I promise her. “Hell yeah.”

Seriously, who isn’t in a rush in September? The light is waning at each end of the day and Fall is bearing down on us here in Vermont, where we spend most of the summer getting ready for winter. I’m under an intense amount of pressure this year, trying to get the new homestead ready.  I call all this nesting and storing of food “operation Field Mouse.” Someone very dear to me calls this “the Fall knot.”   He explains that The Knot is that tension we feel in our bellies when we think about getting the wood stacked, the hay into the barn, the winterizing of gardens and projects and food and we realize that Time is running out.   When the snow flies, we need to be Ready.  “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late” says Ford in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor—though the context is not the quite the same, it fits. (We fantasize about being able to put our boots by the fire then and Rest and be Thankful, not preventing our wives from sleeping with knaves.)   Winter Prep is not just a “bread and milk” thing one hastily purchases at the drop of a storm warning. When one lives deep down, next to the dirty roots of Life and jeans, there is a lot to do at this time of year.   Each extra skillet-fried hour of Summer is a blessing.

I call a local farmer to buy hay.  “Why don’t you come tomorrow or Friday?” he says.

“Tomorrow IS Friday,” I tell him. “Shall I come tomorrow?”

“WHAT?!?!” he splutters. “Tomorrow’s Friday? Geez…What’s today then?” He sounds startled, like Count Reugen’s machine  just sucked a day of his life away.  We live by Seasons not days around here.   And this is the season of Hurry Up! We agree to meet at 8 am the next day, which is late for both of us.

The hay has been a major disappointment. Last year even the first cut was green and leafy and the sheep gobbled it up like it was candy.  Normally, first-cut hay—the “first” crop they cut in June, is a little too stemmy for sheep.  They prefer second-cut, which is often finer.  If they don’t get what they want, they push it around their plates and waste it like sulky teenagers who have no idea how much groceries cost. 

So many things go into getting good hay—most of it is the dice of the gods. Will it be wet enough to grow, dry enough to harvest? This year was a drought.  There is no second cut to speak of.  The farmer from whom I manage to purchase fifty bales (I need a hundred) tells me he is getting out of the hay business.  This makes me incredibly sad on so many levels.  He’s in his nineties and still nimble enough to climb a hay mow and throw bales to me below.  He helps me load fifty bales into my trailer.  As I’m ready to drive away, he says appreciatively, “You know, you’re pretty rugged.” I want to gush “and so are you!” but that seems weird so I don’t.  I will just carry that highest of compliments with me in my heart and smile all day.  Something in me does not wish to tell this man that his strength is unusual or surprising.  Those in their nineties have enough reminders that time is passing.

I rush to work and pick up a project I’ve been laboring over for weeks.  It’s an Aran sweater knit by a mother for a cherished son in the 1960’s.  I pause, hay still in my hair, paper-towel still stuck in my teeth, and realize that Finally, I am holding Time in my hands and it is Still.  This work, done by a woman I will never meet, is just incredible. Her HOURS, nay DAYS, are here still, made visible in the Flawless perfection of her tension, gauge, infinite patience.  I read this sweater eagerly, as if it is an old newspaper from a bygone era.  My task is to knit new cuffs, collar, bottom ribbing, and neck, as they are all worn thin and shredding gently.  The body of the sweater is still perfect.  The elbows have been neatly darned but they are shot and will need patches.  Finding yarn to match this project has been a disastrous waste of time.  I have gone to every yarn shop and spinnery I know, despite my reluctance to shop during the pandemic, on the quest for yarn that matches this.  In each shop, I pore over the sweater with ladies who, thankfully, are wearing masks and thus unable to drool on the knitting.  We all agree that this is a fun project but that matching the yarn will be impossible.  The tiny bits of lanolin in the original wool have yellowed and aged the thing to a rich patina that cannot be matched.  In the end, I have to spin it myself, from my little ewe called “Willow,” ancient herself, who happens to match just right.  It’s a miracle.   But it’s a miracle that will take time. (Most miracles do.)

In the steady rush of days whizzing and rattling past, it’s impressive to hold a piece of work in my hands and see that it has stood the test of time.   Another wonderful treat I have this week is the privilege of working on a Civil War era quilt that needs some stabilizing. I have stamped my foot and insisted I “only work on clothing” many times (a woman emailed me recently to entice me into fixing a backpack for her, saying she was going to wear it as part of her mother-of-the-groom ensemble! Ha!) but this quilt is a special treat I could hardly refuse.  I think about the hours these women put into these stitches—the love, the creativity, the ingenuity of making all these geometric pieces comes together so cleverly and beautifully. 

It is said that Time is our fourth dimension.  There are three spatial dimensions to an object—the length, width, height.  But there is also this dimension of these articles that have endured, like farmers, over many generations.   The progress of existence in irreversible progression from thought to Becoming to Being to Enduring.   It makes me pause my hurry and lose the moment to AWE.  It is the journey of a soul as much as a quilt.  Barns full of hay, sheds full of wood—what are these but hourglasses in disguise?

The Fabric of time puzzles me.  I picture it like this big quilt on the table before me.  It stretches in all directions but it can be folded, suddenly, by a thought or scent or image, and our emotions can hurl us backwards through the years and connect to another time, another patch on the fabric.  Time is part of the International System of Quantities—things occur in both Time and Space.   And it can be used to define other quantities, such as velocity.  Ben Franklin called it “money”—as in “Time is Money,” which I think is really only for the hard-hearted.   How does one ever really put a price on Time?  Time, as anyone who has lost the Love of a Lifetime will tell you, is priceless.

There is so much more I would like to say right now… but sadly, I am out of Time!

Keep up your Good Work, my Darlings!  Hurry Slowly.  Remember to savor the good stuff.

Yours aye,

Nancy

Wisdom

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Greetings Dear Ones!

There is a man who, when I call to tell him the latest dumb thing I have done, laughs and laughs and laughs.  No matter how I have presented the latest melodrama—as a farce, a tragedy, the apocalyptic end of my world (or an unfortunate cheesecake) as I know it, he laughs.  He listens in deep, cheek-bitten silence until the mirth bubbles up and over both of us like a dishwasher accidentally filled with laundry soap.  He tries to take me seriously, especially if I am either in tears or a red-haired Rage with every frazzled follicle on my head standing on edge. He tries. He just can’t.  He asks leading questions such as “what happened next?” or “let me get this straight…you drove the truck into the what?” just to keep the facts in view, never to question my motives or my sanity or make me feel like any half-wit might have known better than to eat a two-day-old burrito she found lying under the back seat of a car and wash it down with solar-heated Kombucha.  He’s on my team, never the self-appointed coach, or arm-chair quarterback yelling from the sidelines. I love that laughter.  It makes me feel safe again, no matter what crimes against Nature, Humanity, or dairy products I feel I have committed.  In his chuckles, I find witness, relief, absolution.  The Laughter heals me.  The only time he gets stern is when I begin to worry “what the neighbors might think.”  And by “neighbors” I mean absolutely anyone from the guy asking me to tailor his bespoke suit, which recently arrived from England, to that kid with the heavily tattooed feet who just wants her shorts patched, and yes, even my actual Neighbors!  (I even worry what other people’s dogs think of me.) Then, the only thing he ever says that constitutes “advice” is to say “Since when does someone else’s opinion about you matter to you more than your own? To Whom do you really have to answer?   (Just the fact that he says “whom” makes Prudence adore him.) Trust me, hon, what other people think of you is none of your business. Stick to the facts.”

This is tough medicine for someone willing to hand sew a zipper into what is basically a dress made of metal, just to keep someone happy.  No matter how I try to swallow the idea that other people’s opinions of me don’t matter, it never goes down smoothly.  I operate on the idea that every customer is Right and that they know best.  In actual fact, you and I know they don’t know best.  They might (occasionally) know what they want, but it is often not what is best.  They have crazy ideas and they need gentle, mothering guidance to say what they are attempting is not possible, not healthy, and certainly not fashionable.  I shouldn’t feel so guilty about trying to protect them from themselves.  But I do.  My job, as a service provider, IS to make them HAPPY.  Very Happy.  Not just happy with the work I do, but happy with their whole day, their whole life and the blessings of Fate that landed them in Vermont for this magical moment of our interaction. I want them happy they are Here.  Even more Dangerously, I want them happy with ME.  That’s when I know my ego needs a trip to the hedge clippers.  That’s when I have gone too far.  That’s when the trouble is sure to start.  Because that’s when I find I cannot say NO, even if I need to.

No matter what we each make in our little workshops, our primary craft is Soulcraft.   How can it be otherwise? There is so much to learn from the mistakes we make, the frontiers we encounter, the relationships we create with the people we are attempting to please, and the two-day old intestinal grenades disguised as bean burritos we really should back away from carefully and handle with tongs until they can be safely detonated by a bomb squad.  Everything is evolving and changing—especially non-refrigerated food items.  From these experiences, we gain Wisdom, along with deep gratitude that the toilet paper shortages have ended.

The word “Wisdom” is an interesting word.  The Greeks, in the time of Homer, used the word sophia (wisdom) to mean “skill,” as in the skill of a craftsperson like a carpenter or seamstress.  Whether one makes barrels or bed sheets, skilled manual labor involves a systematic encounter with Material—from which an understanding of the natural sciences emerges.  There is no denying the geometry involved in sewing! Sewing is a language of shapes, as are carpentry and many kinds of engineering.  A good seamstress can envision a series of puzzle pieces lying flat on a cutting table as encircling a body and becoming a garment in the way that a good carpenter can look at a pile of boards and see a house or chicken coop.  Craft knowledge entails the “ways” of the materials—that is, their very natures—which way the warp and weft will run, how cutting on the bias will affect the drape of the material.  Through pragmatic engagement, we learn universal truths about angles and divisions and symmetry and, most importantly, that you cannot keep cutting something and expect it to get longer!

In modern times, the concepts of “wisdom” and “knowledge” have been unhooked from each other and remain connected to Nature only in science.  In religious or spiritual terms, Wisdom has taken on a more mystical meaning.  It has been cut off from its concrete origins in Nature and made to represent ethereal realms of thoughts, ideas, severed inner knowings. But where do these “knowings” come from?  I would argue that they come from Experience.  I know that young children under the age of five cannot begin to “play” music unless they have played with music.  They need to experiment—to bebop around to their own rhythms and dance moves.  They need to explore concepts of tone and tempo in their physical bodies, through practice, through embodied manipulations.  No less than Aristotle backs me up on this:

Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts.  Hence those who dwell in intimate association with Nature and its phenomena are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.

Over and over again, as one “who dwells in intimate association with Nature” (Nature which, as we speak, is attempting to eat my house!)Experience teaches me what I can and cannot do.  Explaining this to my customers in clear, compassionate, forthright ways actually takes better care of them than attempting to do what I know is risky just to please them.  They have no idea how hard or easy some things are.  I do. I love the phrase “I’d rather turn you down than let you down.”

Thanks to a series of local small business initiatives and word of mouth, people are learning of the existence of my little shop space.  As more and more people emerge from their Covid shelters and realize the change of season means repairs need to be made to their winter long-johns, I am getting a steady stream of emails and phone calls inquiring what I can and cannot do.  I need to stick to the wisdom of Facts: “Yes, my love, I can adjust your waistband and hack your jeans all the way up to the crotch. No, you will not look like J.Lo in Daisy Dukes…” Without fail, the projects I agree to do for dear friends, just because I like them, or worse, because I want them to like me, have a way of not turning out well.  This leads to unpleasant amounts of soul-growth opportunities and tear-stained cheese-cake eating. 

Over and over, in little workshops everywhere, we keep learning to Tell The Truth, Be Ourselves, and honor others with Honesty, not opinions.   Now, if only we could get politicians to do the same!!!

Thank you so much for your Good Work.  Let the mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Thresholds

I’m a dweller of the threshold and I’m waiting at the door, and I’m standing in the darkness, I don’t want to wait no more. –Van Morrison

Greetings Dear Ones,

We did SO much work here at the Land of Lost Plots two weekends ago!  I got totally worn out and needed a week to recover.  Some of it was actually even three-dimensional work, though the true heavy lifting of it turned out to be spiritual for me.  Two dear friends came and camped on the land—one in a tent, one in a tent-hammock, and helped my daughter and I find what we came to call “the spiral path” around this place. 

The land around my new home is anywhere from waist-deep to neck-deep (depending how tall one is) in weeds and brambles.  The women who came to help, both in their mid thirties, agreed that it is as magical and darkly confusing as an old fairytale that makes no sense until you realize it is actually a map of the female psyche.  For one thing, there is no way into the house except through the garage, which seems weird.   This place, with its slightly slanted barn, the mythical meadow we never actually found, and the deep, dark tangled gulch running steeply through the center, could be anybody’s psyche for sure.  It is the stuff of giddy daydreams and ghastly nightmares. There are doors, but they don’t go anywhere reasonable.  (One of the first things I did after moving in was fall out the front door onto a rock that is way too low to be a step and sprain my foot.  I had to crawl back inside and hop on crutches for a few days.)

The ladies arrived Friday night.  “What is our goal? What can we do?” they wanted to know, as they unloaded baskets and armloads of newly canned garden produce and summer squash and turnips and homemade pickles.  While we feast on both their fresh garden abundance and the energy surge they bring, I say “I don’t care what we do—we just have to do Something.  It’s like a tangled necklace.  We just have to start picking away at something to see what can come free.  Let’s try to make some sense of this by what gives way first.”

We decide to start by creating a fire pit so that we can drag two cords of rotted wood away from the side of the house and burn it (the wood, that is, not the house). We want a fire pit anyway so that we can sit around it and play fiddles and chat.  To get to the wood, some of which has actually turned to compost we could shovel rather than logs we could lift, we have to saw through brambles as thick as broomsticks. 

“Where should we make the fire pit?” we wonder.  We all agree that making it someplace convenient to the house, where we would not have to drag the wood too far, is an absurd idea—not nearly as much fun as exploring the twilight for a fairy circle, a little glen, a remote location with an opening in the canopy to the other world, where we can watch the stars.  I pause and feel grateful that I am not dealing with Practical people.  These women are strong and wise and magical.  Intuitively, they align with the priorities of having a fire pit and getting an outdoor claw foot bathtub operational over the need to build some front door steps or clean the garage. 

One friend, dressed in a linen dress, work boots, and gloves, fires up her husband’s weed-whacker and buzzes a trail through the grass.  Shadows lengthen around us as she meanders downhill until she comes to a level place that we all agreed “feels right.”  I fetch the push mower and the two of us hack a wide circle in the brush.  The stalks next to the ground are like straw.  We’ve had a drought this summer.  I worry about sparks.  With a pang of anguish, I think of friends in California who are displaced from their homes, sheltering in fear of the fires raging there.  I don’t want to be the one who burns down Vermont.

I run uphill, fetch a shovel, and cut a bulls-eye of sod out of the center of our circle.  “We need rocks around this, and at least four big buckets of water—one for each of us,” I say.  I lumber back up the hill for buckets and water while the other ladies bring chairs and wood.  I point out a place where they can go to find rocks that will be the right size for our pit.  They are large grey hunks of granite in a disorderly pile near the edge of the driveway.  They begin to peel them from the dirt that has scabbed over them, ripping roots away to free the stones.

“We must Name these rocks,” says the woman with the weed-wacker, her bright eyes glowing bluer than the rim of the fading sky.  “Rituals are the things that tell us about transformation.  We cannot transform anything without simultaneously transforming ourselves.  There are four of us—let’s each take three stones and carry them to the circle.  These are three burdens we are tired of carrying.  We must name our burdens and decide to carry them no further.”   Ok, she didn’t say it exactly like that…she was far more eloquent…but that’s as close as I can remember. 

I fetch a metal hand truck from the garage.  These “burdens” are actually just a little too big for us to carry so we go one by one, down the path alone, using the truck.   When it is my turn, I load three huge stones on the hand truck and head down the winding path, dragging the stones on wheels behind me.  As the pitch of the slope increases, I realize too late that it is really dumb to be in front of the Burdens, which are pushing me faster and faster down the hill, until I am running wide-eyed, blasting past the fairy circle, past our circle of earth, past our water buckets, into the weeds beyond.  One by one, scratched and laughing, I drag my burdens back to the circle, name them, and lay them down. 

Gradually, we have all the elements assembled—the fire, the water, the stone, the air—and we four humans who are made of a delicate recipe of each.  We nestle in to the camp chairs on that line between earth and sky and talk about our lives, our hopes, our burdens.   The pandemic has been hard on us as women, artists, and craftspeople—we share our fatigue, our fear, and our gratitude for having made it thus far.  We acknowledge the symbolism of letting our old burdens be the boundary around a new spark.  These are dark times.  We are here to bring Light and keep each other warm.  This is our own private Solstice.

We talk through the night until a new day.  I listen to the wisdom of those far younger than I and marvel.  They talk of what they want to “birth” into this world on the threshold of becoming—their babies, their music, art, and stories.  A dog crawls into my lap and he and I dwell silently as possibilities get explored.   We gaze at the dear faces in the firelight. The youngest is no longer a child.  She is a radiant Maiden.  The Maidens are ready to be Mothers.  With a sudden start, I realize I have been the maiden, been a mother.  It’s my turn next to be the Crone!  To the shock of those around the fire, I announce abruptly, out of context, that it is my intention to be a Badass Crone.  “Check my Facebook profile tomorrow,” I insist.  I’m going to update my job description to read “Badass Crone.”  We all agree it is time to go to bed.  The Crone is getting wound up.  “We are each called to step across the threshold of what we already know into a world of challenges in order to measure ourselves differently,” I shout as they stagger towards trees, hammocks, tents.  I go inside. This badass Crone sees no reason to let a perfectly good bed indoors go to waste.

The next day, we set out to explore the land beyond the fire pit.  We make a strange processional—there are four women trudging along in a variety of what each terms “work clothing,” which includes everything from canvas trousers, to yoga pants, and a 1950’s vintage Moo-moo and boots—followed by a small dog and a socially awkward rooster with separation anxiety named “Bertie” who thinks he is a house pet.  The brush closes around us quickly. As we slash our way along the path, we come upon a new threshold.  At this moment, the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping and turning back.  What feels like defeat becomes instead the realization that to continue the way we were going was just going to lead to more poison ivy, a lost rooster, not to mention possible self-inflicted machete wounds.   We pause.   The Crone loves the choice to stop doing what we have been doing, to honor the emerging wisdom that is telling us to turn around, to breathe, and feel the sweat trickling between our skin and clothing choices.  We always have the Choice to stop living in discomfort, to stop doing what we have been doing just because we have been doing it, to overcome our cruelty, which is rooted in dedication to an old idea, and choose a clearer trail.  Lack of comfort is usually a sign that we are on a threshold of new discoveries—or about to have to carry a rooster. (Trail-blazing Soul work is not for the light and fluffy.)

__________

Mere hours/days later, I find myself at yet another threshold: the loss of a dear friend and cohort of the past 28 years.  As I spiral my way through the grief, I see that it is a coiling path with many doorways leading me over old familiar ground as I make my way through a series of memories—most of which make me hold my sides and laugh in tear-streaked howls.   Like the time she and another friend had to go to the local emergency room dressed as Cleopatra and a jungle explorer  (complete with gum boots and coconut bra) after a Halloween party at my former home… Or the time she and I drove to Portland, Maine after midnight, after hosting a house concert, to run a half marathon the next day. We were so late to the race we had to start running from the parking lot to the starting line after the gun had already gone off.  It took us six miles to catch up to a one-legged woman on crutches (who, it goes without saying, was Magnificent).  Or the time we went out to lunch and accidentally threw our car keys away with the picnic wrappings and had to get local officials to come unlock the municipal trash cans. 

What I love best about this dear friend, apart from the fact that she was constantly tidying up and making tea for everyone,  is that she was always getting caught in the act of being herself.  She was Herself, Always—from the time she spent half an hour kicking a car in a public parking lot because her key didn’t work (turns out, it wasn’t her car!), to the time she accidentally brought a group of realtors to what they thought was a broker’s open-house on a sale property but turned out to be a mercy meal after a family’s funeral instead.  (Imagine laying granny to rest and coming home to discover her house crawling with realtors because someone had gotten the address wrong!) She was a source of Light and a profound influence on me through many stages of my life.  Her follies, which delighted us all so much, actually made it ok to be Me, by giving me a window to accept my own.  She was my dear companion through my own journey from maiden to mother to crone.  I miss her more than words could ever say.

Now, her spark has gone out, but not before she ignited other sparks.  So! Who will tidy up and make tea and make us laugh now?  We will. We must.  Whether we be mothers, maidens, or crones, it’s our turn to keep a firm grip on our car keys and Step Up.  Gaps are being made, spaces created so that each of us moves one step forward to take on a new role, a new growing edge, a new part in the pageantry of Life.  Though none of us could ever be like her, what we need most is to be Ourselves—moo-moo dresses, machetes, and all. What each of us is being asked is “Hey, it’s your turn now—Are You Available?”  We don’t exactly know where we are going or what is at the root of this jungle mess of a world we find ourselves inhabiting… nor do we need to have the answers to any other question… Just this: Are you available? Do you have the capacity, energy, capability and willingness to show up where you are needed, where you may be called?  Put down your burdens; they aren’t worth carrying.  Make some tea.  Imagine what shape your love will take next.

Chardin says, “The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe.”  (And its portals are DOGS, right, Nora?) Love is how we continue to hold those who have left us.  Love is how we reach for those yet to come. Love is how we dance, Right Here, Right Now by the fires of our dreams.  True Love is our threshold.

I’m off to don a moo-moo and machete.  This is one Badass Crone saying “I love you so much.  Let the mending continue!”

Yours aye,

Nancy

A little Skin

Greetings Dear Ones!

Did you ever notice that when you are shopping for a certain kind of car you start to see that car everywhere? Or when people find out you like antique spinning wheels and treadle sewing machines, suddenly they become the theme of every gift anyone ever gives you?  I had a friend who mentioned she liked roosters and ever after, for years of holiday seasons, she was gifted with ceramic roosters, napkins printed with roosters, wreaths decorated with roosters, lamps made in the shape of roosters… Some would say that this is the Law of attraction at work, while others might say the Universe has a warped sense of humor.  (What else can account for the 1990’s proliferation of garden gnomes?)   And yet, no matter how many times we mention how much we adore gold bullion, winning lottery tickets, or a good working team of oxen, they all seem a bit thin on the ground?  It’s because Abundance sneaks towards us obliquely, where we least expect it, where we Observe Mildly without investing our Longing. 

In any case, to focus on the art of Cherishing better, I have been on a quiet little treasure hunt.   I have taken my eye off the horrors of What I Wish could be Different, and instead, watch from the corner of my eye…  Evidence is mounting that we are doing a better job of being kind to each other than anti-social media might have us believe.   Suddenly, without making too big a deal of it, I am seeing little random act of Kindness everywhere, as proliferous as summer goldenrod in the fields.  These are the things that touched my heart and taught me a bit more about Cherishing this week:

For the past month, a mother has been using my shop in the evenings, borrowing the cutting table and machines after I was gone for the day, to build the most beautiful and unique quilt for her son, who was leaving for college.   She had saved all his old T-shirts—each one commemorating a precious event or era in his life, from concerts to camps, school teams, and the like.  Her boy is now off to his new future, wrapped up in all the love and joy of his past.  On those bewildering days when a young man might come back to his dorm and wonder, amidst all the disorienting changes one is apt to experience away from home, who he is and where he came from—there will be this quilt, a second skin, waiting to ground him like only a loving parent’s hug can do.

A beautiful woman, who is also a very adept home-sewer, came in and gave me more than a dozen lovely summer dresses to hem for her.  “I want my legs to show a tiny bit more skin.  I am not the frump these dresses say I am! And I am outgrowing the thinking that I ought to do everything by myself or for myself,” she said, “Of course, I could do these, but I decided to honor your professional capacities and to honor myself in the process.  It’s taken a long time to realize I am worthy of being served.  Just because I can do something shouldn’t mean I have to.”  I melted.   There was so much power stepping into that statement.  Instinctively, I wanted to offer her a discount because of the volume she was bringing in. She batted it away.  “Do you hear me?” she asked. “I am worthy of full price.  For me to value myself and my time, you must do the same; that’s how this thing works.”  Wow. Good lesson!

A young, somewhat haggard man came in with a pair of torn work pants to mend and his wife’s jacket, which needed a new zipper.  “If you don’t have time to both things this week, would you please do my wife’s jacket first?” he asked plaintively. “It’s her favorite jacket and I hate to see her shivering.”  I glanced from his frayed clothes to the look of tender pity in his eyes and realized I was witnessing a marriage vow with real skin on it. (And yes, it's already time to shiver in the evening in Vermont!)

A gentle, soft-spoken man with velvet eyes came to collect his order and saw a complimentary mask hanging from the hanger.  He offered to buy it but I insisted I give them to all the customers.  “I have been wondering where to get one of these,” he said. “I want to get one for my husband who has to wear a mask all day long and they cut into his face. This looks like it will be so much softer on his skin.”  He was more excited about the fact that he had found a mask for his partner than that his jacket had been mended!

On and on the cherishing lessons came--the woman paying for her daughter’s bridesmaid dress, the inspiring friend setting up a recurring Zoom discussion on the book White Fragility,  a summer music camp imaginatively setting itself up on line to continue to nurture the community, each and every person I see wearing a mask and smiling….

I recently came across a wonderful story, shared by author Terry Hershey, about a little boy having nightmares.  To paraphrase, the little boy kept visiting his mother’s bed all night long and saying he was scared; he did not want to be in his bed alone.  She repeatedly sent him back to bed, telling him he could never be alone, as God was everywhere and always with him.  This failed to comfort him and eventually he returned and said he preferred “someone with skin.”

The story made me smile for so many reasons—not the least of which is the shear RELIEF that I no longer have those broken nights of sleep every parent endures, and those pointless 4 a.m. negotiations with “monsters under the bed.”   My heart goes out to both that boy (whom I remember being) and that mother (whom I also remember being).  This is partly why I used to put my children to bed with a series of prayers, bribes, lullabies, and live animals to keep them company.  (If skin is in short supply, fur will do!)

When I look at the Cherishing moments of this week—the gentle gifts of self I was privileged to witness, they all involve Skin.  I love that a middle-aged mother-of-many loves herself enough to show a glimpse of her knees.  I love that she lets my hands do her work.  I love that a young man has all the T-shirts of his youth, and the imbued love of his mother, still next to his skin, whenever he wants it.  Our tender human skin needs clothing for warmth and protection—like jackets when we shiver, and dresses for celebrations. 

It’s hard, during these Covid times, not to connect in touch, in hugs, in skin with each other.  Most people tell me that hugging is what they miss the most.  Yes, we get to “see” each other, “hear” each other—and stay what is ironically called “in touch” all over the world.  But we miss each other’s skin.

If we think of God as “Love,” yes, Love is everywhere.  Energy is everywhere. Ideas are everywhere.  But it is never anything we can touch, taste, see, feel, hear, or smell until there is skin involved—be it the skin of our hands or by the skin of our teeth.   It seems sacrilegious to think that an exhausted, flawed human near the end of her rope, could be preferable to “God” but to those of us who are frightened and need some comforting, skin makes a big difference. Cherishing is how we put our own skin in the game, no matter what color it is.  I am in awe of the way my fellow humans are doing this in kind little ways all around me.  All I had to do was notice and jump in.  Love has no hands but ours.  Thanks for your Good Work!  Let the mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy