Closure...

“First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.” –George Burns

Happy New Year’s Day, Dear Ones!

I am sipping a cup of Peach Detox tea with the last of the Christmas cookies this morning.  I have been told recently that I need to eat more “intuitively.”  I heartily agree.  (Especially when my inner voice says that I should eat up all the cookies NOW, rather than have them around later, when they might tempt me.)   The first sunrise of the baby year has managed to throw a tiny leg over the New Hampshire mountains in the distance and make its way steadily to Vermont.  Through the window, I can see the barn gradually turning from shadow into color.

More by the light of the moon than the sun, I go to visit the sheep and see that their new manger, built for them on Christmas day, is full.  It is.  They are lying down, uninterested in last summer’s salad. They want this winter’s cookies.  Thanks to Christmas cookies, the new sheep—who were a tad shy at first—have learned to rush the unsuspecting and bite at their gloves in search of sugar.  It’s impossible to go in and visit with them without being bullied and pushed and shaken down for treats. 

I plop down on my little milk crate seat in the corner and start to talk with them about closures—about how lovely things like Christmas cookies have to come to an end.  “We all need to go back to eating green stuff that needs a lot of chewing” I tell them.  “Cookies are over.”  They refuse to believe me—nudging and snuffling and nipping at my pockets and gloves.  They want to eat Intuitively too.

A new dawn, a new day, a new year comes quietly, gently, tenderly to the sheep fold.  I bury my face in the rich aroma of warm raw wool and sigh out steam that hangs in the air, then curls away.  There is so much I need to leave behind with 2020.  The past few months have been filled with intense physical activity and deeply sorrowful personal struggle.  I feel depleted, exhausted.  I know this is true for so many of us.  I have longed to write more, to process, to share, to commiserate but in the end I just had to endure it wordlessly.  And yet, I am deeply grateful for the many blessings that 2020 brought too—my new home, a wonderful new shop and work space, new music buddies, and above all, Clarity about what is truly important to me.  But it’s been Hard…

I know You understand.

The sheep don’t.

Placidly, they burp and munch.  They have nothing to leave behind except small handfuls of what a six-year-old friend calls “doots.”   They have no idea what day it is. “Your problem is that you think you have a Future and a Past,” one tells me, looking deep into my eyes. “This is nonsense.  You have neither.  There is either Cookies, or Not Cookies, that is All.”  The others nod sagely, chewing. 

“So you ascribe to philosophical presentism?” I ask.  “Are you Zen Buddhists?  Forgive me for assuming otherwise--The way you hang out around angels and mangers, and that big part you played in the original Christmas Story, you know…  I kind of thought…”

“That we are Semitic???” asks one.

“We are more like Taoists who eat shrubbery and have a tendency to panic,” interrupted another, setting me straight.  We leave it at that.  I have to get going.  Even though it is a “holiday” in my world, I have to get to my shop to work.   My opening day of 2021 is going to be all about closures.  Literally.

A woman called the other day and asked if I did zippers.   “I have six jackets I’ve been carrying around with me looking for someone who will fix them.  I dragged them all the way to [town about thirty miles from here] to a place that used to do them but they said that they don’t do them anymore…”

“Yes,” I said soberly, biting my lips and trying not to cross my eyes… “bring them in.  I’ll do my best.” Then I hung up the phone and wept.

You might think that it’s because I hate doing zippers. (I do.)  You might think that it’s because she was dragging six (ugh! SIX) of them towards me at the speed of a Subaru Forrester (it’s Vermont. Everyone drives Subarus—unless, of course, they are lucky enough to have a vintage VW bus.)  But honestly, it’s more than that.  It’s because suddenly I ached all over for my friend, whom I once nicknamed “Zippy,” who has been diagnosed with an awful kind of cancer that is known for being particularly swift and savage.  I texted her and told her I was thinking of her and she wrote back saying she really wished she could do those zippers for me, if she could.   We then called and had a good chat and told each other how much we loved each other (again).  And then, us being US, we couldn’t help laughing and being very silly.

We laughed about all the times we would arrive at the old shop at the same time and race each other to the back door, keys outstretched, trying to be the first one in so that we could claim “employee of the month.”  We laughed about how we wanted to make a reality T.V. show out of all the hilarious things that happened—men who asked us to repair their boxer shorts in odd ways, female cops who needed their uniforms to look more “sexy,” ghastly bridezillas, customers who roamed the shop in their underwear, and people who wanted custom outfits for their pets…  We laughed about which “Golden Girl” actress would play each of us in the movie version and which customer we wanted to be when we grew up.  I had wanted to be the stale-smelling librarian with the fascinatingly smooth coif of hair and vintage tweed clothing that fit her so perfectly despite a significant dowagers hump.   Zippy wanted to be the one who slapped around bare-legged in furry galoshes with her slip hanging out.  “It’s not that I want to look terrible,” she had clarified at the time, “it’s that I want to live long enough not to care if I do or not.”

Those words haunt me now.  Young people, PAY ATTENTION.  It’s never too soon to stop caring about how you look! People who run about in plastic boots with Eisenhower-era slips hanging out under their clothes are probably having a way better life than you are.  Get to it!

So today is going to be a Zipper day in my little shop.  I have been doing quite a lot of them lately.  I remember Zippy saying that “there’s not that much to it, really—if you had to, you could do it and get good at it.” She made it look so easy.  When I let go of my tendency to Avoid hard things, I learn quite a bit from them.  “If you can’t get out of it, get Into it,” barks Prudence.

Prudence feels the need to teach you all a little about Zippers:

For one thing, the adage “little things mean a lot” definitely applies.  The teeth must be intact and perfectly aligned.  For want of a tooth, the pulley was lost; for want of a pulley, the zipper was lost; for want of a zipper, the jacket was lost; for want of a jacket, the teenager was lost; for want of a teenager, the mother had to nag herself voiceless and then shovel all the snow herself…and so it goes… Check first to see if you have all your teeth. (Try not to bite anyone, even those holding cookies.)

If there is not a tooth missing or broken, Alignment is key. How spiritual is that?  Get all the Little Things in order and BIG CONNECTIONS can occur.  I love it.

The Left and the Right must come together and agree to alternate appropriately.  (Now that’s a message for a country that doesn’t want to run around getting snow down its pants!)

99 % of all damage is operator inflicted. Good people of Earth, PLEASE HEAR THIS: Begin mindfully and carefully. You cannot just start yanking on a Pulley and expect it to do your bidding like an obedient Labrador retriever.  So many people are in a hurry and don’t bother to line things up right at the start.  Zippers are moody little things.  They need to be appeased. That little metal doo-dad MUST be properly seated first, like your honored granny at Thanksgiving, or a toddler just learning to poo in the potty, or things won’t go well after that.  Get them all firmly seated in their proper places (possibly in an outhouse located three counties away) before you begin.

Here’s another tip: Know when to stop.  If you yank past the stopper, you pull the whole pulley off and there is NO getting it back on without tiny pliers stolen from your son’s guitar case, specialized machinery, AND a magic wand. The next thing you know, you’ll be watching a loved one, arms trapped overhead, head entirely missing, doing a disturbingly violent (yet oddly erotic) dance as he/she/they tries to escape before you have to cut them free with rusty kitchen shears. 

I hate zippers.   But damn, they ARE Good Teachers.   Like Covid-19, Life without them is all Buttons and Bows.  Ever since 1851, when Elias Howe introduced the “Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure,” (which was not a marketing success),   zippers have been transforming lives and fashions.  Grudgingly, I admit that they are jolly useful. Many’s the time I have stood in a dressing room, watching a woman (it’s always a woman) in a stretchy knit pull-over dress, scrunching up fistfuls of fabric in her hands, saying “why can’t you take it in?  It’s still so loose…”   And the answer is always, “because, Madam, we would never again get you OUT of that garment.  You need the ease to accommodate entry and exit.  If you want it that tight, I shall have to install a zipper under your arm.”  

For, what are Closures anyway, but Openings in disguise?

That’s all for now, my dearies!  May 2021 bring you every blessing.  May we continue to learn from and with each other.  May we view this world with tenderness and lavish the love it needs. May we work swiftly, with all the skill we have to Mend what needs mending.  May we have the Grace to listen to the problem fully before we start pulling towards the answer.  May we bless the past, embrace the future and eat our greens (or cookies) in between.

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S.   I invite you to comment, share, or subscribe.  I am looking for ways to focus more on improving my writing this year and the generosity of your insights is invaluable. Thank you.

The Shopping Season

Greetings Dear Ones!

To Prudence’s horror, we heard an advertisement recently that called this season “The Shopping Season.”  What??? No it’s NOT!!!  How dare they claim for Capitalism this deeply Spiritual Season of Preparation—when we reverently garnish our homes with garish gee-gaws, gawdy ornaments, and crinkled tinsel (“almost as vile as glitter…” huffs Prudence). Then we have a tree slain in our honor that we may bring it indoors and spend the next six weeks (or, if you are like me, the next six months) watching it die and vacuuming evergreen needles out of the rug  (Just kidding! Who vacuums??)—All so we can welcome the relatives we already had enough of at Thanksgiving.  (As if people returning within a month won’t recognize the place with all the elf statuary, mistletoe, and Jingle Bells.)  It’s the season of eye-itching sweaters, odd food pairings (like smoked fish and candy canes), and occasionally gruesome music whose themes seem to center on the fauna of Lapland who, having been mercilessly teased for their sinus issues, then run over and murder the elderly.  And all in the name of helping us forget this is essentially a Pagan festival born of Fear of the Dark. 

The Truth is, it is more than likely only a HALF-birthday for the Christ Child (for those, like my nephews, who celebrate half-birthdays) since he was almost certainly born during lambing season—which is approximately five months away.  Still, who doesn’t want to party in the Dark and celebrate the Return of the Light, especially if it involves beverages made of eggs and indoor shrubbery? (Indoor shrubbery is not actually an intended ingredient…though, after a while, it does turn up in everything from pockets to pancakes, kind of like glitter.)   The whole thing, like the year of 2020 itself, seems to be the invention of an imaginative fifth-grader trying to make a story as weird as possible… “Yeah, um… there are going to be some flying deer, and a barn full of  animals who talk at midnight, and a pesky elf who causes worn out parents to lose their minds because they were so darn busy putting cloves (Cloves?? When do we ever use cloves any other time of the year?) in their baking that they forgot to move him and now the children are in danger of suspecting there isn’t really a jolly man with carbohydrate issues who is going to stealthily break and enter their home while they are asleep and eat all their cookies…

Yeah…. “I guess we might as well call it the Shopping Season,” says the part of me that isn’t cynical at all.

A young shopper came to see me about a week ago.  She had (I’m not kidding) nearly twenty things to try on.  “I just brought a few things to start off.  I love to shop,” she giggled as she held up her forty-gallon kitchen trash bag full of clothes.  “It helps me stay sane.  I guess I feel powerless with the Covid thing, you know, so I get to decide what I want,” she said miming the act of clicking a mouse.  Apparently, she wanted a whole lot of stuff that wasn’t her size, along with the exact same skirt in every single color available, as well as a lot of past-season bargains that she won’t be wearing until next summer, or maybe January, if Greta Thunberg is correct.   She kept asking me if things looked like “her.”  I had no idea how to answer.  I had only just met her!  She was looking directly into two large mirrors but she couldn’t “see” herself. So often, we use other people “seeing us” as a way to see ourselves.

Maybe she was just asking if they looked good on her, which is hard to tell when things don’t fit.  I am always loath to answer questions on fashion.  (Please, don’t ask the middle-aged woman with animal dung on her shoes what “looks good!”) After all, having gotten off the fashion train in the 1830’s, my own personal “look” is some version of Amish-track-star-in-cowboy-boots.  I keep imploring such customers, “Tell me what you want.  I want you to be comfortable.” Prudence is more harsh:  “We are here to make this fit YOUR whims, not ours.  We are not available to follow you everywhere in your life, capering in constant rapture because you chose this cardigan, which really would have looked much nicer in navy blue, buttoned to your throat…” (If you think Prudence is mean, you should have seen her prototype—the nun who taught me in eighth grade.)

Gradually, as she tried on various styles from her bag (we’re back to the young customer now, not the nun from eighth grade), I began think I could see who “she” was—a dear, sweet, very Young soul, in a masquerade ball of “choices.”  She was Me, ten, twenty, and thirty years ago. She didn’t have clothing; she had costumes. Like most of us, she was a great variety of people who might be glimpsed differently through the eyes of a date, a boss, a teacher, a lover, or a friend.  In our private confessional, behind the dressing room curtain, she was asking me to see her, at least partially, as all these things. Some things made her look pretty; some made her look smart; some made her look sweet; some made her look smoking hot; and some made her look like she was entering renal failure—or at best, like she had dined on raw salad onions at lunch and was going pale and waxy from being forced to breathe her own fumes beneath her mask.  None of them looked to me like HER. Watching her shape-shift from powerful to meek and back was like observing a kaleidoscope of femininity.     I began to think about women and clothing and Power, wondering, are we Choosing, or hoping to be Chosen? In short, “Which are we, the Shoppers or the Merch?”   

How many young women (I know I should say “people,” but in this case I actually mean women) are given the impression that they are supposed to make a nice little package of themselves and hope the Right Buyer “values” them enough to trade whatever blood or treasure is necessary for the pleasure of “keeping her” happily, ever after?  And what is it the mystery “buyer” seeks—Autonomy or Loyalty? Self-reliance or Interdependence? Are we supposed to be Strong? Or make them the heroes? Are we supposed to see ourselves as Alone? Or anchored in ourselves by being the center of a web of important connections with others?

These questions and insecurities radiate outwards in all areas of our lives--especially in this, the “Shopping Season.”  Who, exactly, are we shopping for?  What do we hope will happen as a result of all our Spending? 

This time of year, I like to sit in a corner of the barn and try to explain basic economics to the sheep.  I tell them that the Christmas tree they ate last year got turned into wool that is going to be made into a Christmas shawl for someone special (if I can get it done on time!)  They just nuzzle me, enquiring what happened to all the corn chips.  “Are you Shoppers? Or are you Merch?” I ask them.  One looks at me and blinks.  “We only talk on Christmas Eve,” another whispers out of the side of her cudding mouth.

“Nonsense,” I reply.  “I know you talk all year round, to those who are listening.”

They roll their eyes and shrug.

“Ok. We’re Merch,” they burp.  “Definitely. All prey animals are.”

“What about Pray Animals?” I ask.

“They have Free Will,” they say with unconcerned nonchalance.  “They get to decide.” 

The sheep, who know considerably more about Fashion than I do, insisting “there’s no such thing as bad weather; only bad clothing,” hunker down in the straw and help me devise the following Guide to help us during the “Shopping Season.”  As you go forth to make your buying decisions, here’s how to recognize whether you are becoming The Shopper or  The Merch:

1.       Shoppers see themselves Directly, without the help of Middlemen (people)

2.      Merch needs other people to see, to praise, to validate, or encourage their image of themselves.

3.      Shoppers choose based on how things make them feel, rather than how others think.  They buy to share Joy, not to “make someone happy.”

4.      Merch hopes, passively, that it will get “chosen,” by choosing “the right thing,” though they haven’t a clue what that is.

5.      Shoppers don’t need other people’s opinions because they don’t want to get stuck having to manage energy coming towards them they cannot control or be responsible for.

6.      Merch gives to Others management of issues they should handle themselves.

7.      Shoppers don’t actually have to buy a damn thing.

8.      Merch will purchase anything in order to gain approval

9.      Shoppers are not for Sale.

10.   Merch will continually bargain itself down in humiliating spirals in the hopes of going home with someone…Anyone…

Merch, according to the sheep, (bless them), will also eat up all your old Christmas trees if you let them, not to mention any stale bread or corn chips you might have lying about.  They will wear lumps of wool and sit in draughts and placidly listen to you go on and on about how much you hate shopping, even on-line shopping.

I would definitely write more—as this feels Unfinished—but there is a fragrant Jack Russell at my feet, whom I suspect of being a Shopper. He says there is no Free Will where incontinence is concerned and if I don’t want to have to add “shop for a new carpet” to my list, I shall have to sign off Now.  If I have to buy a new carpet immanently, I’m not sure who I will turn into… perhaps someone who never finished her blogs…

Take care my Dear Ones! This is a time of Patience with the Dark.  May we give each other the respect, the tolerance, the forgiveness, and the Service that one can never find in a shop.  Charity is Price-less.

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Still Thankful...

“We Thank Thee, Lord, for food and friends, And all the Good thy mercy sends”

Greetings Dear Ones,

When a gorgeous pumpkin pie the size of a hubcap shot from its store-bought container and blasted out the open back of the SUV like it had been fired from an extra-terrestrial pie gun* and landed naked, face-down in the driveway mud, my first words were definitely NOT “Oh! Goody! Disasters are wonderful opportunities.”   No…  I said Other Words.  Very naughty words.  I stared in disbelief at the upside-down pie on the ground.  It’s packaging was still exactly where I had balanced it, along with all the other feast-fixings.  They were intact.  That pie, and just that pie, had its own private agreement with gravity.

Slacker me was very disappointed.  Not because I like pumpkin pie all that much; I don’t.  I prefer any kind of pies to pumpkin pies but I definitely prefer pumpkin pies to no pies at all.  I hadn’t had the time to make a pie in the first place, and now I didn’t have time for a return trip to the store, certainly not the store where I had bought that pie.  And that pie had been the crowning glory on what was to be the “Perfect” first Thanksgiving with my family in the new house. The artist in me mourned its perfection.   It wasn’t just a vast wheel of pumpkin Goodness; it was a work of Art with perfectly carved finials of crust around the edges.  It was, in fact, the Platonic Ideal of a pumpkin pie.  My inner Victim instantly recognized the sabotage and suspected this pie of knowing it was way out of our league.  Even shattered in the mud, it shimmered with cinnamon and nutmeg charm.  Of course we could never have a pie like that… It had to jump ship and commit pie-icide.  For folks like us to dare to aspire to a pie like that…what was I thinking?

From the bushes, the chickens emerged as scavengers.  They were absolutely delighted to discover the mess.  By the time I had the groceries in on the kitchen counter they had pecked off the entire crust and exposed the orange sunset beneath.   They were making the kind of noises that satisfied guests make when they discover you used real butter in the crust.  Their compliments to the chef were almost more than I could bear.  It was worse than watching the Great British Bake Off and not getting to nibble the burnt bits.  (Those are always the best bits, eh?)

Where was I to get a replacement pie?  If only there were such things as the “pie guns” mentioned above.  When my son was young, he used to spend hours building complicated ships out of Leggos, with impressive canonry which he insisted was used solely for inter-galactic pie dispersal.  “These are not scary guns, Mummy,” he insisted. “They are not for killing. They are for getting the pies way far away quickly to people who need them.  They make people smile.”  How does one call out for an intergalactic pie delivery?  I wondered.  How could I be entering into a holiday celebrating all we HAVE with the idea that there was something missing? There was something bordering on obscene in the irony.

To distract Grundalina Thunderpants from the impulse to lie down in the mud next to the lost pie and snork what she could through a straw, I thought about my work day and an interesting conversation I had had that very morning.  A man had entered the workshop asking “Do you know the difference between pants and trousers?” before he even said hello.  The eyes above his mask were bright and curious.  “Why is that plural even though a shirt is not and they are each just one item of clothing?And what about slacks?  Where do they fit in?”

I love questions like that.  I love learning about the origins and uses of words.  My inner professor lunged for her podium, brandishing the lecture on garments designed to cover our lower halves. “Pants,” she announced, are the shortened form of “pantaloons” and are pluralized because anything that can be bifurcated (i.e. cut in two) is considered plural in our language—same with scissors, trousers, glasses, sleeves etc…  There are “two” pants—one for each leg.  In America, we use the word pants for anything that covers the legs from the waist to the ankles.  In the U.K., they reserve the use of the word to mean only underwear or underpants.  They use the word “trousers” for outerwear for the legs.  Breathless, fearful that her audience was losing interest, she continued: In America, we also use the word trousers interchangeably for pants—but we tend to imply that the garment has more tailoring—with topstitching, pockets, belt loops etc… and is worn more formally.  “Slacks” comes from an old Saxon word for “loose” and they tend to be a fuller cut… Normally, customers glaze over with this much detail but his eyes brightened further.  I liked him immediately.

“I’m a problem analyst,” he said. “I’m intrigued with language.  Language often can reveal where the problem is.  I go into big companies all the time and have them tell me where things are going wrong.  I listen to how they explain the story.  Then I show them how their “problems” are just fantastic opportunities.  There is no such thing as a mistake.  Every single disaster brings a gift.”  He beamed, then handed me the trousers he was holding. Clearly, a “gift.”

I nodded. I knew what he meant—at least on a certain level.  If people don’t rip their pants or need me to hem their dresses or tailor their clothing due to some specialized requirement which, sometimes, is the result of a disaster, then I have no work to do.  In a way, I “profit” from their problems.  But he was taking it much further than that.  He meant that the people themselves were blest in some way from having to address their own needs.  The needs themselves, not the absence of them,  ARE the blessing. 

I stared back at the pie at my feet and thought about his sentiment, the energy in his words.  Was there a thought with which to try to leverage great value from a smashed pie in the mud? How could I be Delighted with this experience?  Clearly, the chickens were profiting.  Perhaps they were saving me fifty-seven cents’ worth of chicken feed that I could invest in the stock market and turn into a lucrative IRA fund in three-hundred years… I rolled my eyes.

Then I struggled.  I struggled physically with the groceries, with setting things to rights in the kitchen, and getting food prepped for the dinner the next day.  But most of all, I struggled mentally with that gorgeous pie in the mud.  The best I could do was promise myself a jolly blog about it later.

Against Covid regulations, at least 32 people showed up to dinner this Thanksgiving.  There were only five human bodies seated around the table—and three furry canine bodies waiting patiently for “drop-age” underneath the table—but the cast of internal characters each one brought along—the victims, the heroes, the pleasers, the achievers, the slackers, Prudence, Grundalina, Festus T. Bumfluff, Madam Scumblebum… not to mention the inner pussycats, lions and tigers and bears (Oh My!) made for a crowded family weekend.  Some of them mourned the loss of the pie; some were relieved that there would be nothing to sneak down and eat the rest of after midnight while others were sleeping.   We all talked candidly about our individual journeys between the distances of Expectation and Reality and where true Gratitude could be found.  My children are of that wonderful age (in their early twenties) when it is customary to have one’s parents stand trial (without a jury of their peers) for the crimes of their childhood—especially when we look through photo albums and they realize the full horrors of my early fashion choices on their behalf.  Over and over, I found myself humbled by the generosity of their answers, questions, and willingness to seek Forgiveness over Righteousness (though I was never fully absolved of putting them in Colonial outfits for the 2008 Christmas cards).  I explain that most parents do their best to provide The Best for their children but some “pies” just have their own agreement with gravity.  Sometimes, despite our best efforts, things just Flop.  It’s up to each of us to then make it for our own damn good.

In this moment, I realize with great sorrow that we teach our children so many things; we give them so many things (“only some of which are actually necessary,” shrills Prudence from her corner) that they may experience Gratitude.  Do we give them the ability to see a Lost Pie as an “advantage”?  An “Opportunity”? A way to, with laughter born of Resilience, find brussell sprouts as an acceptable alternative for dessert? (Ok, maybe I would be the only one happy about that…)  How do we teach them to get out of the mud when they too get stuck, when they can’t get “what they want”?  Apart from standing there and singing that Music Together hit single “Oh, My! No More Pie!” what can we do?

The zeitgeist of 2020 has been catching me a lot these days.  The mud is deep and slick around my home.  I have been laboring more than usual to do good work while taking on exhausting extra projects in the margins—some related to the coming holidays, some related to my new farm, some just the desperate efforts of keeping the chickens out of the kitchen when the door’s left open.   It’s hard to look at Hard Things—losses, illness, rejection, and grief and try to find the Good in them—the “Opportunity” for learning or greatness, or even just sullen acceptance that one must now change course.   It’s hard to lose not just pies, but the Idea of Pie—the cherished Hope that we can provide/procure/produce some sort of Perfection for those we love so dearly—and still feel Grateful.  Sometimes, we just can’t.  And that’s OK.   Perhaps the shared Hunger, not the food, is the gift.  

May you be nourished in Spirit, if not in Pie.

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S.After all that, guess who turned up with not one but two small pumpkin pies? The Inter-galactic Pie Gun Hero of the day!

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