Winterberries

Happy February Dear Ones!

It’s about 12 F degrees as I make my way to the barn this morning.  The air on my cheek feels like a 60 grit sandpaper kiss from one of the steers.  It’s a silent, black and blue and white world, save for three pops of red: the barn itself, my nose, and the winterberries, glistening beneath icicles on their branches.  The Winterberry bush, half way between house and barn, is large and ancient. The weight of a recent snow storm has torn off a limb, exposing the pith of the trunk where it ripped. Healing will come with the spring. For now, it trembles in the semi-darkness, offering hot bursts of color that cannot be frozen, dimmed, or shamed.

I feel like this bush—torn by weights that fall upon me (such as people who want their snow gear mended by Friday), half dying, half bursting with ideas and possibilities of a bright red new life just waiting to land upon soft, open ground.  But the ground is frozen and so am I. February, often called ‘the longest little month of the year,’ is that time of not yet living, not yet dying.  Hope is on Ice.

Yearly, I remind myself to be gentle. “Do not make any major decisions on February,” I say aloud, as on I plod, trudging the little circles of light between house and barn, barn and house, home and shop, shop and home.  It seems like it is forever time to wake up, only it’s also always time for bed.  

This is the time when Love Stories sustain us. I’m not talking about those old fashioned versions of “Boy meets Girl; Girl gets chocolate.”  (“Which inevitably lead to ‘Boy disappears and Girl is left sobbing and eating an entire trifle with her bare hands,” says Prudence tartly.)  I’m talking about getting in touch with that Enormous Source within and around us that helps us build and tread the bridges between worlds—between the interior self and outer self, the self and others, others and our community, our communities and the nation, with as much Grace as possible.  I’m on a Kindness safari.

“Know any good Love Stories?” I ask the sheep.

“EVERY story is a love story,” says Blossom.

“I am trying to make my life a Love Story,” I confess, “only I am not doing the best job of it. I have a few crust-omers I don’t feel particularly loving towards.

“Are people in your shop asking you to love them? I thought they were just asking you to fix their pants,” says Prim.

“If every customer is a story, then every one is looking for love,” says Angel Wally.

“Of course they are asking for Love. Humans are asking for EVERYTHING,” says Willoughby, with a touch of eye-rolling.

“Well, why can’t you just Love them?” asks Prim. “Loving is easy.”

“Because…” I sigh heavily, “Some people need a tremendous amount—such as [that pest] from [that state] who keeps texting me at all hours (except during business hours) to see if her shirt is ready already.  Some are easy to love—such as [that adorable person] who speaks softly and is in no rush, who needs a seat on the bench in the hall and a peppermint before he can make it back to his car.”

“I LOVE peppermints!” says Prim. “Let’s all have some right now.   Let’s taste some of that love.”

I confess I have no peppermints, point them towards the Christmas tree they have not yet finished and go on.

“Some people create a deficit in me immediately that makes me mutter to myself and savagely stab my fingers with needles, accidentally, as I sew and have silent dress rehearsals with them in my head about what they can do with their dirty mending, if they really want to know…  It bothers me that I know I give better service to crabby people and more affection to kind people. The kind people get more kindness from me, but slow service because I know they can tolerate a wait without hating me, and the demanding ones get swift service so that I can get rid of them quickly.  This strikes me as wimpy and unsatisfying on so many levels. It’s leading me to live an Inauthentic Life, against which I rebel.

“Being Nice to Nice people and Mean to Mean people is really the way it should be,” announces Blossom. “What’s your problem?”

“It’s not as easy as that,” I say. “There are too many layers. Inside I am nice to the Nice, but outwardly, they are not getting the fastest work. They are paying too high a price for my affection. And the mean people are not getting any nicer—they just get moe spoiled by having everything just how they want it as soon as they want it. I think the Nice people should have that…”

Waterlily stares at me, asbsently munching for a while.

“What makes wanting what you want when you want it ‘mean’”she wants to know. “We ALL want what we want when we want it. We ALL bash each other like mad when you put the feed in the bucket. Is that Mean?”

I laugh. It helps me to think of them as greedy farm animals just trying to get into the feed room so they can eat all the grain.  It’s just their nature to want free buttons for their thrift-store finds, and to expect me to sew them on while they wait, and then charge $2 to a credit card because they have no cash.  These people aren’t unkind or mean, they are just pushy, abrupt, abrasive, utterly lacking in charm, like two young bulls who know it’s supper time.

“It sounds like you are hungry,” says Angel Wally. “But also Fed Up. Get rid of the thing you are carrying so that you can fill up on something more nourishing. If the love you are giving does not serve you, you will not last long as a seamstress serving the public. You will burn out too fast.”

“Aren’t you the one who says the people most in need of love are the ones behaving in the most unloveable ways?” asks Prim.

They are right. What do I need to let go of so that I can enjoy something Else? We all sit in silence, cudding for a while.

“I think the thing I need to get rid of is the sense of insult that is implied when people pester me—as if I don’t want to or am unable to take care of them the way they want unless they worry at me. It makes me sense their lack of trust in me. I want to feel trustworthy. Nice people make me feel valued, trusted. I like that…” I say slowly, feeling the sting come out along with my words.

“You need to eat up a whole lot of Beauty,” says Angel Wally. “Feast your eyes, your ears, your thoughts, on the things that make you Happy, not sad. Work hard and fast for everybody. Do things in order. Don’t play favorites. Your true Heart’s Desire sprouts from a sense of yourself that is sturdy enough to have preferences independent of external factors.”

He’s given me a lot to chew, as I pass the Winterberries again...

So!  The task I set for myself this month is to reconnect to my ability to Love: to be that tiny red berry in a temporarily frozen world.  (I want to give the “nice” customers good service too!)  My plan is to keep an eye out for Beauty, for opportunities to observe others loving each other, to stock the Love Larder, so that I have plenty to share.  When we feed our hearts with caring for Goodness, we reawaken ourselves to love and joy. When a man tells me he wants all the collars reversed on his threadbare shirts by Monday so that he can move to Montana on Tuesday, I will not scream silently “Are you KIDDING ME? How long have you known you were moving to Montana, you [person whose parents never married]???” I will be too full--of the glow of a moonlight on snow, of a person holding a door for a friend at the post office, of a friend’s music, of a mother getting her son’s boxer shorts hemmed so that her son won’t be ridiculed at ice-hockey—to do anything but burp out a little sunshine. I won’t have to suppress the urge to say naughty words, or listen to Prudence’s cutting remarks.

I want to fight the amnesia of Spirit that can overtake me on bleak, midwinter days. Along with mending your pants, I am also mending my Soul. Righteousness and victimhood tell us a petulant Something about our “worth” but they do not lead us to the true, rich peace that comes from recognizing we are already truly “enough.”  They do not soften us or teach us to receive the bounty of this amazing Life.  

I want to remember that Life is an ever-changing current, a river sweeping us past a Beauty Buffet on the shores.  I am no more undamaged, or unlovable than my fellow button-hunters hunkering in our canoes.   I want to lean into Goodness—for purely selfish reasons—because everything seems to work better when I do.  Keeping others “happy” means I must also keep my own tank full.  

Those of us who are ever Mending, have not always had the best instruction on how to Receive, how to lean in towards Goodness, in our lives, in those around us, in our world.  It’s there. We learn to receive by Noticing—the light in the sky, a tulip in the grocery store, a man taking his wife’s arm, a person sharing a look or smile, the heart beneath our ribs, the silent breath that lifts and expands our chest.  

There is a dance to dance between the Light and Sorrow. There is a difference between merely living and being Alive. Loving isn’t as much about Changing as it is about Choosing.

It is your own life that you must come to Love.  

Keep up the Good Work, me Darlings! I love you SEW much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Getting Something Done

“You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate.” (source unknown)

Greetings Dear Ones!

How are you doing with that Baby New Year of yours?  Is it smiling, giggling, burping and cooing like an angel or is it just one exploding nappy full of poop after another? Has it hit the tantrums, teething, we-need-endless-amounts-of-whisky-on-the-gums (your gums, not theirs) stage?  Are you ready, as I was following the births of both of my human children, to take this baby back to that very nice midwife who handed it to you and say “Could you please take this for a few weeks and credit my account?  I’ll be back for it, I promise.  It’s just that I don’t have the foggiest idea what I am doing right now; I can’t handle it and I am in desperate need of a big fat nap!”  If history is anything to go by, you will be forced to take that baby home with you and simply muddle through until you both reach that blessed middle ground where neither of you needs to wear diapers and the fruit of your loins is occasionally gracious enough to teach you how to use those mystery functions on your cell phone.  (Usually by age 3…)

Well, my Baby New Year is off to a GREAT start.  I’m getting positively LOADS done. I’ve done a bunch of laundry, reorganized the fridge (i.e. eaten all the leftovers), learned some new tunes on the harp, done three minutes of AB workouts, thoroughly cleaned the wood stove and spread the ashes on the garden, de-Christmas-ed one room of the house (simply by piling the decorations in another room), and started to de-clutter the cellar. I’ve planned out where the spring lambing pens will be built and decided which flowers would look best in that awkward spot behind the house. (Sunflowers!) I’ve ironed all the napkins and cleaned up at least one bug cemetery/spider crime scene from the bathroom windowsill. I’ve “liked” several hundred things on social media venues and hyper-focused for several hours on removing that weird gunk that gets stuck between the shower door and the tile.  I’ve even spent an entire afternoon attempting to build a bull-proof wooden platform for the water tub in Gus & Otie’s pen, depriving them of the joy of flooding their stall and wasting their bedding on a daily basis.

Yep, life is getting nothin’ but warmer, cleaner, drier, Better around here!

Want to know the secret to my phenomenal productivity? I’ll tell you. (I’m that kind of gal…) The way to get a lot done is:  You Are Supposed To Be Doing Something Else.

Set yourself a Noble Ambition—something that will actually make the world a better place, such as writing a best-selling novel (the proceeds of which will be donated to helping the homeless), curing Cancer (or running a marathon that funds such research), promoting Peace in the Middle East (or anywhere at all), or removing every last sheep turd from your vehicle… then spend four hours knitting a sock instead.

It’s amazing what you can get done when you are supposed to be doing something else. 

Got ten pairs of pants in ten different colors, textures, and fabrics to hem by tomorrow morning?  Need to get the shoulders up two inches on a Mother-of-the-bride gown that is totally encrusted with beads? Wouldn’t  NOW the perfect time to get out the tiny Hoover attachments and dust behind the thread rack and oil all the machines?   This is the secret of how I “work” myself into a frazzle and still have nothing done by the end of the day.  Honestly, if I get any less done, I’m soon going to require a proper vacation!

I did so much “nothing” yesterday that I can barely walk upright today.  I found out that I could balance a piece of plywood on a ball and download an app on my phone that enabled me to simulate “hang gliding” over a jungle.  I had to use my core muscles to swerve to avoid hitting trees and birds and other objects.  I spent three minutes terrorizing what the Germans call der Kummerspeck—literally, my “sorrow bacon”:  that excess pudge we get around our tummies from comfort eating. All while NOT putting a new zipper in an anorak for a man who wants to go skiing some time before 2035.  

As I try to get myself organized for the New Year, New Me keeps discovering that the Old Me is up to her old tricks.  (I simply had no idea how many cobwebs I had in my home until I realized it was Wednesday again and I needed to write a Blog.) Whatever “Crastinating” is, I seem to be extremely PRO.  “Rast-in-ate” sounds a bit like my friend from Belfast telling me to “Rest and Eat.”  These are always Good Ideas.  But when you have done enough of these, there are plenty of other excuses NOT to climb up that hill in front of you just so you can shine your light for all to see…

“WHY do you do this to yourself??” Shrieks Prudence. “I thought this was going to be the year you finally got your shit together, and not leave it all over the back seat of the car.”

 Unfortunately, Old Me is flaking out on all of New Me’s Good Intentions. 

Naturally, We are handling this like a compassionate Adult—approaching with Curiosity, not Judgment. We slipped Prudence some laudanum, clobbered her over the head with her Bible, and gagged her with her own pantyhose.  And…After extensive Kindly Mindful Adult Introspection, it turns out that there’s a jolly good reason I am not doing What I am Supposed To Be Doing:

 It’s Hard.

What I Am Supposed To Be Doing is really HARD.

 It’s unbelievably stressful to run a business, decide how much to charge (what is your precious time worth?), do Good Work, show up on time, get things done efficiently, pay all the bills, remember appointments and deadlines, and eloquently and authentically express yourself artistically, spiritually, and emotionally with Love and yarn and Kindness for All.  It’s especially hard to rock these woolen, hermit granny fashions when der Kummerspeck leaves me only two options—breathe normally or get the zipper up.

 I don’t know about you, Dear Ones, but when I find myself getting in my own way, over-doing the under-doing, Old Nancy has a variety of Go-to options. Carefully and compassionately, let us examine each one:

 The number one favorite, of course, is to blame someone else.  This must be “Someone’s” fault. Someone is that character always lurking in the shadows at the Land of Lost Plots.  As in “Someone left the key turned and drained the battery…Someone spilled the [thing that got spilled]…Someone didn’t shut the [thing that should have been shut] and now all the [cows, chickens, corduroy clothes] are missing…Someone really should clean all the poop out of this car…” “Someone” is clearly leading a life of thoughtless, petty crime and I am the undisputed Victim.

The Second Option develops from number one, but expands into its own entity, given enough churning.  I start having random thoughts about ALL the people (everywhere) and all the things out to get me.  I have never seen their literature published anywhere (they are too clever) but I am convinced that there is an enormous and ubiquitous Society Dedicated to the Thwarting of Nancy Bell.  They have offices in every county, every city, every nation around the globe.  Alerts go out, the moment I leave home, signaling a carefully choreographed network of members to drive like imbeciles or establish endless phone trees when all you want to do is talk to a bloody Customer Service Representative. (An unbloodied one will do!)  Lights go red. Generators go out. Clocks lose time. The whole country seems to be run like Southwest Airlines.

The Next Option is to develop a series of Delusions.  For instance, I am pretty sure that if I just lie down and binge watch Season 5 of “The Crown,” I will suddenly, Miraculously, be filled with so much energy that I will leap to my feet and put a whole new lining in that jacket that has been hanging dejectedly on the “to do” rack since November. (“Actually,”chokes Prudence, muffled by the pantyhose, “October!”)  Somehow, I believe this Pause will be so effective and gather so much momentum within me, that I will explode with energy and the increased efficiency will more than compensate for the preliminary Slacking.  I’ll get ten things done in the time it took to do None.

One of the most dangerous Delusions is that procrastinating is really a form of Self-care.  I NEED to avoid doing What I Am Supposed To Be Doing because I am already doing “too much.” My inner victim wants you all to know that you have No Idea how hard I am always working. To get One thing done, I have probably had to do thirty—like simultaneously groom the dog, doodle on the grocery list, spend time trying to decide which of the daily photos of the darling bullocks is actually the cutest and therefore destined for Instagram, (They all are!) all while watching two guys called Joe and Larry do amazing Latin duets on harp and banjo on YouTube.

 Wise me knows that in order to make the changes I want to make, I need to do LESS, not more.  I need only to live One Day and do ONE Thing.  Just One. And it needs to be The Thing I Am Supposed to Do: That Really HARD thing I don’t want to start but which I know is the true work of my soul—found only in the union of the love of my heart and the work of my hands.  Deep down, I know that if I do not do this Hard Thing, something incalculable will be sacrificed.  I am here to do this thing.  I know it. If I don’t, no amount of filling Time will fill the Void.

What is your One Thing, Dear One? How can I help remind you that we love you dearly and we need Your Gift?

Me? I’m going to go hem some more pants.  That is, um… if the oven is really clean.

 Let’s keep mending!  I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Baby New Year

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

Greetings Dear Ones!

Most of you who put up Christmas trees probably have them down already and all your holiday decorations safely stowed away in neatly labeled boxes until next year.  Hopefully, you found some nearby sheep or goats with whom to share any live trees.  That is a wonderful mid-winter treat for them.  Around here, farmers advertise that they take tree donations to feed to their flocks.  Just make sure they are devoid of tinsel. (The trees that is, not the farmers.)

Here at the Land of Lost Plots, I’m in no rush. It’s still Christmas.  (Sometimes Yuletide decorations last straight through to March in Nancyland.  Only the Christmas cookies never linger…)

“But it IS still Christmas!” insists Prudence, who is a stickler for such things.  “There are TWELVE days of Christmas.  Christmas isn’t officially over until the feast of the Epiphany on January 6th.”

“The Epiphany…”says little Prim, the sharpest sheep in the flock, “Whose idea was that?”  She wants her tree now.

I’m still playing Christmas Carols on the harp—mostly because they are easy melodies and that’s pretty much all I can manage with two hands at this point.  I play them all year. My ears are so full of the lyrics, they have been leaking into my speech.  “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentle men,” I say to the oxen as I turn out the lights at the barn. “And don’t be TOO merry!!” I add, “I’m sick of cleaning poop out of that water tub.”  I turn and trudge up the hill to a house nestled in the sliver between glittering frost and glittering stars. 

The weather has been nutty.  A few weeks ago, we got about six to ten inches of white concrete poured over the property.  It fell as a very pretty “snush” (snow + slush) and then hardened.  Since then, we’ve had more snow, high winds, heavy rain, thunder, thaw and a flash freeze followed by rain and fog.  One day, the temperature fluctuated more than forty degrees in twenty four hours.  Winter is in menopause! I am grateful for the addition of cleats to my mucks, although yesterday they grabbed so hard, I walked right out of my boots.  I was carrying a bale of hay in front of me and being followed by nine sheep so I didn’t notice immediately. Funny how ice “burns” the feet.

Back inside the warm house, my harp playing is full of so many “typos” that visiting real musicians who overhear me can’t help saying “What was that chord you just played? That crunchy one…”

“I have no idea,” I say impatiently.  My chords range anywhere from pleasantly chewy to “crunchy” to the painful ear-stabbing equivalent of walking on ice with no boots.

“Seriously, Mum, it was so bad it’s actually amazing. Try to find it again.  Show me which strings you hit…” 

“Oh, shut up!” I say with cheerful aplomb.

My favorite, of course, is “Away in a Manger.” I think about mangers all year round.  I shop for them all the time on online venues for used farm equipment.  I made the ones I have out of old wooden pallets.  I keep wondering if my critters will waste less hay if I put it in a big outdoor manger with a small roof over it.  Or is it best to continue spreading hay on the ground in new locations every day? Such thoughts occupy my mind more than I would like to admit.  I look at hay as if it is shredded ten dollar bills, which it basically is.

Mangers, as we know, are ancient things.  The ones I have are pretty dirty and would make a lousy bed.  Basically, they are wooden plates that have never been washed, only licked clean.  I cannot imagine putting a newborn baby in one.   I decided to ask the sheep about this on Christmas Eve, when Tradition says all the animals can talk.

“Oh, that’s just another one of your stories,” they say, chattering like mad. “You know we can talk any time!  All you have to do is be ready to sit in a corner and listen. Humans are such relentless creators of Stories; you sometimes forget which ones are actually true.”

“Ain’t THAT the truth!” I say, plopping down on the nearest hay bale.                                    

“Any chance you have any spare cookies in your pockets?” asks Prim.

“No,” I admit, hastily brushing the crumbs off my cheeks.

“One of the reasons you don’t hear us animals talking much is because we are such good listeners.  We listen, like we talk, with our entire bodies,” says Wally. 

“We’re very quiet and when we know we are not actually being Heard, that can make us feel afraid. It means chances are good that we are being Misunderstood.  And that’s usually when Bad Things happen,” says Prim.

“What is Fear, anyway, but just a form of extreme listening?” says Blossom in the somewhat enlarged tones of the congenitally Bossy.  She has taken over as lead ewe since Willow’s demise last April.

It feels deeply Good and sacred to sit amongst the sheep, just Listening.  The shy ones relax.  I’m not there to trim their feet, or shear them, or give them worming medicine.  Alas, I’m not there to feed them treats either… I’m just there to BE.

 “Tell me about this manger business,” I say.  “What would you think if one night you found a baby in one?”

“Why would anyone put a baby in a manger?” asks Prim. “Why not a Christmas tree?”

“Well, that’s not really how The Story goes,” I say. “In fact, I’m not even sure what the heck a Christmas tree has to do with babies or mangers at all.”

“Except that they are delicious,” says Willoughby, smacking his lips.

“Are babies something good to eat?” asks Otie, one of the yearling steers, leaning over his gate to eavesdrop.

The sheep ignore him. Cattle are not on their rather short list of priorities.

“Hey, Otie,” I say.  “I’ve always meant to ask you.  Would you say you ‘moo’ or ‘low’?  In some of the carols it says ‘the cattle are lowing.’  They never say ‘the cattle are moo-ing…’ Which is it?”

“I definitely go Low,” says Otie swelling his chest and trying to look extra macho. “Gus, on the other hand, er…hoof, Gus goes High.  His are squeaky moos.”

“You know how it is--when they go Low… we go Bah!” says Chip interrupting with disdain. “The Humbug is implied.”

“You aren’t the only ones saying Bah-Humbug,” I say. “One of my tailoring customers came in grumbling that his wife had lost her mind. He said ‘”we have chopped down a living tree and put it in the house. Now she wants to put a FAKE tree out on the deck!  So we have a fake tree outside and a real tree inside.  I’m tellin’ you. She’s NUTS!”’

“It sounds like he was not into the holiday spirit,” observes Molly.

“No,” says Prim, “but at least they can eat that yummy tree in the house.”

“Don’t be silly,” says Wally, “Humans don’t eat trees! They just eat cookies.”  

I gaze around my humble living crèche—this manger scene I visit daily.   I know the angels are here.  I can hear them in the wind, I can see them coated in snow or wool or fur.  We have a shepherd (er, shepherdess) (ME).  We have a drummer person (also me). We have at least three bearded wise guys playing fiddle up in the house.  The scene looks a lot like a Euro-centric Christmas card, especially when I wear my bathrobe to the barn. 

We’re just missing a baby.

“Hey, isn’t the New Year supposed to be a baby?” asks Prim.  “Isn’t it usually portrayed as some naked thing in a diaper with a top hat on?”

“Hats? Are hats something we can eat?” wonders Otie.

“Yes,” I admit slowly, not to hats being fodder, but to New Years being babies.

“Funny that a New Year arrives like a tiny baby,” says Blossom, “and yet everyone acts like it’s a full-grown soccer coach, here to prep them for the World Cup. They all jump off the couch, renounce booze, and rush to the gym and do push-ups until they are ready to toss all their Christmas cookies.  They make all sorts of reasons to punish themselves. Babies are sweet and soft and vulnerable. They don’t make you do plank drills!”

“They do, when that “baby” is twenty-two and you still haven’t lost your post-partum flab,” I say dryly.

“Besides, we NEED punishments,” interjects Prudence testily. “These are my two favorite seasons—New Year’s and Lent. I say, unleash the grievances!  Let the atonement Begin!”

“That sounds awful,” say the sheep.

“When we have babies, we just lie down and let them climb on our backs to help them stay warm.  We sniff them until we know them in the dark.  We nuzzle, nourish, and nurture them.  We protect them from bad things and bawl loudly if anything happens to them.  We don’t try to improve ourselves; we try to improve them.”

“Maybe that’s what I should do with my own baby New Year,” I say thoughtfully. “Maybe I will just hold it, carefully in my heart and see what it wants to be.  Maybe I’ll just follow the joys and try to witness the development of things in their natural course.

“Rubbish!” says Prudence, beginning to panic. “You need to write a book, expand your business, pay off your debts, clean up the mess in your car, and you definitely need to do some sit-ups!”

“What if you just followed the seasons the way one follows a toddler, instead of rushing ahead with an impossible agenda that will just leave you weeping and searching for more cookies?” says Wally kindly.

“How many seasons are there to follow?” asks Prim.

“Hundreds:  There’s the upcoming  tax season, and ant season, and mouse season.  These are the Nibbling Seasons that nibble away things we have stored.  Then there are the planting seasons, the weeding out seasons, the harvesting seasons.  There’s prom season, bikini season, back-to-school season.  Some seasons aren’t even seasons; for example, it’s open season for zippers all year long.” I explain. “There are ever so many seasons on a farm, in a life, or a tailoring shop.”

“What season is it now?” wonders Gus.

“It’s Baby New Year season,” announces Prim.  “Time for tenderness and Baby steps. It’s the Holding Time—hold on to your Dreams, your faith, your courage.  Have Gentle snuggles with your feelings and fears. Hold the seed catalogue but do not plant anything.  Just wait. Rest.  Enjoy long night naps.  They will be getting shorter day by day.”

Her words soothe me.  She’s right.

As the little New Year gets under way, I’m trying to be a better listener.  I can hear the animals.  Usually, I can hear the stories clothes tell too.  Though, I admit, I got confused yesterday when I was confronted with a blue shirt smeared with some sort of white paste.  “What happened here?” I asked the gentleman who was wearing it beneath a sports jacket he wanted altered.

“This?” he asked, pointing to his stomach. “Oh, I made homemade ravioli for my ex-wife on Christmas Eve.”

“That was TEN days ago,” Prudence reminds me with a roll of her eyes.

We do our best not to judge him.

“I want to have more compassion,” I tell her after he leaves. “I want to hold a bigger Grace Space for the people who confuse or frustrate me.  I want to love more, judge less.  I especially want to gossip less.”

“But how will we know whom and what to forgive, if we don’t know all the details of their crimes?” asks Prudence, with no innocence what-so-ever.  

“We’ll manage,” I promise.

The past two years have been tougher than I ever could have imagined.  We now know how strong we are, what we can endure.  Let’s see how soft we can be, how merciful and tender, how curious and open.  Let’s embrace our powerful, Fool-ish Innocence and take baby steps in New directions and follow after Joy.

Let’s see how we can keep each other Mending.  Thank you for your Good Work, Dear Ones! May 2023 bring you heaps and heaps of every Good Thing!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Ragged

Greetings Dear Ones,

Well, here it is, right in the middle of the holiday rush and I decided I would just Quit Everything for a while.  No hustling for presents.  No tree trimming.  No parties.  I have not been sewing, spinning, knitting, baking, reading, writing, or playing music of any kind.  On a good day, I may lie around watching old sit-coms from the 80’s (that I never got to see then because I wasn’t allowed to watch TV; I had to “play outside.”)   The phone is ringing off the hook and I just lie here by the crackling stove, sipping tea and watching people with rather unfortunate hair and clothing choices make a slap-stick muddle of their lives for 45 minutes at a time, before everything gets resolved with a few one-liners and that sparkling good will of another era.

My shop is clogged with work and I am getting testy emails from people “just checking” in to see if they should come in and pick up yet.

They shouldn’t.

I haven’t done their work today and I doubt I’ll get to it tomorrow.  I’d rather lie here. My body has some major decisions to make about whether we are ever going to wear jeans and walk vertically again.  

Naturally, my inner Capitalist is going out of her freakin’ mind. “Everyone says Covid is now just a mild flu.  You’re over-dramatizing this. What kind of Slacker are you? You’ve GOT to power through!” she shrieks.  “You probably aren’t contagious. Get up and plug in the iron. Fix something…Make something. DO something!” She is running in circles, shaking fistfuls of bills at me. I ignore her.

“You manage to power through for the animals,” she says accusingly.

“Yes, but I MUST.  And I always will. That’s what having animals means.  They always come first.”

“Why not people?”

“People are not going to die if they don’t get some pants hemmed.”

“You’re not going to die either!” she storms.

“Yes, but after five days of aches, chills, and fever it sure feels like it…” I mumble, turning over to cough until I see stars. 

Doing chores with a fever is not the most pleasant thing to do but at least the weather is still mild and I don’t have buckets of ice to haul and smash.  Twice a day, I feed the animals and go back to bed with a little dog who is only too delighted to keep me company in the over-heated covers.  I drag half a bale of hay out to the sheep in the field and sit on an old tree stump to catch my breath.

“You’re sick, aren’t you?” asks little Miss Prim.

“Yes,” I say. “I haven’t been this sick in many years.”

“Well, you need to hide that.  We sheep never look sick until we are just about to die.  It keeps the predators at bay. You need to pretend you are fine.”

“You sound like some of my customers.”

“This is a world pretty short on Mercy,” says another sheep. “Limping just makes you a target. Keep your suffering out of sight.”

“That seems to be what a lot of people do,” I admit.  “How many of us are actually walking around with invisible Handle with Care labels on them? So many of us are suffering like sheep afraid of getting bitten.”

“It’s a Thing,” says Wally, chewing. 

Walking back to the house makes me dizzy because there is a ringing in my ears.  Out of curiosity, I match the pitch I hear as best I can and hum it into the guitar tuner app on my phone.  My head is ringing at a faint D#.

“I hope you feel better soon,” says Everyone.  Some of these people say so with their own selfish agendas at heart; others genuinely wish me well.  Honestly, I am in no hurry.  It’s been five years since I have taken any kind of break.  I’ve earned this and no one is going to deprive me of it.  If I can’t get out of it, I’m going to get into it. Defiantly, rebelliously, I don’t give a hoot who sees me limp, or lie on the dog’s bed in front of the stove.  I am not a sheep.  I’m a crabby middle-aged woman who hasn’t slept through the night in over a week.  Frankly, that’s way more dangerous than any coyote! 

I listen to every sound in the house until all I can hear, beneath the D#, is Stillness.  I had not realized how hungry I was for this Silence, for this peace. In the Stillness… when I am Very Still…I find myself. Still.  It feels good to lie still. I don’t want to be Tough.  I don’t want to “power through.” I’m exhausted by the thought of being anyone’s pretend hero.  I just want to lie here and listen to something I am supposed to learn about Healing, about Resting, about Receiving the miracle of health I take for granted every day. Suddenly,  I am flooded with Gratitude.  I have unhooked from the relentless forward momentum of my normal life just to Be. This illness is actually a blessing.   

When the fever finally breaks and I can begin doing little things, I start my most important project:  embroidering a heart-shaped pillow for a customer.  He has asked me to make a plush toy for his child that can contain a much older plush toy inside of it.   It’s the child’s favorite toy but it is worn to shreds.  In Velveteen Rabbit terms, this thing has been loved so much it is Real to the point of disintegrating into wadded up thread crumbs stuck together with kid sweat and drool.  The idea is that the little toy will live inside the “heart” I build to put inside the much larger replica of this toy.  I have no pattern, so I am just winging it from pictures.  Love has damaged this little bunny so much he has no recognizable face.  

The little Velveteen bunny lies next to the fabric that will become its new home looking exactly how I feel.  I try to handle him as gently as possible.  Gradually, the heart and the larger new toy take shape.  The proportions are not exactly right because the hollow torso must accommodate this “heart” that is oversized and filled with ragged, damaged, but pure and true Love.  I leave the chest empty and stuff the arms, the legs, the feet, hands, head, ears… I sew on eyes and embroider a nose.  Then I pack the little bunny away into the heart and seal up the chest cavity with Velcro.  The new guy looks both hopeful and vaguely surprised—the hand-sewn mouth is a little crooked, as if this chap is a little shy but up for a good joke.  I hope he will be loved, both for who he is and what he contains. 

I have put a Good Face on something that is hiding something ragged within.  The sheep would be proud of me.  

I think about how hard this time of year can be on some of us Menders.  The Darkness is always a challenge—so is the unrelenting weight of fear and fatigue we are still coping with after two years of a global pandemic and economic and political upheaval.  We are all more tired than we think.  Most of us are carrying hearts full of ragged little loves we cannot bear to part with yet cannot survive our continued grasping.  We tell ourselves we cannot rest, we cannot wait, we must carry on.  But these hearts can be so heavy… And we can only build our newer, bigger, stronger, more hopeful selves if we take it gently, one stitch at a time.  Time is all we have and all we need.  It is the only Healer. 

I feel so blessed that I got to lie still and be authentically Ragged for a week. I had the luxury of being able to make space for myself.  Prudence and the inner Capitalist realized, for once, that continuing to whip me was futile.  I had the luxury of not giving a damn.

I’m hugely grateful to my sweet customers who mostly understood and were content to wait graciously.  All in all, it was a splendid isolation.  A perfect Advent of silent Waiting in the dark.  

Dear ones, I hope you don’t need a virus to allow you to realize the beauty of resting when you are tired or praying when you feel hopeless.  Your work is important, yes, but even more important is that Spirit that informs all you do.  If your spirits are at low ebb, please remember how very much you are needed, wanted, and loved.  Those who love you can build a safe place for you in our hearts where you do not have to pretend to be invincible.  Rest your little ragged self with care and patience.  Let old resentments and rush jobs pass you by in the holiday hurry-up.  Who cares how many days it is until the presents are due? Embrace Presence.  Giving yourself the gift of Time will do magic and mending you cannot imagine.  

For if you can love and make space for all that is ragged in yourself and others, is that not the greatest gift of all?   

Wishing you every blessing of Health & Peace,

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S. I am actually On the Mend and feeling better!

Second Helpings

Greetings Dear Ones!

Forgive me; a thousand little “dust-ractions” (like dusting!) kept me from being able to put out a blog last week.   As I raced around, basically just sprinkling more dust everywhere, I thought to myself that those celebrating Thanksgiving  traditions are probably rushing too—to make, to bake, to clean, create… as we try to make our nests more welcoming and cozy for those who might come visit.  Perhaps you created a dish you could bring to share with others.  Perhaps you brought your most generous, authentic, shined-up, ain’t-gonna-discuss-politics, leave-your-swords-at-the-door, do-the-dishes kind of Self, which is a pretty awesome gift to share.  But before the Grace, we grumble a little… We rush.  We shove stuff under beds, we wear ourselves out with lists and reminders, and we think Dark Thoughts about whether the stuffing should be “vegan” or not.

It was absolutely wonderful to take a moment to pause… to sit by a wood stove, with scones in the oven and musical instruments piled about the place like cordwood, kids and friends and Music  all still asleep, as Dawn put pumpkin stains on the mist rising from the distant river.  I survey this (still somewhat dusty) corner of the world with increasing contentment and pleasure.  I am Happy.  Truly Happy.   The work is worth it.  The Harvest is rich. What a Gift it is to be able to Share…

I receive all this Abundance gratefully.  Receiving is the Gift we return to the Giver.  I was reminded of this several times last week, in my shop, as I worked hard and late to get things done for customers who decided they didn’t need their items after-all and didn’t come get them.  Other customers, whom I had assessed (wrongly) as “low-maintenance” began pestering me for their things instead.  So I did a lot for the Ungrateful and disappointed those who would have been very grateful indeed.   ALL these customers shared a confused sense of what “in a hurry” means.  (“Do you need these in a hurry, ma’am?” “Oh no, Tomorrow is just fine!” )  For the past fortnight, I have been asking everyone, “Do you need this for Thanksgiving?” and creating two piles—those due before November 23, and those who could wait.  Then everybody changed their minds.  It’s enough to make me want to eat every last scrap of stuffing.

ONE customer, bless her heart, told me she “hoped” her items would be done but was ok if they were not.  I put them in the “Get-‘er-done” pile and got them done.  The joy on her face was better than a slice of Mom’s apple pie.  She had four things to try on and jumped up and down, hugging me after each one.  Her gratitude made me feel like I was getting paid twice.

We talked a lot about Gratitude over Thanksgiving, as you do...  One of the best things about having a house full of people aged 22-36 is being able to marinate in their idealism, enthusiasm, and the phosphorescence of Change.  They aren’t where they used to be and they aren’t where they’re gonna be and they are wildly excited about pretty much everything.  They are discovering who they are, who they want to be, as well as cool new jigs in D minor.  Some of what they light upon they will soon outgrow; some they will love for the rest of their days.  I cherish my time with them almost as much as garlic-roasted brussel sprouts.

One dear soul in particular was my morning buddy—up at 7(ish) each day to help do chores, then sit with warm hands cupped around coffee and ideas—Essential  Vitamins of ruthless self-examination.  Jokingly, we called it our morning “Therapy.” On the last morning, there were six bleary-eyed people snuggled together in “the cozy room” for morning “Therapy.”  “We played music until 5:am last night, but we don’t want to miss Therapy!” they said through face-cracking yawns. 

After all the Gratitude talk, the thing that fascinated me the most was that these do-ers, these dreamers, these amazing achievers still want More. They want to be “Better”: Better people, better at music, better at relationships, better at business, better at being Better… What does that even mean? I wonder.  In a modern landscape that preaches “self-acceptance” (“You DO mean Selfishness,” sniffs Prudence, noting how the place is strewn with rubbish and no one seems to be picking up after themselves) and Gratitude for What IS—how does one have the naiveté and bravery to want “More”? How does honest self-assessment avoid getting tangled up in withering self-Judgment?  I want to learn.

I decide, rather smugly, that these young people have yet to Fail.  Their relationships are shiny; their jobs are fresh; their travels are still taking them to places they have never been before.  None of them are married yet. They are still on an upward trajectory of successes, opportunities, possessions, or relationships they “must” attain (and probably will).  Sure, they have experienced devastating losses and are wise beyond their years but they have not yet truly Failed.  Achievement has made them daring. They are cloaked in Invincibility, surging towards new ways to test their courage, strength and valor.  “Failure will teach them a thing or two,” says Prudence confidently, rubbing her lumbago.

Failure can be horrifying. Catastrophic.  Attempting to measure up, to show how Good I am or how many virtues I have and realizing I don’t actually have what it takes threatens my very sense of self.  After all, I was MADE this way, wasn’t I? Isn’t it Good Enough? It’s not???? Now what? Oh dear God… I need MORE???  How dare I ask for Second Helpings!

Despair.

Yep, Failure is going to break them, I join Prudence in thinking.

“Then it’s going to save them,” whispers a Better Angel.

They have no idea what an immense relief it can be to Fail.  Failing at things has been my salvation.  (“And you’ve gone at it like it was mashed potatoes with rosemary gravy,” says Prudence tartly.) Relinquishing the mantle of Perfectionism has been the key to my success.  Exhausting, Relentless, fear-driven perfectionism was destroying me.  But I could not know that when I was in my twenties.  

Our morning chats turn from Failure to Talent--Talent and Success being close cousins.  “How do you feel about being called ‘Talented’?” I ask a very talented young man.  

“I HATE it,” he says bluntly. “People tell me that all the time, as if they cannot do what I do.  The truth is that they don’t work at something the way I do.  They don’t want to get Better, they just want to be Great.  We all want to be great.  But we can’t get there if we don’t at least want to be better.

He goes on to explain his strategy as a weight-lifter.  His goal IS to fail—to get his muscles to the edge of their capacity, where shuddering fatigue forces them to tear a little, then heal, in order to get stronger.  Muscles don’t grow unless their fibres FAIL.

“Everything is a muscle,” he says. “Everything.  Even so-called “talent.” If you are born as talented as you will ever be, why bother?  There’s no fun there. The fun is in getting more. You can have all you are willing to work for.”

This news actually stings a little.  He’s right, of course.  But how dare he know already the things I am only now discovering? All my little-old-lady life, I have looked forward to being the Eldress with the Answers. My generation spent its youth being told by those who had invented polyester and linoleum, that we, with our “big hair,” shoulder pads, and parachute pants, were insipid and would amount to “Nothing” if we didn’t shape up. I have eagerly awaited venerable old age so that I could amount to something and dole out wisdom like cranberry sauce to add tang to the meat and potatoes of Life. Nope! With a snap, I realize I have missed it again. These young people are MY teachers.  At best, I am the limping, straggling, fellow-traveler they have to help over the sharp rocks and teach about Instagram.

They DON’T fail. (And they haven’t embraced anything as ridiculous as “Big hair” though skinny jeans severing their butt cheeks is a close second). Failure as an end in itself doesn’t exist for them.  Somehow, they got the memo (I didn’t) that Happiness lies not in the avoidance of failure, but in the embrace of it.  Failure is not an attack on who I am or “What God Made” but an invitation to use my Will to see what is on the other side.  Can I flex? Can I grow? All my life, I have been attached to Success in the form of desired outcomes, not Growth.   Failure has a completely different meaning for these young people I love.  They see their current abilities as emerging from the challenges they pose to themselves.   Like weightlifters, they seek the evidence that they have reached their current limit and get excited.  There is no “fail.”

I love this.  When I burn soup, sew the wrong patches on a pair of jeans, mishandle a social situation, or flunk dung-removal from a vehicle, I am just pushing the limits of my present abilities, and therefore (let’s hope!) improving them in the long run.  Failure IS a relief! Not because getting crushed gives me permission to quit, but because it allows me a moment to rest before trying again.  I know where my growing edge is now.  Wah-hoo!

 “When you leave here, and go back to your normal life, what are you looking forward to doing? What is your happiest thought?” I ask one.

“Getting back to Practicing,” says a musician who plays more in one evening than I do in a month of Sundays but still doesn’t call that “practicing.”

I sent them all homeward with “Bannocks and Blessings”—parcels of leftovers and haste-ye-back hugs in the shape of over-cooked cookies.  

One of my favorite things about a Thanksgiving Feast is the idea of “Second Helpings.” (“Of course you do,” says Prudence, eyeing my waistline.)  I love the word Helpings.  Many little helps.  I love to think of food as a “helping,” rather than a naughty or guilty indulgence. I love that feasting, on music, on fellowship, and thoughts can nourish us for weeks.  I’m grateful to have a little slice of Humble Pie as I think of these magnificent beings shining their brussel-sprout-fueled lights in the world, out there, Practicing to find their weaknesses and make of them Strength.  They are going to change the world!

I’d like a Second Helping of THAT, please!

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Beginning Beginnings

“The Music begins before you even hear a single note.” –Pete Clark

Greetings Dear Ones!

The sky canvas outside my shop windows is awash with deepening colors. The cycle of Endings and Beginnings happens swiftly these days.  The pace quickens with the wind.  “Yes, I can wait for you,” I tell a client who is running late at closing time, “but my animals are waiting for me, so if you are going to be more than a half hour, we will have to reschedule.” Breathlessly, she arrives twenty minutes later but it is already dark then.  We do the fitting as quickly as we can.  She needs to get home to feed her family and I do too—my animal family—the “fam-inals.” Together, we rush to the parking lot.  I get to my car and realize to my chagrin that I have agreed to drop some pants for a customer on my way home, delaying me further. (“Um, perhaps you need to rephrase that,” says Prudence, ever the Editor-In-Charge.)   This customer is one of my favorites but also one of the fussiest—literally bringing in a tape measure to check my work.  It’s a good thing he has never inspected my car. He’d die! I hang his trousers, neatly hemmed and bagged, from the hook behind my seat.  They hang, swaying slightly, directly above a foot well that is full of junk mail, damp hay, and a leather boot full of ram piss.  It’s an inauspicious ending to another beginning, but there you go.  Past Nancy has a lot to answer for!

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that into every vehicle must fall some poo.  That is, if one is a farmer (or the current owner of a toddler). If one is very lucky, poo is all that will happen. Sheep turds are dry little pellets that sweep easily. Urine is a much bigger problem, as anyone who once drank five cups of tea and attempted to cross the George Washington Bridge during Rush Hour (which, with total hypocrisy, translates to Stand-utterly-still-for-three-hours) with only an empty yoghurt container for company can tell you.

It’s tupping season for the sheep.  That means borrowing a tup, or ram, from a friend and bringing him home in one’s Ford Explorer.  For the uninitiated, it goes something like this:

1.       Make ready the back of your vehicle.  You are going to need a tarp, some hay, and some towels.  Start by emptying some of the crap you carry around that needs to be “Sorted Out One Day.” Put the tools in the tool shed, put the empty lunch containers in the sink, and put six inches of junk mail into the woodstove, or better yet, just leave it on the floor for now, along with your favorite pair of leather boots.

2.       Put the back seats down. Realize that there is a gap between the back of your seat (the driver’s seat) and the top of the back seat because you are so short, you have to have the driver’s seat pulled forward as much as possible.  Decide to fill in that gap with several layers of heavy-duty cardboard.   Then put down the tarp, the towels (to absorb urine) and the hay.  Hay itself is not very absorbent.  Not having old towels between the tarp and the hay means the tarp is more likely to direct all the urine into the nearest cupholder, or worse, on to the carpet, making the car smell of sheep for the next ten years.

3.       Drive to friend’s farm in a clean (ish) sweet-smelling vehicle redolent of summer hay and Hope.

4.       Install yearling ram in vehicle.  Tie his halter to the back of your driver’s seat so that he is not free to run around the vehicle, or worse, join you in the front seat and decide to drive. (He’s too young to get a license.)  Make sure child safety locks are on the windows.  You DON’T want a repeat of that time you loaded six animals into the car and one stepped on the automatic window button, let his window down, and jumped out while you were driving down the road.

5.       Play some romantic music for the new guy, to get him in the mood—some robust Shetland Fiddle tunes perhaps, since he is a Shetland ram.

6.       Drive approximately ten miles with your new companion, unaware that he is steadfastly rearranging the cardboard so that he can slip his body down behind your seat and hang himself from your headrest.

7.       Pull over and loosen the rope so that his neck angle is less extreme.  Ensure he can breathe. Decide to leave him wedged between the seats because he is calm and relatively happy there and his horns are wedged in such a way that he cannot possibly get into more trouble. Forget your favorite boots are beneath him. Drive another 30 miles.

8.       Suspect him of drinking too much tea before he left his former residence. The windows are fogging up and you want to gag.  Your good boots have become his yoghurt container.

9.       Arrive home, unload, introduce him to his new harem. 

10.   *THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP* (We cannot stress this enough)  CLEAN THE CAR!!!  Clean every bit of it.  Pull out the tarp. Recycle the cardboard. Compost the hay. Don’t just look at your boots and their contents and scream. Don’t think “I don’t have time for this; it’s dark and I need to make sure the pen for the ram is secure first…” then just wander off and have supper. Finish What You Start!! (We BEG of you!)

Ok. So we all know I did not do step ten.   Go ahead. Judge me.  No one regrets it more than I. “You know you can never sell this car now, right?  You’ll have to drive it off a cliff and let it burn in a fiery crash,” a concerned citizen informs me. “It’s the only way to get rid of the smell.”

Instead, I got involved in the charm of watching the animals greet each other through the fence.  The little ram is a sweet and super friendly little guy. He spent the summer as a pet at a girls’ camp in New Hampshire.  As a yearling, he’s never been used for breeding and (so far) has only the purest of intentions for his new friends.  He is shy, vulnerable, curious—like an innocent middle-schooler hanging out with Fast Girls from the Tough High School who think he’s kinda cute and want to offer him purloined gin and cigarettes. 

The weather has been so unseasonably warm that the ewes have not been coming into heat yet. Sheep libido is stimulated by the seasonal drop in temperature (Christmas carols and Hallmark movies are strictly optional).  The plan is to have this guy in a little pen adjacent to theirs, where they can touch noses through the fence but nothing else (like the courtship “bundling” ritual in colonial America) for about seventeen days.  It’s also known as “teasing,” (for obvious reason).  The theory is that all the females will synchronize their cycles and then conceive within 48 hours of each other when we set the tup free.  With any luck, this compacts the lambing season—with all the lambs arriving close together and not dropping randomly for seventeen days (the length of the ovine oestrus cycle) next Spring, (during Prom Season!), which is chaotic enough.  

Meanwhile, the darkness comes sooner and more fiercely each evening.  The steers have lobbied to have suppertime moved to 4:pm.  The dog is in agreement.  So am I, actually.  It is a time of hunkering and munching and turning our collars to the wind. The contented animals have no holly-daze looming, no shopping lists, no resolutions to fulfill before the stroke of midnight December 31st. They dwell in doorways and Moments, as ever, beginning new beginnings they don’t even realize are beginning.

There is so much wisdom in their innocence and almost none in my scheming.  We know damn well that Prom Season and Lambing season are going to bring their share of stories, opportunities, and regrets, no matter what I try to encourage or avoid. (Glitter!!!)  Life is going to happen.  And it will be Joyous, Tragic, and Messy. So Be It.  It’s worth the work of beginning.

Beginnings take a lot of preparation before they can begin.  Before Advent, the season of Waiting, can begin, the preparations for the preparations must be done. I need to close out the old projects, clear the decks, and prepare for the next things I will create.   I’m not ready, but I’m getting ready to be ready. Perhaps one of these days, I’ll even throw out my dear boots and clean that car.

Keep beginning, Dear Ones! 

I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Brighter

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Greetings Dear Ones!

I cannot believe it is already the second day of November.  This year is slipping by like leftover fiddle chili through chickens.  Our nation is now staggering sideways in a sugar coma left from Halloween towards midterm elections in less than a week’s time.  (The Fright continues sans milk duds.) The sky already has that dull, November gloom to it, as though we dwell inside a dirty pearl.  Days shorten, darkness lengthens.  Owls and howls and late-night prowls are more prevalent as What is Hungry edges closer.  This morning, I was ten feet from a coyote when I went outside to empty the ash from the wood stove.   

Hard frosts are more common now.  I go out to do the morning chores and the yearlings are standing in the corner of the field that is closest to the house, awaiting my arrival and blowing great wafts of vapor through their nostrils. It looks like smoke pouring from their internal hay burners.   If I am late, I can hear the impatient mooing from inside the house.  As I heave into view, singing our Good Morning song, their backs and ears stiffen with intense interest, their eyes open wide; they visibly brighten.  Their whole bodies seem to smile.  I slip under the fence and get enveloped in warm breath, hugs and cuddles.  We are SO happy to see each other!   After a few moments, I duck the zap of electric wire and go in the front of the barn while they dance around to the back gate and enter via their own entrance.  They know nothing of elections.  They live under the most benevolent of dictatorships.  The sheep too are happy to see me—though ninety percent of their brightening comes from seeing the feed scoop and the hay.  Still, it does my spirit so much good to have this daily welcome, to be seen as “Something Pleasant Approaches…” I would take this kind of Sweetness over a cauldron of candy any day. 

I only worked on a few Halloween costumes this year and they were all for adults.  One woman loves to dress up as the same Disney villain every year but in different outfits.  She had ordered this costume online and none of the proportions worked for her so I had a lot of work to do.  She is very petite, so we had to chop off a huge portion of this year’s skirt, the loss of which was in danger of ruining the total effect but then she had the brilliant idea of bunching it all together like a bustle behind her.  It solved the problem perfectly.    When she came for the final fitting, she looked in the mirror as excitedly as if she was seven years old and had been told she could keep her whole pillowcase full of sweets.

“Halloween is my THING” she said breathlessly. “I just Love Halloween.  I love dressing up for the kids who come trick-or-treating.  I love going out dressed like this to hear my favorite band play at all the senior centers.  I think people enjoy it. I don’t care if no one else is in costumes or not.  I just love it.  My husband refuses to come.  He just stays home.  He doesn’t want to get dressed up.  But he loves that I love it.  He is fully supportive, as long as he doesn’t have to be included.” 

My niece wanted help with her costume too.  She had a brilliant design but did not quite know how to attach a spandex body suit to a woven coverall that was cut down the middle.  (She was going as one who was partially transformed.)  We settled on the idea that the bodysuit would not be cut down the middle but remain intact underneath half the coverall.  To settle the stretch issue, I decided to sew the coverall to her jumpsuit while she was in it. She lay on my cutting table, looking like a gorgeous cadaver, as I carefully hand-stitched her into the costume.  It was nerve wracking “surgery” trying not to nick her with my needle as I attempted to pick up a tiny bit of spandex with each stitch and anchor it to the woven material above.  The seam went right down her mid-line, which made things awkward in a few places!

“Can you imagine if I offered this service to other customers?” I asked as I stitched over her bum cheeks. 

“Never!” hissed Prudence.

Rabbit and I couldn’t stop giggling.  The end result was spectacular.  She looked incredible.  Half of her was totally gorgeous and exotic and sensual and the other half was sternly in uniform.   She captured a “transition” perfectly.

I love that Halloween brings out latent creativity in people who wish to transform themselves for a night.  My favorite costumes are the ones that take thought and are not bought from a store.  The best costume ever was not one that I made personally but only heard about.  A young friend of my daughter’s is an excellent seamstress and dating an engineer.   She sewed dance clothing for them that contained strands of lights and he programmed the lights to get brighter and brighter when they got closer together and to dim as they drifted apart.   They attended a party where their proximity to each other was evident by whether or not they were glowing brightly.  

This isn’t just a charming costume idea, it’s a perfect metaphor.  Who doesn’t want to transform into this?  I believe we DO light up around those we love, and grow dim in the face of separation or loss, whether we are bullocks awaiting breakfast or me, finding out I really have eaten all the milk duds already.

I have been thinking about what lights us up a lot lately.  I think about the man, relieved to sit home on the couch while his life-long partner dresses as a villain to party without him.  This is a beautiful thing.  In his case, proximity might dim them both.  Having the space to let each other dance their own dance, the way they choose, is enlightened indeed.   She knows her way home.  Bewigged and bejeweled, trailing a flume of excess fabric, she travels her compass trail to the Elk’s Club, the Senior Center, and back without faltering. They are the modern, gender-reversed version of John Donne’s poem “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”  There is Joy. 

The northern hemisphere continues to darken daily, as our planet runs to the outer reaches of its orbit and certain media sources reach the limits of insanity.  It’s easy to feel depleted, to feel ourselves grow dim along with the days, especially with our politics in chaos and the prices of food and fuel rising.  We all have disappointments and worries about the future.  Anger and resentment look flashy but they are not the Light.  They provide sparks but no heat.   Friendly eyes, when they meet, are like candles touching new wicks, igniting warm smiles. Have you witnessed old friends bumping into each other at the post office? It’s high wattage.  Lighting up takes energy but the right smile, the right tune, the right phone call from the right person can light us up for days. 

Messages of Kindness and Light seem weak, trite, unsatisfying …I get it. Garrison Keillor says “Hope is a cup of chamomile tea; resentment is a double bourbon.”  I’d love to go to my local polling station, shake a bucket of grain and have everyone brighten instantly. But people are NOT sheep.  This is going to be tricky.  We’re going to have to do this, one smile at a time—a smile that says “hey there, neighbor, I’m secretly your friend!  This community/county/country/planet is our shared home. I might not agree with your opinions or choices but I want you to have them.  You might not get what you want, but your voice and vote matter. My candidate might lose but I won’t lose my dignity or integrity.  The only pronouns that matter to me are We and Us. There is no ‘them.’”  

What lights you up, Dear One? How can we use our skills to light each other up? My animals light me up. Work lights me up.  Music and seeing other people lit up lights me up.  I love to hear about partnerships that cause the partners to light up.  North of the equator here, it’s another fifty days until the Winter Solstice. What is your plan for refusing to go dim?

As ever, thanks for your Good Work!  Thanks for subscribing, for sharing, and for taking the time to comment.

With Sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Part of the Plan

“What we plan for ourselves isn’t always what Life has planned for us.”

Greetings Dear Ones!

October seems to have left without me; I have been hanging on one-handedly like one dangling from the last rail of the caboose on a speeding train.   Dare I admit I may have taken on “too much”?  No… I would never admit such a thing.  But it has been a scramble to do all the usual things AND cook for four days at a wonderful fiddle camp, AND have house guests for a week, AND have concurrent major deadlines on multiple projects, one of which included sewing 187 cloth pennants for the aforementioned fiddle camp.  My regular customers seem to be taking it all in stride—unless they happen to be the one (or three) I forgot to tell I would not be available for a week. (oops!)  I can tell that one of my recurrent life lessons is about to hit me with a pop quiz, the main question of which is always: “Are You In Balance?”  I pass or fail depending on the crash.  The next question is “Can you embrace a New Plan?”

I admit I do NOT feel in balance.  Things seem hasty, rushed, devoid of Breath.  I eat without tasting, sleep without dreaming, and arrive at places hardly knowing if there was traffic on the road or not. I get wet but I do not feel the rain.  Autumn in the North East does this to a lot of us.  It’s a hectic time.  The closer one lives to the Roots, the more one must gather before winter clamps its jaws.  For weeks now, I’ve been gathering hay, wood, and stones.  You would think I am building homes for all three of the little pigs.   

Thanks to Hurricane Ian, my beloved sister and her family, instead of taking a dream Carribean vacation, decided to forgo hot sun, trashy novels, and fancy beverages with tiny umbrellas in them to come to Vermont for a week to help with Fall chores. (These people really know how to choose a party!) Instead of lounging around getting sand in their bum cracks, they moved a huge wood pile, put six tons of hay in the loft, and helped dig an irrigation ditch out the back side of the house to convince water that wanted to live in the cellar that it would be happier running down the hill outside.   They cleared a new pasture for the sheep and fenced it!! We worked hard and laughed a lot, two of my favorite things to do.  A wise person once said, “A good vacation makes you grateful to get back to your normal life.” For them, this certainly qualified!

There were a few glitches (of course there were) that required me to say “Ok, NEW PLAN!” Every time something went askew, we took to announcing “Ok, this must be part of the Plan…” like when my niece Rabbit fell through a rotten board on the hay trailer and skinned her shins from ankle to thigh, or when I fell off the top of the hay truck and felt my brain, like a speeding ball of jello, collide with the inside of my skull.  Or when the hay delivery truck couldn’t manage the hill and had to be towed the last two miles.  And the sheep got into the chicken feed and needed to be dosed for bloat because I had decided to remove all the hardware from the coop door but had gotten distracted before I could fix and replace it. (When I did replace it, I put it on so thoroughly it is now impossible to open the door!)

New Plans… New Plans…  The Land of Lost Plots is now the Land of New Plans.

I like the idea that there isn’t a “Fail,” merely a New Plan.  

I get asked a lot, “Can you sew something without a pattern?” The answer is a carefully worded... “no…”  Everything needs some sort of pattern.  If you give me your beloved skirt and ask me to copy it for you,  that skirt then becomes the pattern:  I’ll trace it, measure things, put a bunch of marks on paper, maybe scream at it a few times because I neglect to mark things like “left” and “right”  and nap of fabric.  (Fabric “nap” is that small rest the exhausted seamstress needs has when she cannot remember which “direction” the fabric is supposed to run.) Having a pattern vs. not having a pattern is like having a map and a declared destination rather than simply going out for “a wander.” (Very few people drop off a bunch of fabric and invite me to wander around in it, creating what gives me joy.  Not that I want that, mind you! Don’t get any ideas!)  Without marks on paper, I can take a yard or two of fabric, pin it all over your body, make darts, make seams, and custom make a garment for you but you still have to tell me---are we making a vest? An 18th century mantua ? A Victorian smoking jacket? Or something in case the circus comes to town and needs an extra clown… (cue a 1980’s silk blouse with linebacker shoulder-pads and enlarged bow tie at throat).

Custom items rarely turn out with the perfection of one of Plato’s Forms but they still have to participate, at some minimal level, in the idea of that form, the way one loosely follows a recipe and decides to add extra garlic, or leave out the meat, or, in the case of my father, substitute sawdust for shredded cheese.  (Just kidding, it was vintage parmesan.)  

So!  As reluctantly as I admit this… I am fairly dedicated to plans.  Planning is important to me, if only to know what it is I am NOT currently doing.  It significantly aids my continually simmering Guilt Process to know I am vehemently, perhaps even gleefully, astray. 

Now, can you imagine setting off to cook for ninety fiddle campers and their valiant teachers with no plan???  Nada. Nunca. Nyet.   As usual, I left it to the last minute to print out the menu and shopping list and all the notes I have gleaned from previous cooking-at-camp experiences—but instead of contented purring and burping from the printer, there was silence.   The computer refused to produce the files.

“Are you KIDDING ME???” I said in a sentence that was at least one very naughty word longer. I tried restarting everything—a reboot that took ten minutes I passed by pulling out some of my hair, which was actually a good thing, since it reminded me to find my kitchen hat.

Meanwhile, from the computer…   Still nothing.

After two futile hours begging the gods for a different fate, I had to go on with my life. Utterly refusing to believe There Was No Plan, I shouted up at the ceiling, “OK! THIS must be the new plan.”  I’d read a book on “Surrender” once upon a time and decided it was the only available superpower at the moment, so I took it.   With a pit in my stomach that signified my bowels were turning to liquid, I hopped in the car and set off for Boston.  I picked up my son. “What’s the plan?” he asked after stashing his stuff in the car.

“There isn’t one,” I admitted.

“WHAT???”

“Yep.  The new plan is that there is no plan.  I couldn’t get the [another naughty word] computer to print.  So we have NO plan. That’s the plan.”

“Oh my God…”

“Yep.”

“So what are you going to cook?”

“What do you want to eat?”

We made a list of comforting foods we thought most people might like. 

We went to Costco, where torrential rains hosed the parking lot.   Great.  Loading a trailer load of food in the rain. Must be part of the new plan. 

Oh? What’s that you say?  I don’t have my Costco card and need to stand in line for a new one?  This New Plan is really amazing.  It’s a gym membership, and psychological stress test requiring aqua-lungs and flippers all in one convenient bundle.    

Over and over, I got to flex my flabby Surrender muscles and embrace A New Plan.  All week, every time something went wrong, I just continued to shout “Wahoo! THIS must be part of the plan!” as if plans are treasure maps we discover, rather than create. When we cooked all the potatoes three hours too early and they turned to rocks, when the girl chopping peppers cut her hand,  when the porridge turned to cement, when I flew out the back door gripping a smokey pot of (literally) flaming soup, when I had to run back to the store for everything we needed, every… single… blessed… meal….  only to discover now we have way too many leftovers... These were all just part of The Plan I couldn’t see. And thank Heavens too—it was a mercy I couldn’t see what was in front of me or I might have been tempted to put my head in the giant oven (that incidentally was broken “on.” We were warned never to turn it off, lest we not be able to turn it on again. Yep! You guessed it… Someone turned it off. )

As I told the forty pounds of unused carrots I discovered on the last day, “I’m sorry little orange ones…I guess you just were not part of the plan” (though they will have to be soon!). 

So many New Plans.  So many choices to sing or scream. So many opportunities to adapt or perish.  I discovered that “Plans” represent our best hopes of making things better than they are.  In actuality, it is humor, resilience, and a new friend willing to chop thirty pounds of onions without gritching about it that really gets us through the tough times.  Humor is that gap between “what Is” and “What should be” and it is Here, in that gap, outside the reach of the best-laid plans of mice or men, that we find ourselves and our community of fellow Menders.  Here is where we find the work we know how to do, where Love and Laughter and some clever patchwork are the best substitutes for Other Plans. 

Finally, I am home again.  I’m not sure what to do next.  Anybody got a plan???  

With sew Much love and gratitude for all your Good Work,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Only Temporary

Greetings Dear Ones!

Several of my dear customers have what I consider to be one of the hardest “side jobs” imaginable—the care of their elderly parents.  For a few of them, this is a full-time, round-the-clock, round-the-night, round-the-bend endeavor.   As one so articulately put it, “My biggest problem is that in order to keep up with them, I kind of have to think like them—to anticipate their next need or their next move (or movement)—so I have let a part of my brain turn to mush.  I go at their pace, keep their schedule, talk with their words. To my horror, I notice I am now a fifty-something person behaving as though I am eighty. When I get around my own age group, I no longer switch back!”

Another, rushing back in to collect the shoes that her father had left behind, said “Is it me? Am I insane?  I feel like I am losing not just shoes, but my mind!”

“No,” I tell her honestly. “It’s not you, it’s definitely them.  They look like a lot of work and you are doing it beautifully.  It’s filial piety at its best.  Keep at it and remember to take care of yourself too. It’s a tough job to give all the time without losing yourself as well.”

She melts a little.  I see her shoulders drop.

“Is this what having a baby is like?” she asks. “I never had kids, so I have no idea.  But right now, I think I have two giant toddlers down there, wandering around the parking lot, arguing with each other and trying to get into a car that is not theirs, while here I am with the keys.”

“No,” I say. “Taking care of aging parents is not at all like having a baby.  The chores are similar but the emotions are not at all.  A child falling over as she figures out how to take her first steps is a joy; having a mother pretending she hasn’t pooped in her pants is not.  Both require all the love and grit and patience you can muster.  I’ll bet you feel absolutely wrecked at the end of each day.”

Her eyes fill with tears she brushes quickly away.  “The saddest part is that I know this is only temporary and I don’t want it to end.”

On another day, a man slips a piece of paper across my table as I write up the instructions to my future self on how to mend his father’s clothing.  I open it after they depart.  It says “Thank you for treating Dad like a person.” Now I’m the one weeping…

I transition, as I must, to wedding gowns, sport coats, and hemming navy trousers.  One school boy has eight pair.  His mother is clever.  She knows (as did Ringo Star) that from September until June, there are “eight days a week.”   I turn up huge, three-and-a-half-inch hems and stitch them lightly with large, easy to remove stitches.  This job is only temporary.  This boy is of an age where he will eat the contents of the fridge on a daily basis and need everything let down again by December.

On the farm, the chickens are starting to molt and look ratty; they toss their knickers all over the coop.  Their clothing  transitions are as unflattering as mine, as we scramble into warmer gear that doesn’t fit yet. The Autumn Equinox is upon us and the encroaching darkness is an invitation to hurry at the chores. Due to a broken toe, I’ve been struggling to work the steers. I tie them up and groom them instead.  When I finally get them back out on the road, I can barely stuff Gus’s chubby neck into his wooden bow.  He has been eating like a schoolboy and his collar is tight.  Still hungry, he and Otis keep bending down to lick the driveway.  I find myself irritated by this constant distraction of theirs.  What are they trying to eat? Leaves??? Where did all these leaves come from? I had not noticed until now that small black cherry leaves are leaving their summer hang—the first to begin the fall flutter.  They are all over the driveway.  I am asking these boys to walk over and ignore a delicious snack. They can’t manage it.

Suddenly, Change seems to be everywhere.

I look around at all the cow candy still on the trees. The Oaks and Maples are holding firm but blanching slightly.  There is no “color” yet—except green. I pause and stare up at the tower of bark and branches above us.  I am amazed to think of such a vast organism nourished by such individually insignificant things.  One by one, they are nothing.  Collectively, they have fed a giant, like so many individual cheerios going into a teenager.   So it is with our tiny daily habits, our routines, our simple, unconscious choices that create a Life.   

On the days when I wake up more than usually fizzled and frazzled, in a new season that is changeable, fitful, maddening as I am myself, when the days are choked with too many demands –I feel like a tiny leaf consumed by curious, unthinking cows.  I wonder what is The Point in all this over-busy-fied, eternally temporary, Overwhelming Smallness that just leads to death and pooped undies?  

Somewhere, at some cellular level, I understand that the very ordinary, mundane, small, and boring experiences are the gateway to what is Holy. But I need to remind myself, again.  I pick up a single leaf and hold it up to the light.  Gus sticks out his tongue, as if to receive Communion.   In this final exhale of a single leaf, I behold what it means to belong to family, to community, to Decency and democracy.  Everything is Connected.  This is US, each of us—caring for our parents and children and oxen and friends, doing our little bits to be kind, to be civil and respectful, to remind each other that we are human, making sugar from sunlight to nourish and support a greater Whole, without which we would cease to be.

A woman comes in to have her coat sleeves hemmed.  She’s not sure if she will even keep the coat or donate it to a local charity shop. I turn up the excess and leave it under the lining.  It lends stability to the cuff, and maybe the next owner will be grateful.  When possible, I do not make the changes permanent.   How can we change if our choices have been cut?

Transitions are tricky. Sometimes we must endure hard phases of loss and growth.  Sometimes we get choices, often we don’t. Nothing in this world is permanent—not monarchs, not parents or presidents, especially not seasons.  Like hemlines and coat cuffs, we are designed for change.  Ideals don’t.  Value doesn’t.  Kindness, steadfastness, humility and gentleness, Small Persistence over time—these are always the answers.  Turbulence, Transitions, Violence—these are only ever questions. What will we do next?

My birthday is coming up.  I am embracing the passage of Time, even though I know it might lead one day to my doing things that amuse, embarrass, or exhaust my children.  (I can’t wait to get back at them for once telling a cashier ‘”Mummy gets to wear fancy Big-Girl pants because she does all her poops in the potty!”’)  For now, I am going to live each day like it’s a chance to be a Summer leaf about to soar.  I’m choosing a new Theme Song, a new slogan, and a new secret nickname for myself.  I’m going to keep Mending.  I might even Get Organized.  (Ha! If I do, it will only be Temporary!)

Keep up your Good Work, Dear Ones!  Nothing you do is too small. Thank you for reading, sharing, subscribing.  I love you sew much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Eggstra

“Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find—Nothing.” –Aesop, “The Goose with the Golden Eggs”

Greetings Dear Ones!

Me and zippers are at it again.  One customer alone dropped four anoraks on me this week—all of which need new zippers.  If there’s one thing I have learned about zippers, it’s that when someone comes in and tells you one is broken, they are almost always Right.  But when they tell you how to fix it, they are almost always Wrong.  People have no idea how to fix zippers but they will stand there and tell you what they think you should do—something I find hilarious, vexing, and endearing. “Why don’t you try this at home? Why drag it here if you know so much?” Prudence wants to know.  She should talk.  She’s a fine one for telling other people how to fix everything.  She knows exactly how other people should conduct themselves—how they should eat, how they should drink (they shouldn’t!), and how they should never dance the tango at a bus stop.

One man was so intent on watching me replace a pulley that I had to be careful not to snip off his nose with my pliers as he hovered inches above the coat.  He was dictating as he was observing, as if he were leaving some sort of audio memo to his future self from the part of himself that already knew how to fix the problem.

This is a Thing I have been noticing a lot lately—that we are so often Correct about something being Wrong but we are stymied by how to fix things.  Sometimes things are going wrong so slowly that we don’t even have any idea they are running amok. One day, we wake up far off course, bewildered by the state of chaos in which we find ourselves. Sometimes, things are going wrong for the “best” of reasons…

Take the Egg Lady.  She is a sweet soul who adores chickens and wanted to have a whole flock of twenty-four heritage breed birds.  A few years ago, she built nesting boxes and an avian palace and fussed over her hatchlings.

“Why have so many for just one person?” friends asked her.

“Everything on my little farm must earn its keep,” she said.  “These chicks will produce enough eggs to pay for their own food with the money they earn. And I will get to eat the leftovers for free!”

It seemed like a charming plan.  In no time, the chicks became pullets and began to lay.  The egg lady had no trouble finding customers who signed up for “egg-scriptions.” They adored having fresh eggs delivered to their doorsteps. The chickens earned plenty of money for treats as well as sacks of grain. Everyone thrived. The customers were so happy they told others, who asked if they could sign up for fresh eggs too. The egg lady had just enough eggs each week for all the new customers but that meant she could no longer eat them herself.  That’s Ok, she thought.  She could eat oatmeal for breakfast. She likes oatmeal.

Then a few chickens went missing—perhaps a hawk strike, perhaps a fox.  One died of a mysterious illness and had to be buried in the garden near some rhubarb.  The hours of sunlight in the day began to fade as autumn came on so the chickens no longer laid as many eggs.  (Chickens lay according to the light cycle.) The day came when the egg lady was busy filling her cartons with eggs and she came up short.   

“Oh NO!” she thought.  “My poor customers! What shall I do?  I know… I’ll stop at the co-op on my way to deliver the eggs and just buy what I need to fill out the cartons.”  She only needed three eggs and she knew the co-op sold eggs singly.  On the way to her deliveries, she stopped at the co-op and the smell of breakfast sandwiches grabbed her by the nose and led her to the heat lamps where wonderful vegetarian breakfast burritos were sunning themselves like plump (vegetarian) seals on a beach.  She had not had time to make oatmeal that morning, so she bought herself a burrito. With the Egg money.  It was delicious. She had forgotten how amazing scrambled eggs with cheese and onions and peppers could be.

That week, she had to buy three eggs.  She put one store-bought egg in each of three of her cartons—of course they were free-range and local and of the highest quality, just like hers, so she didn’t mention it to her customers. The next week it was five.  Soon, she was having to buy a dozen. The daylight dwindled, her own chickens were going into rest mode and she was now hooked on weekly breakfast burritos from the co-op.

Unfortunately, with a bird flu raging in other parts of the country, the price of eggs skyrocketed, meaning that the eggs from the co-op then cost more per dozen than she was charging for “her” eggs so she began operating at a loss.  While she couldn’t afford to eat the eggs from her own chickens, she was ever so happy to continue pounding down the local burritos. Yes, at an ever-increasing loss.

“What if I take this to its logical extreme and come to a point where I have no eggs at all? I tell no one; I just drive to the local co-op, buy dozens of eggs, hand deliver them to my egg people, pass them off as my eggs yet charge them LESS money than I pay, and then wind up destitute over this enterprise? Do I need to get a side hustle to pay for this side hustle? How will I feed the chickens?” she wondered frantically. “Surely this is not a good business model…”

But how to fix it? Does she raise her prices? Does she confess the truth? Does she cancel everything and let people go back to buying their own damn eggs wherever they choose?  She agrees that the situation has become unsustainable, not to mention absurd. The egg lady is in a quandary because she hates “disappointing” people. (And chickens.) So she chickens out. She buys eggs on the sly, and eats store-bought burritos with money she doesn’t have.  

I love this Egg Lady.  

There is a part of her in every Artist I have ever known.  This is the part filled with old mis-beliefs that if we tell the real truth, the thing we most need or want to say… that we might hurt someone. (This is assuming that we “know” what might cause hurt. We actually don’t.) We try to “magic” our way out of things, even though that magic puts us in hoc. We take on too much, spread ourselves too thin, and then refuse to admit what is truly going on.  What does it take to trust that when we are fully honest, we are also our Kindest?  It does our fellow humans a grave disservice to think that they will not believe Science—that chickens do not lay all year unless you mess with their lighting.  All Natural things cycle: flowers bud, bloom, fruit, then go dormant—and only in that order. When we live close to the land, we live according to Nature’s Laws.  We are NOT a grocery store.  “Instruct the Ignorant!” brays Prudence. “Teaching farm truths to city folks is not just showing them respect it is a spiritual work of mercy.”  

She is disgusted with the egg lady.

When pressed, the Egg Lady feels both accountable and resentful in twisty ways that are complicated by her refusal to face Truth. She thinks she is doing the best “for her customers,” but IS she??? I have my doubts.  I think she is just trying to Look Good, which is just a way of disguising shame.  At their best, these eggs are wholesome farm-fresh eggs, but at their worst, they are just Lies, destined to be hard boiled or fried. Prudence makes haste to “Counsel the Doubtful and Admonish the Sinners.”  (Her Spiritual works of Mercy contain no actual mercy.) She is so invested in being Good that she becomes monstrous, bitter, and cruel.  (Then she can never apologize because she cannot acknowledge that she has not been Good.)  Ironically, she keeps trying to be Good in the same misguided way the egg lady does—both of them without actual reverence for What Is or genuine mercy for those they purport to love. 

With her mouth full of breakfast burritos she should not be buying, the Egg lady tries to tell us that she is ok with her “funny little sacrifices.” She was raised to be “Unselfish.”  Like Prudence, incandescent selflessness is her gold standard.  I rebel.  I think incandescent “self-less-ness” is one of the most selfish things we can impose on others or ourselves.  It bleeds us dry in the end.  If we have no “self” then we become reliant on others to supply whatever “us” they permit to exist and it’s usually not much, unless we rob them. This is nonsense. What is the good of counterfeit selflessness that, taken to extreme, causes one to lose the farm? Who says that her customers deserve her eggs more than she does?  I want to bop this lady over the head and hug her all at the same time.

Pleasing people can become a trap. I say this as a member of the service/artist/artisan world whose livelihood depends on customer satisfaction. I say this as one who is similarly addicted to pleasing and over-giving.  I have observed that many of our fellow “Creatives” feel an intense sense of noblesse oblige to share their gifts, their joys, their talents relentlessly—to the point of accidental depletion, exhaustion, and poverty of every kind—including the poverty of ideas.   Worst of all, they don’t find their gifts worthy of protection from other distractions.  It’s not wolves but well-meaning “customers” we let in to rob the hen house.  There is a woman whose novel I cannot wait to read but it does not get written because she is over-busy-fied with a myriad of community-building hobbies and distractions taking her off course. These are “worthy things” yet that make her operate at a loss.  And until we get that novel out of her, we ALL lose.  We lose the best of HER. Likewise, there is a musician whose rough tracks I have been listening to with breathless awe for ten years now.  He still doesn’t have a CD out yet.  He fritters his eggs away by laying down back-up tracks for other musicians.

Sometimes the act of “becoming” begins with the act of “overcoming.” Saying NO is a form of saying Yes.  Sometimes we need to hold on to a few of our precious eggs to nourish our own spirits. They cannot be for sale, especially if we don’t have them!  Thinking we are blessing people with sacrifices they never asked us to make is just plain silly. But we all do it.  And “giving” to them deprives us all of something Greater.

As we Mend, may we remember to nourish ourselves. May we give, yes, but Self-fully rather than Self-less-than-ly.  May we not sell out on what is most precious to us. If we are to be true Piece-makers and Make-Peacers, restorers, healers, sewists, storytellers, and lovers of every kind, may we remember to be humane—both to our chickens and ourselves as members of the Natural World.  It is unnatural to bloom incessantly without rest.  Fall is coming.  The harvest has been great but so is being fallow, getting small, returning to the earth to rot a little and renew.

Now, Dear Ones, how would you like your eggs—scrambled? Fried? Boiled?

Or… GOLDEN?

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Character

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. —Jane Goodall

Greetings Dear Ones!

The wretched state of our national politics has me spending a lot of time considering old-fashioned notions of Character.  What IS character anyway? Is it not required in politics? In Media?  Are we currently a weaker, more deplorable cast of creatures than at any other point in our history?  Does Character matter anymore?  From a moral as well as literary perspective, my little window-seat next to the world has provided some fine views of Characters, as well as valuable opportunities for me to work on my own.  Built of “crooked timber” myself, I have many, many of these valuable opportunities to look in the mirror—not just to realize I put my shirt on inside-out—but to enter the Fitting Room of Humility in the hopes of emerging… well, Mended.  My challenge these days is not to see myself as a sinner, but rather a joyful warrior—a mirthful, even zestful combatant-in-training alongside my fellow humans in our local Virtue Gym.  (Some of us are doing too much burping and not enough burpees. )  

For a start, any writing 101 class or tailoring shop will reveal many types of characters:  Some are static (all manner of lint, cat hair, and stray threads will stick to them), some are flat (these will require bust pads in their prom gowns), some are round (these will need the waist let out and the ankles tapers on their trousers), and some are stock (off the rack fits them just fine; they don’t even know why they came in here in the first place.)  My favorites, of course, are the Dynamic ones.  These are usually the Main Characters in their own storytelling—protagonists, if you will. (This does NOT mean they like tags.  Most of them ask me to remove them, as they scratch the necks of sensitive people already embroiled in personal drama.)  These people are going through a major change or journey, learning a Valuable Life Lesson (such as you should have ordered this gown two years ago, before you had even met your betrothed!)  These people are energetic, powerful, active, progressive, productive, vibrant and kinetic—especially if they are leaving for college in a week and just realized their pants don’t fit.  The word dynamic comes to us from the Greek dunamis, which means “power” and is pronounced like a person from New Jersey saying “do not miss” with a mouthful of pizza.  “Does Not Miss” is a pretty good way of describing  Power.  

There are some simple ways to asses character: Is the person honest? Are they reliable? Are they competent? Kind? Compassionate?  Are they capable of taking the blame and making amends when necessary? Are they able to persevere through challenges?  Are they modest and humble, or boastfully grandiose?  Are they pacific  (i.e. from California or Oregon)? Seriously, can they modulate their personal anger to keep interactions civil, serene, or professional? (as well as be groovy and hang 10 in good surf?)

Here are just two of the Characters I met this week:

A flirtatious philosopher comes shuffling into the shop with a big smile on his face. “How old do you think I am?” he says, grinning.

“Sixty-two” is my pert reply.  He laughs and gestures with his thumb for me to go “up.”

“Sixty-three?”  His thumb: “higher.”

“Seventy-three?”  His thumb: “higher.”

“Eighty-three?”

 “Almost,” he says, “but I’ll take it.”

“Well, Sir,” I say, “you don’t look a day over sixty two.”

“Go ahead and kick me in the shin!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Go ahead.  It won’t hurt me.”

He proceeds to lift up his pant leg and reveal a prosthetic limb.

“You can’t even tell, can you?!” he announces with glee, “And I can run like a son-of-a-bitch.  I just made it up all those stairs.”  

“How did you lose your leg?” I ask tentatively, uncertain if that is ok for me to do. His face flickers and then reassembles the smile.

“Lost it in a bet,” he says laughing and slapping his thigh.  He pauses for effect and looks deep into my eyes. “Young lady, you gotta live every day. One day, it ain’t gonna happen anymore.  I only retired ten years ago because my leg kept falling off when I had to kneel down to work.  I was in [a trade] so now I have to find other ways to amuse myself.” He winks. “I keep busy!”  We both laugh—me weakly, him uproariously.  He launches into a series of pretty awful jokes.

Apparently he is here to have some pants hemmed and to do a full, stand-up, one-man comedy routine sharing his robust world view with an audience of one haggard seamstress with too much to do. I grit my teeth and play the laugh track in all the right places.  Prudence is rapping my knuckles and hissing “Honor thy father! This man is an elder; he deserves Respect. Besides, he has only one leg! Show mercy! Show some strength of character! ” I try.   I pull through, barely.  He is alternately hilarious, boorish, and invasive.  Mainly, he’s lonely and needs love.  Who doesn’t?  When he starts telling me he lost his hair because he did too many high speed u-turns under the sheets, I decide to get the shepherd’s crook and haul him off stage.  It’s time for him to go.

“Well, Hon,” he says winking at me as he is leaving, “you got my number there.  If you ever get in trouble, call me—if I can’t help you, I’d love to join you!”

The next young man, though appearing reserved, courteous, and cheerful, in is in a panic.  He has driven an hour to get to the shop because I told him over the phone that I could get his wedding suit altered before his own wedding this Saturday. He’s a sweet guy in his very early thirties with intense brown eyes and a kind face.  He ordered this suit six months ago but when it came in, it was not the right suit.  The sales clerk took it back, ordered another one, and it has just come in today.  Only, instead of it being a 42 Regular, they have sent him a 44 Long. The wedding is four days away.   The pants have a 38 waist and need to come in 5 inches, which is an impossible feat, given that the back pockets will overlap if we do that.  The coat I can alter but the pants are a deal breaker.  On closer inspection, they are not even made correctly.  One pocket is already only one inch from the center seam and the other is three inches.   There is something seriously wrong with these pants.   They cannot be done.  He looks stricken.

“Deep breaths,” I say.  “The good news is that you can get married in your underwear and the wedding will still be legitimate.  You’re marrying the love of your life and that is what counts.  This is just nonsense.  We’ll sort it out.  First things first, take a picture of my tape measure next to these pants and tell the store where you bought them that these are coming back.”

He calls the store.  They refuse to acknowledge that anything is improper with the suit other than that it is unfortunately too long.  Their sense of “customer service” is to deny any wrong-doing on their part and insist “a decent seamstress should be able to fix that for you.” 

I laugh, not politely.  This is the best joke I have heard all day.

“Our in-house person could have done it,” they maintain.   

“Maybe their magic wand is more magical than mine,” I say dryly. “Unfortunately, my magic needs to obey the laws of physics. I should definitely go there and take some lessons!”

The Groom-to-be asks to speak to the manager.  Eventually, he gets in touch with the owner of the store, who refuses to acknowledge that the photo of the pants with my tape measure is correct. 

“I’ll have to see them in person before I can authorize a return,” he snipes.  There is no apology and no compensation for the fact that they have messed up this man’s order not once, but twice.  This young man bears it all patiently, stoically.  His only concern is disappointing his bride, should he have to show up to the event in his pajamas.   I ask him what he does for work.  It’s grueling work—work that takes incredible study, skill, personal fortitude, and deals with the general public in a venue where mistakes are potentially fatal and simply not allowed.

I am humbled by his dogged imperturbability.  He shrugs.  He’s used to dealing with people, with disasters.  He possesses an impressive inner cohesion.  There is no “temper” in his temperament.  He is not blown off course by storms.  He sets off for a town thirty miles away to see if a Bridal shop there has a suit he can use by Saturday. 

“Honestly, I don’t give [some poo] about wearing a suit.  But I really want [my bride] to have the day of her dreams.  I want all the photos for years to come to look good. I’m going to do what it takes to make that happen for her.” 

I feel so lucky to come across these Characters in my daily work.  I am blessed and buoyed by those who face both silly and serious challenges in their lives with such cheerful courage.   Sometimes, we might not notice these people—especially those who are ordinarily reserved and dignified (and not inviting you to kick them in the shins).   As I continue my own Mending, I begin to see that what hurts us gives us  opportunities to forgive or learn compassion.  What exercises power over us teaches us how to take our power back.  What we fear comes to teach us courage.  The things we cannot control give us opportunities to choose—do we Let Go? Or do we drive on, in blind faith that we can overcome any challenge? Until we do.  (When this young man says “I do,” we know for damn sure… He DOES.)

That’s an awesome thing for a humble little seamstress—one who is flat, static, round, and dynamic to the point of scattershot—to witness on her Journey to the cutting table.  I love these Characters who lead me to Love.  The best Love of all is that which shows me how to be a better person without changing me into someone other than myself.  I do believe we are all here to help each other Mend.  As my new one-legged pal says “And You gotta laugh! Cause one day, you’re gonna wake up and it ain’t going to happen anymore.”

Happy Mending, Dear Ones!  Thank you for your Good Work! 

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy