Up the Ladder

“There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.” George Eliot

Greetings Dear Ones!

So many people wrote to me last week to welcome me back I have not yet had time to respond to each personally yet—I will! But meanwhile, thank you for all the lovely love and support. It was so incredibly heartening and infinitely Warming!

The inner warmth is especially welcome as my shop has been without heat much of this week.  Wonderful Helpers have been in multiple times to try to fix, then replace, the valve on the ancient radiator but it was not much fun trying to sew with stiff fingers at the maximum temp of 53F and it was even worse for the poor bride who had to try on a sleeveless June wedding dress at 47F.  My breath was garlic-scented frost on her neck as I laced her into the corset back.

Today, with additional sleet and snow falling, I decided to work from home.  I brought back a few projects last night, “in case of weather,” which we are definitely having!

“When do we have a day without weather?” wonders my inner middle-schooler.  Yes, of course we have weather every day.  Every day, we look up at the sky and it is doing something.  But in Vermont, “in case of weather” means something quite specific, which we all respect.  Just because we are used to it, doesn’t mean we are anxious to get out there and slide our vehicles around like bumper cars on a ride called Mud & Tundra. No Amusement to be had there!

Personally, I love any excuse that allows me to linger over morning chores and sit and watch the silent feathers falling all around us.  The snow is silent but Gus, the biggest ox, is not.  He’s busy working his horns against the latch on the outside gate.
“Gus!” I yell, “QUIT!” he pauses and looks at me a moment, then returns to his annoying rattle battle with the metal. He is ruining both the peace and a perfectly good, working latch. He has broken similar latches twice.

“Gus!” I say with vexation, “WHAT are you doing?  This is NOT a toy! Do you even have a plan?”

He smiles sweetly. “I’m going to open this door and then I am going to go with Otie and take over the green land we found at our neighbor’s house last summer when you forgot to plug in the electric fence.”

“First of all, Gus, this is an exceedingly dumb idea. For one thing, that land is not ours.  You are not allowed to go there without express invitation or permission, which you will NEVER get. Secondly, that land you suppose is green is actually covered in ice, just like our land. The snow is everywhere.  There’s no food there.”

“But I was there…” he stammers, “I SAW it.  It came up to my knees and was so sweet and tasty. My gums were so green and happy by the time you found us and marched us home.

 “You don’t need to go anywhere,” I say, “All the food is HERE right upstairs in the loft.”

He gazes at the beams above in thought.

“I can’t get up there.  I can’t climb up the ladder with hooves… I need claws, like the cats.  They go up that ladder all the time.  They climb one side like a tree.  I don’t know how to climb a tree.  I only know how to knock them down when they are kind of dead in the forest.  I guess I need to become a cat. From now on, I choose to identify as Cat.”

“You can’t become a cat!” snorts the eldress sheep. “Don’t be ridiculous. You are an herbivore.  Just because you are the biggest and the strongest does not mean you can suddenly become a predator to get what you want.”

“I thought I could be anything I wanted to be!  Isn’t that what education is all about?  To be an OX is a form of bovine accreditation, is it not? Otherwise, I’d just be a steer. But I am clever.  I’ve been Taught Things. I’d like to climb that ladder and be a cat.”

“Let’s face it, Gus, you are a D minus ox at best,” says one of the bossier sheep, nodding my direction. “She meant well but you weren’t trained in the formal methods—you were homeschooled by a distracted “mother” who suffers heroically from ADHD.  You turned out to be very well-socialized and somewhat musical animal, if weak in the fundamentals of Maths and Science, but you are…um… Unique…as far as true oxen are concerned.”

“I’ve graduated to Cat,” insists Gus.  “Hey! Why are they allowed to be up there anyway, and we’re not?”

“Well,” says a smaller sheep, “They police the mice, who would try to steal or ruin our food. The mice are not part of our community.  They aren’t civilized.  To be civilized means we stay inside our borders and get food and health care and hoof care and safety, and in your case, a little bit of education, though I’m not sure what good it’s done you. Besides, the cats won’t eat the hay, they will only eat the mice.  If you got up there, you and the mice would eat it all, shit on the rest, and give us none.”

Gus smacks his lips and agrees. This is exactly his plan.

The sheep continues.

“Being on a farm is complex.  Some of us are free, but not as free as Wild Things.  We are all living together under the care and protection of our Person.  She is our leader, our teacher, our Farmer, our friend.  She organizes trade deals—using our raw materials like wool which she turns into hats and socks—to get us the food we cannot get for ourselves, like seaweed treats, and grain that comes in bags, and budgets it accordingly so that we all get our fair share and still can eat even when it is 9F degrees out and there’s not a blade of grass for months.  It’s the plus side of Domestication and good governance.  The downside is that we can’t just go anywhere we want and do anything we want.  It’s a social contract.

“Hey! I never signed this contract! What about Self Determination?” asks Gus. “What does it mean to define ourselves if we are not also able to RE-define ourselves at any moment? I would dearly LOVE to be a cat.  I’ve always thought I should be lap-sized. And I would be able to get up there with the hay.”

“If you were a cat, you would not WANT any hay,” insists the sheep. “You would eat MICE.”

Gus looks queasy at the thought. 

“I do NOT want to eat Mice,” he says firmly, shaking his head and making a “ppfth” noise with his large, rubbery lips.

“It’s OK to be frustrated with things the way they are,” says the sheep. “Being civilized as pretty boring.  Who wants to chew cud all the time and watch the snow fall for months on end? A cow being able to climb a ladder would be a vast amount of jolly good Entertainment, not to mention broken ladders, broken buckets, broken tools, broken backs, and broken cows.  It would be a spectacular catastrophe.  But the spectacle would only take minutes and recovery will take years that might prove painful and expensive.”

Gus sighs.

I serve him another flake of hay to distract him from the latch.  He gobbles it eagerly. Benevolent dictators such as myself understand that full bellies keep minds empty. When the jaws are busy, the rebels are not.

“We honor traditions on a farm,” says another knowledgeable sheep.  “We’ve learned what works and we like it that way.  We stay true to our values, even if we have to remind ourselves what those values are—especially when there are ripe apples all over the orchard floor and we’ve forgotten what tummy-aches feel like.”

“I am not into tradition,” says the impatient young Ox, barely four and a half years old.  “I’m a progressive.  I like change!  I love learning new things.  I can think of a thousand new things to try around here.  For instance, I’m pretty sure I could drive the tractor.  Remember when I nudged the lever and got the bucket to go up? That was very exciting indeed.”

“Who are we kidding,” says Otie, munching stolidly in his corner. “You pooped yourself and shot backwards like you’d been sprayed by a hose.  You thought the tractor was about to eat you!”

“You liked novelty well enough when I showed you how to escape by shimmying under the electric wire and going up that steep cliff at the back of the barn,” huffs Gus.

“Yep,” says Otie, “and thanks to you, I snapped off a piece of my toe on that cliff and then that guy had to come and put us into that chute that lifted us off the ground with hydraulics.  I got a plastic wedge put on my broken foot with epoxy and you enjoyed the “novelty” so much they had to hose down the entire machine before they could take it back on the road.”

“You’re right,” admits Gus.  “Going UP is not all it’s cracked up to be.  I think I want to stay down here and stay Grounded.  I guess I will continue to identify as “Ox.”

I pat him affectionately, reluctantly beginning my departure from this bucolic identity crisis.

“Gus, you just have to be your best Gus ever, that’s all.  I have a dog that identifies as a cat and cats that identify as dogs, and you and Otie are mostly big fat Labrador retrievers with horns, if you ask me. The more I know and love any individual, the less they identify as anything other than themselves to me.  I love how smart you and I love how stupid you are.  Just stay inside your borders!  We’ll all get along best if we remember who we are on both the inside and the outside and if we follow the rules of the Farm: Keep the Gates SHUT and the minds OPEN!

And Sew it is.   For hooves and hearts and pants and people, Let the Mending continue!!! Thank you, Dear Ones, for your Good Works and all you do to keep the tattered in stitches.

Yours aye,

Nancy

Happy New Year!

“It is the small things, every act of normal folk that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.” Gandolph, in Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

Greetings Dear Ones!

And…. I’m back.

I’m gazing at this new year and pondering a couple of things: Prudence, my inner fussbudget/critic/cleric is thinking that it’s high time I get off my crumpet and get back to churning out the miserable drivel that gives her an excuse to eat alkaseltzer like candy.  My inner flibbertigibbet is miffed that no one else wanted to party last night. Instead of lurching towards the finish line with a belly full of regrets, we went to bed early with a copy of The Vermont Almanac.  I’m in full-on slump-n-hunker mode.  It’s dark, it’s cold, who wants to leave a toasty wood stove and a couch full of Christmas cookie crumbs? 

To be honest, this New Year feels like a gift I haven’t asked for, that someone got me just to get me something, like cute soap. (“No,” says Prudence, “The person who gave you the soap really wants you to USE it!”)  Every year I get another and I’m not sure I make the most of them. (“This is true of both soaps and years,” tuts P.) I finish in tatters, ready for the rag bag (“or the bathtub,” adds P). Last year was only just starting to get good, just last week, when my whole family was together and we were singing and playing music, doing the traditional “airing of the grievances and feats of strength” and feasting on food and bright smiles.  We agreed to keep presents to a minimum and “presence” to a maximum and it was the best family time we’ve ever had. I laughed myself into a whole new dress size.

Now, I’m on my couch with a cat and a dog who are about to growl at each other and the shiny new year in my lap, wondering what it will be good for?  They sure don’t seem to be making them like they used to—they always look great until they shatter and cut out someone I love with their sharp edges.  I miss the soft, Old, Homemade years, woven of strong threads, with good stitching, full of hopes and promises, where everyone I loved Lived.  I can’t take another year of Loss.

I’ve never been fond of “new” things. This year feels like something from a fast fashion outlet rack I am not going to wear but will write a polite thank you letter about (at Prudence’s insistence) because one Ought to feel grateful for the Gift of a new year.  Like the fast fashion they resemble, these recent years have been one blurry trip to the trash.  I’m up for up-cycling. Personally, I’d like to shop for my own new year at one of those online bargain places where one can find Vintage Quality at an affordable price—something from the late ‘80s with a longer hemline, a strong silhouette and a few frills. I’d take anything up to the mid ‘90s. I much prefer more hellos than goodbyes, more sense than sensitivity, and more pride than prejudice. (We could do with a whole lot less prejudice!)

I want a KIND year, a Sane year, one that takes its sweet time over peaches and tomatoes from the garden. One with friendly visits with people who are Interested, not exhausted.  One with extra helpings of fresh corn from the farmstand down the road. One with lazy days where it’s ok to swing in the hammock with a good book instead of smashing into subterranean rocks with an iron bar while trying to build more fences.  I want to sit in a canoe so long the blue herons have no idea I’m there.  I want to hike these hills in snowshoes and moonlight.  I want to write like nobody’s watching and read like nobody’s listening; I want to spin and knit everything from fuzzy ideas to greasy fleeces; I want to invent, build, create, expand.  I want to huddle in a cozy spot, shrink to the size of a wildflower, and watch ant armies drilling in a vast, peaceful meadow.  While few things are as truly fabulous as running a hot water hose from the laundry hook up in the cellar to an old tub in the pasture and bathing in the rain or starlight on a summer’s eve, I want to bathe outside because I want to, not because I have to, and not because we took a saws-all to the mold-stained fiberglass shell of a tub/shower insert upstairs, then realized a clawfoot tub wouldn’t fit so chopped down a wall, severed the electrical wires and left them capped and dangling, and then  simply abandoned the project, leaving a working sink and toilet in the middle of an open hallway because too many other things were happening.

“You want a lot,” says a melodious voice. I cannot see but sense the presence of an angel.  He is kind, full of caring, here to help.

“Do I want too much?” I wimper.

“Of course not! But you err when you believe that you must effort toward all these things.  You are so busy being busy that you forget to be Alive, which is the point of doing all these things in the first place.  You are too curious, too excited about too many things.  You are like a child at Christmas crying because you cannot play with all your things at once.”

“You’re right,” I slump. “There is too much I want to learn, too many skills I wish to master, and way too many objects I have collected in the pursuit of these endeavors.”

“Yeah,” pipes Prudence, “just look at ALL THIS CLUTTER! Who needs THREE spinning wheels in one dining room? From projects to books and barn animals, this gal is all cluttered up. It’s too much.”

I glare at her.  One can never have too many books or barn buddies.  Projects? Maybe.  Prudence is like that meme going around that says, “This coffee tastes like I’m gonna throw a lot of shit away today.”  Slyly, I tuck a half-knitted sock behind my back where she cannot see it.

No wonder I feel overwhelmed. At home, just as in my shop, I am disappointed that I cannot do everything at once. Some projects excite me; some depress me; some even anger me. I cannot help having “favorites.”

“But you have SO many favorites,” says the angel lovingly. “It’s like you have way too many guests at a party and you work like mad to cook nice things and take care of them all but you burn the vegan sausages and fill the kitchen with smoke and suddenly there is not enough time or space to get to know them better—guests that is, not sausages. Just give the sausages to the chickens and forget about them.”

He pauses, evidently distracted by the concept of “vegan” sausages, then continues radiantly, “The point is, you invite too much to your work parties, which leads to burn out (literally) and rage about how “nothing ever gets done.” Year after year, you do the same things with the same results.

“As in NO results,” says the prudish one, smugly.

The angel ignores her. “I’d like to help you start a year with a few strong F-words (Prudence gasps, the angel giggles) such as “Focus” and “Finish.”  What do you say?”

Inner Party girl is horrified. She always says yes to everything, even though her parties are notoriously terrible and leave her feeling awful, with far too many vegan sausages for the chickens.

I say aloud, “but… but… How do I know which to do?  What do I prioritize?”

“Easy,” he says. “Write your top twelve onto cards and fold them all up into squares.  Toss them in a bowl and mix them well.”

My best wooden bowl, it turns out, has a little salad dressing still in it, so I literally make a “Goal Salad” that smells vaguely of mustard and vinegar. In it go “finish the book you paid to self-publish five years ago, learn a new tune each week, laugh (or walk) yourself into your old dress size by March (and marching), finish the bathroom, finish the quilt that’s currently all over the floor of your home office, do something about those old fleeces that smell like funk in the cellar, make an in-home recording studio, train Gus and Otie to drag a wagon you will build for them,  publish a cookbook for people who entertain crowds of 100 or more, finish the  X, and the Y,  and the Z.

“Now pick one and toss the other eleven in the fire. My friends in the Angel Ministry will take care of them. Divine Guidance will most assuredly kick you in the pants at exactly the right time or place to act on each goal. The right people will show up; the right energy will flow; the right amount of money will be made available; the Time will be free--all these clues will appear and you will Know.  OR… this thing you want so desperately is not meant for you and we will take care of helping you forget you ever wanted it.  Sometimes, you want stuff that’s no good for you.  It will disappear, taking all its regrets and guilt with it. Until then, stop laboring in multiple directions. Put all your heart and efforting into the ONE in your hand.  You have One job now.  Let the rest GO and GO REST.”

The relief I feel is indescribable.  I sit with it and let it seep into my flesh and marrow like good balsamic on Romaine.  

Slowly, I open the paper cube in my palm. It says “Get back to blogging.  Have Fun with it. Create a small, safe, silly space outside of politics, religion, and culture wars where you can welcome and celebrate the Mending you and your Dear ones are doing in this achingly tattered and tragically Magnificent world of beauty and absurdity.  Cheer them on, Cheer them up.  Seek Delight.  Send Love.

So!  Here I am. I’m back.  I guess I will wait until April to have a proper bath. “Don’t forget the soap,” says Prudence.  Keep Mending, Dearies!  Thank you for your Good Work and all your simple acts of kindness and love wherever you may be.

With SEW much love,

Nancy

P.S. I missed you more than you could ever know.  Thank you to the ones who wrote to me and encouraged me to Keep Mending! Thank you for keeping the darkness at bay.  I love you.

Courage

“Courage!”—said a customer to me, as she left the shop today

Greetings Dear Ones!

You haven’t heard from me much lately because I have been struggling.  Mud Season has not been debilitatingly muddy however Timing, energy, the alignment of purpose and resources—these have all felt distractingly “off” these days.  I’ve been having the kind of days where you spend twenty-nine minutes on hold waiting to speak to the customer service representative, then realize that consuming endless cups of tea has created consequences you urgently need to manage but you can’t hang up now, you’ve waited too long in the cyber queue, so you hit the “mute” button, sneak down hall and just as you pull down your pants and commit to doing something nasty in the woodshed, a cheerful Indian voice clicks on the line and asks how he can be of service today.  Suddenly Life is full of awkward choices.  Do you hang up?  Do you un-mute? Do you sit there, pants at ankles, trying to behave  normally, unable to flush until you have (literally) simultaneously conducted all your business in as dignified (and silent!) a manner as possible?  

I notice others struggling too.  Emotions are as frayed as the elbows on a beloved sweater. As a professional seamstress, there’s one thing that really gets my knickers in a twist:  It’s when women (yes, it’s always women) stand in front of the dressing room mirror and pout  and pinch and pull at their own nipples until they make an utter mess of the delicate fabric that is attempting to cover them.  There’s a seam that often runs right over the center of each breast, and since the fabric is cut on a curve, and since no human body is ever perfectly symmetrical, often there is a little gap or glitch or pucker of some kind in this area.  Picking at it (since it is cut on the bias) just makes a bad fit so much worse. 

And they cannot stop doing it.  Even when I ask them nicely.  They keep frowning and picking, in a slow-motion tantrum with themselves, instead of smoothing or lifting or leaving everything alone once they have demonstrated their dissatisfaction.   As I try to pin and measure, they cannot help wriggling and pulling and yanking on their busts until they resemble the torpedo boobs of the 1950’s.   I’ve had a few of these ladies lately.   Impending proms and wedding parties are filling my rack with chiffon problems to solve.  (‘Tis the Season!)  Sometimes a seam needs to be reworked, which is tricky because it often contains multiple layers of lining and boning.  Sometimes one just needs to add a small tuck or dart in the armpit area to reduce the problem.  Sometimes the dress needs to be returned to the manufacturer for a different size altogether.  Sometimes the owner of the garment just needs to be encouraged to cheer the heck up and not be so, well, Picky! Sometimes the seamstress has to remind herself that chugging adult beverages during working hours is NOT an option.  Neither is going outside to lie down in traffic.  Somehow we all survive the initial consultation and get on with our regularly scheduled programming.  They leave to pick at other things that bother them and I am left to take a razor to the offending bust-lines in peace.

There’s no doubt: bust lines are tricky! The problem with the way a sewing machine is laid out is that one finds it challenging to sew both sides of a dress bust from the same directions—i.e. top to bottom or bottom to top.  It’s easier to sew one from top to bottom, the other from bottom to top in order to orient all the excess fabric to the left of the machine.  Even when you do manage to sew both sides the same direction, the results are skewed because the fabric pieces are reversed—one is upside down from the other.  A Left is a mirror of a Right—which means reversed and backwards.  You can treat them both equally but not samely.

“’Samely’ isn’t even a word,” interrupts Prudence, picking.

“I know, but it expresses my point exactly,” I protest.

We humans have curves.  We are not even or symmetrical. We have inconvenient needs and tempers.  Things that exist in any sort of Wholeness possess a left, a right, a top, a bottom.  It’s sometimes difficult to get them synchronized, unified, harmonized.  “Equal” isn’t always “same.”  What is true for a country is true for the average bosom.  We make everything worse by picking and complaining.  

Prudence is always tempted to ask “Why did you buy this thing if it fits you so badly to start with? Do you think we have a magic wand? We perform tailoring, not major surgery!”  I try to rein her in.

Last week was the 7th year anniversary of this blog and all I can do is pick at it myself.  I am torpedo-boobing it.  It’s been a fun flop.  The fact is that I am boiled alive in angst and guilt over it on a weekly basis and it is breaking my heart.  I am trying to fit something that simply doesn’t fit me.  Seven years ago, I was so hopeful, nervous, and excited to try to “put myself out there” as a writer, with the idea that I would someday “BE” a writer.   The truth is, I AM a writer and I always have been, since I was nine years old and sending long tattling letters to my grandparents.  A writer writes. I write.  I always have and I always will.  It doesn’t have to get bigger or better than that.  Except that every now and then, a writer wants to get published.  The ego gets involved. 

“Why isn’t this working?” I wonder.  I am not a cook but people keep asking me to cook.  I am not a designer but people keep asking me to design.  I am a seamstress only as a last resort—to eke out survival using the hand skills I developed in more prosperous times—but there is a constant demand for my work. I am not a real farmer or a real musician but the folks in those worlds embrace me as one of their own.  Writers don’t.  Writers are among the most self-absorbed, insecure, and socially awkward people I know. (I would fit in beautifully!)  But no…    Because of this blog, I have gotten a lot of sewing work, absolutely NO writing work.  I have applied to get a masters in writing and been denied.  I have submitted articles for publication and been rejected.  Incessantly.   Three times I have paid hard-earned cash to editors whose comments have not enlightened me in any way. 

What I really want to do is WRITE.  When I mention this, I get told sweet reassurances by those attempting to be helpful “Don’t despair; nobody reads anymore…” in the same way that customers always tell me “No one carries cash anymore…” when they find out the credit card machine is not functioning.  What an impoverished nation we are when the average person does not have fifteen bucks in his pocket and “no one reads anymore”!  I am constantly told that “nobody sews anymore” too, but that’s beside the point.  There are plenty of us Menders out here doing the stuff that “nobody” does but needs to be done.  

And…..

My father is dying, my last dog died in December, my dear friend died last June and now it feels as though my dreams too are dying. I am immersed in intense mourning on many levels.  I am finding it impossible to sleep or play music.  I go to the shop daily and function as peacefully as I can to satisfy the demands of others.  There is no end to the need for Mending.  

My plan is to meet this pain head on and see what it has to teach me. I will plant a new garden (literally) and also literaturely, and spend as much time as I can outside, reading everything I can from the weather to my favorite poets. I will keep my thoughts to myself for a little while, and see which seeds grow strong enough to bloom.  For seven years, I have been watering a little plant that has refused to grow. Perhaps it was the wrong kind of seed.  Cilantro is not an oak.  How was I to know?

I do know that the right things have a way of finding us without us having to force ourselves upon them.  As the Scots say “What’s for us canny get past us.”  And I know that my best work has always come from alignment with and openness to the Spirit of Wonder, of Delight, of Amusement.   It’s hard to do that when one is grieving.  So I am going to free myself to be Sad, knowing that sometimes only by going into something can one get out of it.    I have met my agreement with myself to keep a blog for seven years and “see what happens.”  I remember thinking “surely I will be a published Author by then, or at least taller, thinner, and wryly wiser by then.” I couldn’t wait.   I had no idea then that I would leave the Enchanted Forest, buy fifteen acres of rock, bramble, and mud with the daily challenge of keeping livestock out of the house; start a business in which women pick at their boobs so much; or that we would all endure a global pandemic followed so much destructive political animosity, upheaval and economic despair.   My personal losses have been coming too swift and hard recently to be processed properly in the way I have been living.  I cannot do it all.  I will make space in the Faith that after this season of sorrow, a new season will arise.

I will meet you there, in that New Season.  This is merely a pause, Dear One, though of an unknown duration.  Sometimes the greatest thing we can mend is our own heart.  I’m not sure how long such a thing takes—it seems a messy business and there might be horrifying amounts of glitter or horsehair in there. Who knows? Thanks for reading (despite the fact that no one reads anymore!) and thanks for your Good Work.  I wish us all the Courage we crave to live truly from our hearts.

With more Love & Gratitude than you can imagine,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S. I miss you already!

IF

Geetings Dear Ones!

It may come as a surprise to no one but myself, but (despite my unusually high cat quotient) it seems as though I am well on my way to becoming a man.  “As if all those random beard hairs weren’t your first clue,” says Prudence.  Yep. It’s me—putting the “men” in Menopause. For the past several weeks I feel as though I have been living out Rudyard Kipling’s “IF” poem.  I’ve been meeting “with triumph and disaster” and trying to “treat those two imposters just the same.”  I’ve been “talking with crowds and attempting to keep my virtue, and walking with kings (and the likes of Hanneke Cassel and Natalie MacMaster!) and trying not to lose the common touch.” And there’s been plenty of “heart and nerve and sinew straining,” to say the least.  Anyone who has recently moved three hundred pounds of canned beans out of the cellar and into a snowbound truck will tell you that!

Most of the “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…” occurred last month in the kitchen at PDB—the Pure Dead Brilliant Fiddle Camp I attend each year in February. (“Pure Dead Brilliant” is Scottish for “Wicked Awesome” which is Boston for “pretty darn special.”)  The camp, which originated in my former home and is now at a large facility in central Massachusetts, is dedicated to the preservation and proliferation of Scottish music.  My excellent team of volunteers and I attempt to feed 180 hungry fiddlers three times a day.  This year’s dramas centered around uncooked meat and brand new ovens that no one realized had THREE buttons that needed to be pushed for actual heat to reach the interior.  It turns out that one is not able to slow cook sixty pounds of beef over night with nothing but the light and fan on.  We got to “start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss…”  Thank goodness for a flattop grill and some fast cutters!

Unbeknownst to me, while I was dancing and cooking and having all the joy and chaos that comes with searching for the misplaced coriander at a fiddle camp, a bride was waiting outside my shop door back in Vermont.  She had scheduled a fitting online and for some reason some gremlin glitch in my website let her do this, even though I had supposedly “blocked off” the time.  We got lunch served and then I discovered I had a pocket full of increasingly furious texts.  Triumph and disaster are flavors that must be blended carefully to make a nourishing broth for the soul. One doesn’t get what my grandmother used to call “a fat head” (big ego) when one realizes there is a side dish of “angry bride.”

After nearly twenty years of doing this camp—each year bigger and more overwhelming than the last—I am astonished to hear younger generations gushing things like “I want to be YOU when I grow up.”  It’s bizarre and seems to be happening more and more often as I age—which is odd because each year I grow grayer, more grizzled, more crabby and less of anyone’s ideal of beauty or competence. I want to scream at them, “Do you know that there is an angry bride haunting me??!!”  However, I think I know why…  Because after my lifelong journey of being On The Mend, angry brides not-with-standing, I genuinely enjoy being Myself and seeing what happens to me next.  I’m a better friend to this excitable, clumsy, hardworking, chatterbox, even though she often embarrasses me:  She frequently says the Wrong Thing, she definitely eats too much, she doesn’t drink enough water, and most days she has to lie down to put her jeans on.  I’m ok with all that.  I’ve been through a lot—I’ve heard the truth I’ve spoken “twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,” and I have “watched the things you gave your life to broken, and stooped to build ‘em up with worn out tools.”  I am proud of this strong, scrappy, askew little elf whose hair reeks of sautéing onions who still attempts to “fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run...”   Still, I look with wonder at these youthful beauties, with their long legs and long hair, playing like cherubim on their fiddles.  Why the hell would they want to be ME?? It boggles the mind.  Who wants to be a middle-aged feral woman with stumpy legs, sore feet, thinning hair, and too many cats, who cannot do vibrato? (To be clear, it is I who cannot do vibrato.  The cats manage it just fine.)  

Then it hits me. What these cherubs really want is permission to be themselves—to inhabit the full magnificence of being Who They Are and being loved for THAT. That’s what they seek.  They need their own version of “IF!”  Though I have spent the better part of my life living into the ethics of this poem which was first presented to me at a Catholic retreat in high school, and I am sure I will one day make a rather pleasant fellow (I shall wear nothing but tweed and carry a pocket watch), whether mine “is the earth and everything that’s in it” or not (fifteen acres of bramble-encrusted Vermont clay and granite is plenty!) I have always believed that “being a Man my son” is merely a metaphor. One does not have to have a directional urethra to live Authentically, Generously, and Magnificently.  That’s not the point of the poem.  This is not about a DEI hire. It’s merit based.  Everyone from tentative teenagers to feisty old crones may apply.

So!  Here’s what I have learned so far:

1.       There is no IF.

YOU, yes, YOU! You are lovable, worthy and enough.  Just as you are. Even on your worst day.  Your tribe needs you.  There’s a waiting list. You made the cut.  You made it here because you need to BE HERE.  So show up. BE here!

2.       Work hard.  Be more contributor than consumer. Look for ways you can help.  Working hard is actually fun, especially if you find others willing to work hard with you.  Teamwork is transformative.  Don’t think about what you can gain from it, just do it—let the Good Things that always come from participating surprise you. Find the nearest kitchen and get in there!

3.       Be Yourself inside and out. Wear what makes you feel the most like YOU.  For me, it’s sturdy boots, a grubby apron, and a hand-knitted cap to cover the fuzzy onion hair. For others it might be perfume and a cute dress.  Enticing people to look at you is not the same as letting people SEE who you are.

4.       Wherever you are, you are the host/hostess of your personal space.  Are you welcoming? Do you invite those near you to share in your laughter and lunch?  Or do you use your eyes like trowels to wedge the people you have turned to stone away from you? Be kind. It matters.

5.       Take time to Play—to delight the inner child within you who thinks it would be super fun to have a castle play house. Then build it.  Paint it in the middle of your home and make a jolly mess.  Be the kind of grown-up who manifests the magic your inner child has always dreamed of now that you have access to keys, a credit card, and a truck bed that can accommodate a full sheet of plywood. Have fun! Let the Dreamy side of you see what Isn’t but Could Be. Then, share your toys.  Invite others to play too.

6.       Take Responsibility. If you make a mess, clean it up as best you can. Be polite. Say I’m Sorry. Ask what is yours to fix. Then fix it. This is the key to guilt-free living and blessed relief from shame. (“This should actually be number one,” says Prudence, “as it actually does the most good.”) Accidents happen. Brides who have waited outside a locked door for half an hour and have to reschedule find it much easier to forgive you when you are honest and contrite.  (They even bring you cook books later!)

7.       Don’t take too much responsibility.  Some people are just plain mean and small and snotty.  The ones most in need of love are those who behave in the most unloveable ways. Let that go. If we choose to show up and serve the majority (whom it is a privilege to serve), we must choose to show up and serve the minority too (though my inner middle-schooler must resist the urge to poke them with sharp forks as they walk by.)  Choose to go on, despite your hurt, despite your angst, despite that undeserved cruelty none of us quite get over, not because they deserve your best but because YOU do.   Their shadows make your Shine all the more necessary.

IF… If you include those who look lonely; IF you feed those who are hungry, you will never be lonely or hungry. IF you do all things with Love, you will never be without Love. True Serenity and Security originate in Service. 

That’s what I have so far…

We will never be as good as some people think we are, and never as bad either. Sometimes I have to go home and cry and sleep and hug cattle and read to all the cats and binge watch British crime dramas in order to remember the “wo-Man” I know I can be.   This is the challenge of being On The Mend—to constantly re-ravel the unraveled parts of us as we snag our hearts on the world’s jagged edges.  If we don’t, we risk getting tangled up in all that ill-spun yarn and crashing…  So when Triumph and Disaster come staggering into view, Keep your head!  Pivot. Find something Kind or Pretty to make or celebrate and share. THIS is the work of real Men…ding.   

Keep Mending my Dear Ones! Keep showing up as you are and doing your bit. I’m so proud of the work you are doing.

I love you SEW MUCH!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Two Things...

Greetings Dear Ones!

A customer in my shop is worried about the economy and about the price of eggs and a whole host of worries about things that might threaten our dear community. She is too young to be this old and too old to be this scared.  In ever-widening spirals, eventually, her worries even include me.

“As a business owner in a tough economic climate, you must be scared too,” she frets.

I look around my shop and smile.

“Well, it’s hardly mentioned by the prominent business schools, but being a seamstress is a pretty sure bet in any economy.”

“Really?” she asks. “How so?”

“Well, by no means is it akin to winning the lottery, or any sort of get-rich-quick (or even slowly for that matter) scheme whatsoever.  But it is a truth universally acknowledged that people everywhere (and I mean those currently without access to red carpets and NOT married to Kanye West) do two things that are unique to any other form of mammal—the first is that they wear clothing.  When they are prospering, they buy new clothing that needs to be altered. When they are poor, they mend what they have.  In both cases, there is the opportunity for the enterprising seamstress to make a crumb.”

She nods, eyes like the dawn. “I wish I had paid attention when my aunt tried to teach me to sew,” she says wistfully.

“There are two sides to everything,” I say.  “When you are a true Sewscialist you see it all.  We ALL need to cover up our smooth or pimpled, bald or hairy hides—to protect ourselves and others from the climate…

“…and the fleshy sights that tempt one to sin—either by lust or manslaughter! Aghhh! Kill it! Kill it!” interrupts Prudence from nowhere, savagely poking at the dimpled saddlebags on my thighs. I silently kick her sideways and continue:

“Ever since Eve put apples on the menu, it has been ever thus.  Even in times of war, soldiers brought their tailors into battle to maintain their uniforms. In times of peace, we need ball gowns and business casual, and…

“those shapeless, sloppy pajamas beloved by Wall-mart shoppers the world over!” says Prudence scrambling to her feet and kicking me back.

“Oh God, don’t say War…” says the customer, shuddering. “Let’s hope it does not come to that!”  

“Indeed!” I sigh breezily. “I have battles enough right here on the home front.  I have three ski jackets that need zippers, two dresses for an upcoming wedding to shorten, and a carpenter just brought in five pairs of bombed out Carhartts that need their crotches rebuilt by Tuesday… I can’t go getting packed into the back of a mule train with a bunch of artillery at the moment.  I have far too much to do!”

I can see that this dear customer is still upset.

“Do you know what the other thing is that humans do that sets them apart from every other species?” I ask gently.

“Make fire?” she asks haltingly.

“Close. They tell stories,” I say. “We wear clothes and we tell stories. Nothing else does that—unless of course you happen to be a Pomeranian whose pet “mama” has inflicted a souvenir sweatshirt from Martha’s Vineyard on you and you had no choice.”

She smiles and rolls her eyes.

“Do you know how powerful stories are?  Stories have the ability to charm and change us.  Stories can delight or destroy. Stories can inspire or terrify.  When we hear a particular story, we must ask ‘why is this person telling me this?’ ‘What do I need to see, or learn, or do?’  In my shop, I listen to stories all day long.  I have no idea how to help anyone unless I first listen to her story and understand her motives.”

“I get it,” she nods. “Of course.”

“Every good story depends on Fear. Without a problem, there really isn’t a story; one’s plot options are slim. We need problems. We need the fear they cause to heighten the tension so that we are motivated to seek a solution quickly. But Fear is just a tool,” I remind her. “It’s the perfect tool to use against those who have real skills and might use them. Don’t fret unless you enjoy fretting.  In that case, fret to your heart’s content. Sometimes a good Fret is just the thing to get you through a long, cheerless night when you want an excuse to drink malt whisky or eat trifle straight out of the bowl with both hands.  But if you don’t like fretting, go on and tell yourself The Rest of the Story as you wish to live into it. Explore plot options! The True Story is not fully written yet. YOU get a hand in it. Get some skills. Practice something. Develop something. Mend something.  No matter what the state of the world, we will need Menders!  Menders never go out of fashion. The things you are afraid of are no threat to happy, skilled people who know they have the power to Mend.  You must believe that.”

My words seem to comfort her.

“You need to believe these things yourself, my Dear,” whispers my inner angel. “Practice what you preach!” 

After the customer turns to go, I survey the rack of things I must mend and sigh.  It’s crammed with stories.  There are new uniforms from the state and local police that need new badges and chevrons.  There is summer-weight clothing from a visiting nurse going on vacation.  There are four pairs of jeans, only two of which seem to have the desired measurements attached. (Are the other two to be done the same as the samples? Why the heck doesn’t ‘Past Nancy’ keep better notes?!) There are work and wedding clothes from butchers and bakers “and candle-stick makers!” shouts my inner storyteller.

She lies. We don’t have candle-stick makers.  We have people who “work remotely” for insurance offices in far off cities.  My inner storyteller wants them to be candle-stick makers so that they can be lumped in with the butcher and baker, who are in fact real—I will save their stories for another day.  (We do take care of several local potters, so maybe they make candlesticks.) And lastly, there is a hunting garment from a person who has written me multiple emails, with specific instructions, always signing off as “One who acknowledges that I trespass on the ancient tribal lands of the Abenaki.”

“Aren’t we all trespassing on ancient tribal lands?” asks my inner Worrier, “or is this person boasting about some specific impunity?”

“Um..Yes,” says my inner ancient tribal lands real estate agent, distractedly.

“Which?” asks my inner Worrier. “And what are we supposed to do about this?”

“Perhaps just acknowledge the acknowledgement and then do nothing, like everyone else,” says my inner Lawyer. “If you want to look virtuous, perhaps you too could incorporate it into all your future correspondence.”

I start to worry. I worry about genuine virtue versus virtue “signaling.” What does each require? I worry about what people will think if I try to look Good. I worry about what people will think if I don’t try to look Good.  I worry about who I am exploiting, right this very minute, without realizing it. I realize the inherent irony of this job, which is specifically to make people LOOK Good. “Does this actually include me?” I wonder. 

“It should,” says Prudence peering at my outfit and sniffing, “but obviously you don’t give a damn.”

And then, there is always The News..

My inner storyteller rubs her hands and gets to work, envisioning horrible things with horrific cliff-hanging plot twists.  Some of them are darkly funny. Most of them are just plain awful.  Soon, I am as wound up as that customer who just left.

You See? Fear is that ubiquitous and needed story ingredient that crops up in the most unlikely corners—even in a simple tailoring shop. It’s EVERYWHERE.  I pull my collar around so I can look at the tag and see where this shirt was made.

“Keep your shirt on and do your work,” says Prudence. “Tell your inner Storyteller to cork it.”

So I labor on—a mammal only half humaning (i.e. wearing pants but trying avoid stories.)

So it is for many of us Menders at the moment.  I’m not saying that the stories are not Real.  They are. (“ALL stories are real,” insists my inner storyteller.) I’m just saying that we need to treat them carefully. They have immense power—as dangerous as a steamer full of rusty water near a wedding gown: Brown stuff is gonna spew.

Remember who you are, you Dear, Magnificent Mender. Remember that a story in process can always get a better ending any time you want.  Remember that the Best Part of any story often comes after the worst. The Problem is just the best place to start.

Hang in there, Dear One. Keep doing your Good Work.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy

“She who acknowledges that she treads lightly and heavily on places where she probably shouldn’t go but goes anyway and has moo ca-ca on her shoes to prove it.”

Frozen

“Some people are worth melting for.” —Olaf, in Frozen

Greetings Dear Ones!

Whew! We’ve survived the last ten weeks—the darkest weeks in the Northern Hemisphere.  It feels like ten years.  The Lunar New Year starts today. (Happy New Year!)  Ancient Celtic Imbolc/St. Brigid’s Day is Saturday—midway between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  The Light is on its way!  In Ireland, they celebrate by having a public holiday—“a festival of renewal, fire, and fertility.”  (Prudence rolls her eyes and shudders.)  Here in America, especially in Punxsutawney Pennsylvania, people celebrate the cross quarter change of season by dressing warmly, listening to accordion bands and flugelhorns, and fortifying themselves with hot beverages while they await the prognostication of a well-fed rodent.

Here in Vermont, things look brighter already—in fact, they look a dazzling white.  It’s 23F degrees, which is practically toasty compared to some of the recent temperatures. The trees look like they had a pillow fight in the night.  Fresh feathered flakes flutter. Vermont is wearing one of her magnificent bridal gowns full of sparkles.  Someone made whipped cream in the overturned bowl of the sky.  Exhalations hang in the air like frosty promises.

I am fitting a pair of pants to a new customer.  She is a traveling nurse here from Florida.  “How do you like Vermont?” I ask.

“I LOVE Vermont,” she gushes, “It’s just the cold…brrr…. I can’t get used to it. It goes right to your bones.”

“Well, it’s NOT bikini season,” mutters Prudence, launching into her favorite mantra: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”

“Vermont wouldn’t be Vermont without the cold,” I say.  “I for one am extremely grateful for the cold right now.   My dear little dog died last month and since the ground was too hard to dig a grave to bury him, I put him in my deep freeze with last summer’s blueberry harvest to await a good spring thaw.  Only, I adopted a bunch of semi-feral cats who seem to have disturbed the electric wire to the plug and unplugged the freezer and the poor dog defrosted.  Just this morning, I had to run through my house with his soggy box, and get him outside and into the nearest snow bank as fast as I could.  Thankfully, he’s a good, solid pup-sicle again.”

I finish pinning her and look up at her face.  This customer is staring at me with wide eyes.  I cannot tell if she is delighted or horrified.

She shivers. “That….that… is SUCH a Vermont story,” is all she can say.

“Really?” I ask. “Are you telling me Floridians never use their larger household appliances as temporary pet morgues?  Ever? I would think it would be even more necessary to keep them cold in that heat—they would start to decompose so rapidly.”

She laughs. “I’m pretty sure you can bury a dog any day you want in Florida.”

“Hmmm,” I muse. “I had no idea.  I guess it makes sense if your ground never freezes.  Still, it’s not something they mention in the tourist brochures.”

“I’m telling you, that is a VERMONT story,” she says chuckling.  She has that happy look of a traveler in a foreign land who has just had an ethnic experience she was seeking.  Like a Scotsman eating haggis for his evening tea, I have unwittingly obliged the tourist.

I think about it for the rest of the day—how those who live in a place become shaped by its weather—not just physically but mentally and spiritually too.   I think about how many farmers here dig a large pit in the autumn in case any of their livestock don’t survive the winter.  (I take grim solace in the knowledge that your average Jack Russell can fit in a crisper drawer.)  I think about what a gift hard Winter is to Grief and how here, even the rituals surrounding death must be suspended and given time.  Grief and Winter go well together.  I like that some things get stripped to their bare essence, like trees and mountaintops, and other things get covered over, enveloped in soft layers of wool until they are unrecognizable, like sheep and people who have not stuck to their New Year’s resolutions.   I like that we know where to seek the nuggets of warmth—in a pocket, around a tea cup, in a smile.    I like treating the air vents in the truck like they are tiny campfires.  In the way that the darkness highlights any kind of light, the cold makes of us all seekers of heat.  

Being Frozen, “on ice,” is a form of delay, not denial.  But it gives us something precious—Time. Time to adjust to loss. Time to plan and be reverent.

“Just how reverent is it to run screaming through one’s house with a box dripping defrosted dog juices on the carpets?” asks Prudence snidely.  “He just needed one last shot at those carpets, didn’t he?”

“Hush, Prudence,” I say. “This little chap deserves a proper send off.  We’ll give him a grand wake and a proper burial.  He’ll get wrapped in a blanket and put to bed in the earth with his favorite food and a pillow of flowers.”

“Well, he’s emerged too soon and didn’t see a shadow,” says Prudence briskly. “As soon as you get that freezer cleaned out, back he goes.  It’s six more weeks of winter for him!”

In another “Vermont” kind of story, I love those tender frozen moments with the cattle when I put my cheek against their necks and they curl their heads around me like a hug. I reach up and put gloved hands into their cold, hairy ears and scratch gently.  We would not stand thus in sweaty, stinky, fly season.  We hold each other quietly, me within the circle of a coiled neck, until our individual inner warmths can reach and touch each other and we feel the exchange of heat.     It’s an amazing thing to have one’s skin register the heat of another animal as you each warm every barrier between you both.  It’s the bovine version of a cat on your lap.  (These two guys would be lap cattle if they could!)  They eat from a giant round bale of hay in a feeder in the field.  There is no reason for them to trot expectantly to the barn each evening at feeding time, except that they are reporting for hugs.  Hugs are a different kind of food for those who live in deep cold.

At this time of year, it can get very exciting to look at seed catalogues and to plan the garden (especially since you may recently have lost last year’s gleanings in a certain feline-related freezer incident).  As soon as it is 39F degrees, we will be out there in our t-shirts tilling and toiling and counting our chickens before they are hatched.  (Goodness knows we need to hatch a lot of chickens!)  We will get very busy very quickly.  There are dogs and seeds and grievances to bury.  There are vines to cut and trees to save and the annual milking of the Maple trees to do.

But it’s definitely not yet time to put away the woolens.  (Talk to me in July.) Winter asks us to harden off a little more. To Wait. To be still and shiver a little.   A bit of pruning is all we can do.  We can’t just bury our old dogs or problems any time we want.  Sometimes we need to sit with them until the ground beneath the apple tree is ready to receive them.  Sometimes, it’s good to sit with a frozen hurt until you are ready to move on. (Unless, of course, you discover it is leaking—then run for the nearest snowbank!)   I love that Nature dictates the pace.   Someday, there will be honeybees and apple blossoms and the velvet of the earth will be scraped back then and our worn out little Loves will find a permanent resting place.  We will turn then, and plant something New.

This is that hour before the dawn, where we curl our toes in anticipation of What Is To Come. But it’s not time to get up yet.  A minute longer, stay in that warm pocket of flannel.  You have time to lie still. Breathe… Wait… Listen….  Enjoy the cold that makes Life worth savoring.  It’s a Vermont Story.

Wishing all you Dear Menders, wherever you may be, clean freezers, cozy corners, and healing Rest from all your Good Work.  Don’t thaw out too soon!

With Sew Much Love,

Nancy 

P.S. Thanks to all of you who wrote last week inquiring if the customer ever got her pants. I haven’t called to check but knowing the dear people involved, I assume so. People here are so kind—yet another Vermont Story….

In Kind

In KIND: you react to something that someone has done to you by doing the same thing to them

In KINDNESS:  with steadfast love, faithfulness, loyalty, graciousness, goodness

 Greetings Dear Ones!

A woman comes into my shop to pick up a pair of pants I have altered for her.  She sees another pair I have just completed, hanging next to hers.  She reads the name.

“I know her!” she says brightly. “That’s my neighbor. I’ll pay for hers too and bring them to her.”

“Really?” I ask. “I haven’t even called her yet.  I just finished them.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll drop them off.” Briskly, she slaps enough cash on the table for both and then grabs them and leaves, humming a happy tune.

After she goes, I panic.

“What if they aren’t friends?” says a fearful voice in the back of my head. “What if they are arch enemies who lure slugs to each others’ lettuce patches in summertime?  What if they really ARE friends but she forgets to give them to her and then leaves town for a month and the other woman gets mad at you and says ‘how could you give someone my pants without checking with me?’ What if they really don’t know each other at all? What if she lied and just got a new pair of nice jeans for the price of a hem?”

“Who are you?” I ask the voice, “and why are you in my head?”

“I’m friends with your inner Insurance Agent who is friends with your inner Lawyer.  We are here to erode your belief in simple human Kindness.”

“Ugh! I thought so… You fellas are really crummy.”

“You can’t be too careful when you live in a litigious society where it’s not about the law, it’s about the lawsuit—where a single bad review will sink the ship of a small business owner,” they say smugly.

“You are really BAD guys posing as good guys. You are the thieves of Joy. We need Joy right now.  We need these random acts of kindness.   Kindness is a wonderful Mender.  Kindness is our key to survival.”

It’s that ice-smashing time of year where the constant battle with Nature to stop hell and buckets from freezing over leaves us feeling brutalized, exhausted, wary.  We are tired.  We need Kindness.  And Tea, and Soup, and warm things like smiles and sweet people who pay for well-fitting pants.  We don’t need internal lawyers flinging poo at our happy thoughts.

Kindness isn’t always easy. Twice a day, before and after working at my shop, I slam the buckets until they dislodge their frozen Frisbees then refill them.  I climb the ladder to the loft, toss hay to the hungry cattle below, and pay a visit to the two barn cats, who now have a feline shanty town of cardboard boxes, blanketed dens, and nests in a large hay fort where they can hide.  I’ve used up so many bales of hay to shield them I’ve had to purchase more hay rather than let the sheep eat a supporting wall.  I feel their ears and paws--even at these single-digit temperatures, the exothermic felines are warm.

“Could you please come live in the house?” I ask. “At least visit and see how toasty it is?”

“No,” they say. “We want to be right here.”  Putting an ungloved hand into an occupied box is an invitation to get it swatted with a lightly clawed paw.

“Don’t ask again,” hisses Miss Kitty.

Almost daily I marvel at the miracle that is homeostasis and how Life can thrive in such harsh conditions.  It makes me think that even I could survive another trip across the George Washington Bridge with nothing more than a pick-up truck, some fiddle sets on Spotify at volume 11, and some adult nappies or perhaps a large, empty yoghurt container with a trustworthy lid.

After visiting my dad again, I am astonished both at how fragile life is and also how incredibly resilient.  His brain is doing two things—rewiring the damaged circuitry to his left side (he can now move both his left arm and his left leg) and deciding that he is going to make pizza for Everyone.   His conversation is mostly grounded in reality until he takes an unexpected sideways turn into pepperoni nonsense, then finds his way back.   Is his brain going to rewire this too?  Is this what a brain-as-construction-site looks like?  Is the verbal rubble cause for concern? Or are we trading increased physical capacity for the loss of mental acuity?

As a girl who just survived an accidental trip over the George Washington Bridge, I shudder to think what the implications are for my own brain.  MY brain was happily chatting to my sister through the truck speaker phone (which I just learned how to use) and totally forgot that we were still on 91 South, instead of 84 West and didn’t realize we should have made a right turn somewhere near Hartford until our eyeballs started reporting signs that read “Bronx,” at which point the brain started to panic and the bladder sent a frantic message that there better be a rest stop soon or we were going to need to shampoo the seat later.  The next thing we know, we have a choice of “upper bridge” or lower bridge.  I don’t know which to choose.  I am lost in a Dr. Seuss-esque nightmare of coiled roads and tangled ramps into space.  I turn on my GPS and say “Jesus, take the wheel!”   Instantly, I remember my Catholic upbringing and feel guilty. I realize it  is wrong of me to bother The Big Guy with my petty problems (not while there are wild fires raging in California and hostage troubles in Gaza) so I implore some of Heaven’s lesser bureaucrats to assist—the guardian angels and patron saints assigned to deal with the likes of me.  With the help of St. Christopher & Co., I make it through the wasteland of train tracks, iron stumps, and telephone wires that is eastern NJ after nobody heeded the Lorax, until I arrive at a toll booth.

I slow the truck to a stop.  There is a haggard blonde woman hanging out of the open window, with her claws out.  I worry about how cold she must be but she is scowling the scowl of a cat in her cardboard box.

“Hello?” I venture hopefully.

 “Ticket?” she snaps.  How quaint, I muse, this is one of those old-fashioned booths that has an actual person in there, waiting to charge us for the miles we just drove.

“I don’t have a ticket,” I say apologetically.  “I never saw a place where I could collect one.”

“Are you KIDDING me?” she screams, going from surly to berserk in a nanosecond.  “You think you gonna drive these roads for FREE? Gimme a break!” She acts like I am robbing her at gunpoint.

The sparks in her fierce blue eyes ignite a burst of nervous laughter out of me.

“After a full thermos of tea and no restroom in sight, we’re lucky nothing else came out,” says Prudence.

Maybe it’s that I have the company of so many lesser saints on board—I have the sudden impulse to crawl out of my window and give this enraged woman a hug.  I don’t dare.

“Ma’am,” I say as soothingly as possible. “I’m sorry. I drove down from Vermont.  I missed my turn.  I’ve just been following the GPS. I never saw a toll booth.  In New England, most toll centers take a picture of your license and send you a bill.  I assumed that was the case here. We don’t get to meet toll booth operators like you anymore.”

“Well, since you ain’t got a ticket, you’re going to have to pay the whole damn fare! That’s $18.50 from the GW bridge until here.” She is livid, as if my money is her money and she needed it to buy eggs.

“I’m happy to pay it,” I say, unable to repress more nervous giggles.  This woman is so outraged, she is like a cartoon.  “Besides, I actually DID go over the George Washington Bridge.  There didn’t seem to be a choice. I probably owe the whole fare anyway.”

“I know what you did,” she says grudgingly. “You came over the upper bridge.  There’s no booth there.” She’s still upset but at least she understands.

I nod, handing her a twenty dollar bill.

“And I know Vermont,” she says authoritatively. She squints suddenly in an awkward attempt to unfold the WTF crease lines of her face into something like a smile. “I go up there all the time to ski.” We are practically kin, she is admitting.

“Well, I hope you come back soon. We like visitors,” I say.

As I pull away, and leave that ruffled soul in the middle of that wasteland of a landscape, I think self-righteously, ‘If you’ve been to Vermont, you know how KIND people behave.  You know you don’t just start screeching when someone makes a mistake.  And you know that we don’t charge you to drive on our public roads—roads with no billboards, no acres of bombed out scrap metal beside them… I hope you go back soon and fill your soul with beauty and I hope people are NICE to you! No one has filled up your Nice Tank in a while!’

In the rehab center, I notice how kindly my father treats all the staff helping him.  I mention it to him.

“It must be hard for you, Dad, to be in this situation.  Yet you are decent to everyone.  Everyone tells me that they enjoy taking care of you. I’m proud of you for that.” He shrugs.

His words are slurred as they pass through his drooping, half-paralyzed lips. “The world has an abundance of jack-ashes.  It doesn’t need another one.  I don’t like doing what I’m told any more than the next guy but I don’t want to cross the line where it makes someone’s job harder.  It’s not anyone’s fault. Every one of us is carrying something heavy. Every one of us is in a fight.”

I tell him about the toll booth operator.  He shakes his head.

“You’d think I was the very first and only idiot to accidentally leave the George Washington Bridge without a ticket,” I say.

“Wrong,” he corrects me. “You were the forty-seventh that hour.  When dealing with folk like that, never forget, you’re the lucky one.  Ask her what she wants on her pizza.”

Humbly, I realize he is right.

I get even more humbled when I forget the security code I must use to get out of his building.  This is a code one needs to open the door so that the residents who might wander out and get lost are protected.  I try a number of combinations, all of them wrong.  Finally, I track down a nursing supervisor who tells me the code. 

“It’s a square,” she says kindly, “3-9-7-1.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to keep me here?” I ask. She shakes her head and laughs.

“This happens all the time,” she says smiling.

Once in the parking area, I cannot locate the car.  It’s my dad’s.  I use it when I am there because a farm truck with an eight foot bed is hard to park in tight spots.  Dad’s car is small, grey, and looks exactly like every other car in the lot. (A reasonable person might think I would have remembered the license plate. But then, a reasonable person would need to be reminded that I am incapable of remembering a four-digit code that they gave me when I signed into the building an hour ago.)  I have to roam the asphalt hitting the unlock button on the key fob, whispering quietly “here car, car, car! Come out, come out wherever you are!”  Eventually, I locate a car that lets me use the key I have to drive it away.

I pull out of the lot onto a small road, lost in thought.  I drive, and drive, and drive.  It dawns on me that I have seen the sign for the “Skilled Nursing” facility multiple times now. I am on a ring road that circles the complex.  Like a turd in a toilet bowl, I am just going around and around, about to commence my fourth lap.  I begin to scream.

“THIS is how you wind up on things like the George Washington Bridge,” says Prudence smugly from the back seat of my head.  “You aren’t paying attention.  Maybe YOU are the one whose brain is broken. Maybe you need to go tell that nice lady who helped you with the code you need to live here now.”

Again and again, I realize how very Attached To Outcomes I am. I want to go Where I Want To Go but I keep winding up somewhere else. I think many of us do. 

The very core of Kindness is paying attention.  Traumatic relationships, no matter how fleeting or extended, are the ones in which people consistently deny, overlook, refuse to hear, or avoid each other’s truths. It’s hard to accept the truth of where people are, including ourselves—especially when we are blindly rushing to get somewhere else.  Here’s where we hit the weeds, or the upper level of a bridge, or a toll booth with no ticket. Kindness is a form of Witness.  The people in our lives are here to teach us and help us to evolve into the truth of who we are.  They are the mirrors we need as we Mend. We don’t get to change anyone else—hell, it’s virtually impossible to change ourselves or what happens to us.  But we can choose our response. We can choose to pick up each other’s pants.   We CAN choose Kindness. It matters.

We are worthy of what we want. (Kindness)

We are willing to do the work (to be Kind).

May it be so. 

Keep up your Good Mending, Dear Ones!

With Sew Much love,

Nancy

Dear 2025

Greetings Dear Ones!

Many of you have already embarked upon what I sincerely hope will be a Peace-filled, Prosperous, and Spendid New Year.  My intention is to be a better correspondent with you than I have been in recent months.  However, before I can write properly to you, Dear Fellow Menders, I must write to a few others first…

Dear 2025,

Honey, we need to talk.  I hope you can understand—it’s not You, it’s Me.  You haven’t done anything wrong.  I’m just not that into you.  I’m still in the throws of a bitter break up with 2024.  And while you seem totally great and not the type to give me 18 flat tires in the span of eight weeks like your predecessor, I’m just not ready to move on.  You look amazing and you are trying so hard, but I can’t bear the thought of a new relationship with a whole new year and all the hopes and dreams that come with it.  I need a break from heartbreak.  I don’t care if you are my new ticket to being richer, wiser, thinner, and able to play Strathspeys in the key of F.  I just don’t care. Come talk to me in March.  I might be ready for a New Year then.  I’m hanging a big “Do Not Disturb” sign on my Life until further notice.

I’ve had a few bad years but 2024 really did a number on me.  Gone are some BIG relationships that meant the world to me.  The shepherdess friend I talked to every day for many years is gone; my dog is dead; I’m now in an exasperating cycle of on-again-off-again toxic love with FIVE cats (honestly, if a man ever treated me like this, I’d call a hotline) who eat my food, love bomb me then ignore me, and act borderline violent if I seek affection. I’m not even convinced they are actually cats—they seem more like alien beings spying on me and reporting back to headquarters… Who knows what lies they are telling?

And WORST, worst of all, my dad—my True North for my entire life—is very, very sick. In fact, he too is “gone.”  He’s been replaced by an adorable creature wearing his half-paralyzed body, who languishes in a hospital bed and chats about how we need to “share our bagels with Everyone.”  

“Hey Nance, how many people are there?” he asks.

“Where, Dad?”

“Here… Uh, what is this place?”

“It’s a hospital, Dad.  You are in the ICU with the flu that you caught at the rehab place after your stroke.” He is on oxygen, in mild heart and kidney failure, hooked up to a lot of machines that go “bip.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well, go count all the people.  We need a count.  We need to know how many bagels we need. We can’t be in here eating bagels all by ourselves when other people don’t have any bagels.  Ask them what kind of cream cheese they prefer.”

We have no such bagels but I step into the hall, smile silently at the three nurses at their station, and go to the bathroom to cry. Last week, it was pizza.  The week before it was sausage gravy.  He’s totally lucid, cheerful, unfailingly grateful and pleasant, except for the fact that every evening he gets obsessed with feeding people some random form of carbohydrate. He had seven falls out of his wheelchair at the rehab place. Did he injure his brain? Is this the stroke? The psyche’s self-defense in the form of dementia? Or just another form of cruelty dished out by a vengeful 2024?

My son comes to visit him.

“Grandpa, remember when you were my age? Do you have any life advice to give me?” he asks. Without skipping a beat, my dad answers:

“Yeah!  Do good stuff. Don’t do bad stuff. You know the difference. It’s as simple as that,” he says. “Do Good Stuff.”  His clarity and brevity are breathtaking.   This is a man who has lived by these motives (and the deep need to feed everyone) his whole life.

I know, dear 2025, that you will give us all plenty of opportunities to do Good Stuff, and maybe we’ll even get some decent bagels out of the deal.  I thank you for that. However, it’s deep Mid-Winter in Vermont.  Our nighttime temperatures are in the teens and single digits some nights.  Snow flurries flutter like parmesan cheese on imaginary pizzas between me and the trees.  Each day, I smash another night’s worth of ice from the buckets so that thirsty animals can drink.  This just feels like Stuff—neither good or bad—that numb creatures must do to survive. Our world is waiting room Grey.  It doesn’t feel right to start anything New, while things are still Unfinished. 

We are in survival mode, Hunkering.   I pour the tea carefully, allowing the water from the spout to be just the thinness of a finger stroking the emptiness of the cup, filling splashlessly.  I wait for the toast, roasting my hands above the toaster like pale marshmallows over a campfire.  Nourishment is simple.  I feed only myself, hungering in Silence for heat as much as bread.

Dear 2025, I feel like one of my adopted cats—I need you but I cannot come near you yet.  I want my old things, my old place in a world I used to understand.  You need to earn my trust. If you really mean to give me the Good Things you promise, your first gift will be Understanding.

Thank you,

Nancy

Dear 2024,

Are you Freakin’ KIDDING me???? What the hell was THAT? Thanks for being one of the worst years of my life.  I thought I was going to write a book, run another half marathon, train some oxen, grow a garden whose produce I actually harvested and shared. (It rotted.)  I thought I would play more music, learn new tunes, perhaps go dancing.  I thought I would lie on my back under the summer sky and witness the magic of a meteor shower (thanks for the clouds, you malevolent miscreant!).

I dangled you on my knee as a sweet baby New Year with so much hope and joy.  The first day involved a big jam session with a bunch of lively musicians crowding around the dining room table.  There was enough local cheese, craft beer, and tunes for everyone.  A little dog scrounged under the table for crumbs.  We couldn’t wait to see what the New Year would bring…

The Chinese were right: you turned out to be a Dragon.  By April, every time you burped or farted, you set fire to another village.  

Nan hit her downward spiral right in the middle of Prom season.  Abandoned by her family, her friends did their best to care for her and grant her wish to die at home.  We tried.  We fed her cats; we sheared her sheep; we watered her plants and did her chores.  We brought her money, food, adaptive clothing—whatever comfort we could.  But there was all the chaos of nocturnal raccoons in her kitchen and toilets backing up and cars not starting and people not being able to stay with her.  It was a mess.

Summer was filled with trips to her farm to doctor the sheep and prepare them for sale, and the overriding anxiety of finding good homes for all her animals.  Her friends got to see the enormous Good in one another but at the expense of tragic loss and chaos that was beyond comical at times.

Fall was no better. Was it really necessary to abuse the poor dear Hermit of Hermit Hollow like you did?  In one month alone (September) as soon as his hand injury healed, down came the wood on his foot and caused a bone injury that continues to take months to heal. Then you capped it off by totaling his car in the grocery store parking lot at 0 miles an hour. (It doesn’t help that most cars are made of plastic these days and that pick-up truck drivers don’t look where they are going.) How could you treat this Dear man in such an appalling manner? Especially when you knew he was headed for heart surgery in November!

Speaking of cars, this year was not the year I wanted to learn that tires won’t hold air pressure when elder wheels have corrosion on their rims.  I guess the gift of this experience is that forever more, when I don’t have to put air in a tire just to drive the vehicle, I shall offer up prayers of Gratitude to St. Christopher, the patron saint of travel and middle-aged women who kick tires with unnecessary fury.

So, 2024, as the teachers we are, Prudence and I have decided you deserve a Very Bad report card.  We’d flunk you completely but we don’t want you to repeat the year! We have had quite enough of your shenanigans.  We want to send you along, hoping at least WE have learned enough.

We have learned to Surrender to burnout after choking on our own fumes of exhaustion (and bean burritos). We have learned to ask for help and patience and understanding from those unaware of our plight.  We have learned the dangers of growing numb to beauty and of hours wasted doom-scrolling during political frenzies whipped up by the media.  We have learned to enjoy the banquet of emotions that an honest experience of Life provides.  Holding space for grief and honoring its needs brings a Grace and Peace that cannot be found in eating, drinking, shopping, working, or binge knitting. (Ok, knitting really does help a little!)

Over and over again, we have had to make a new friendship with Time and to seek the courage we need to change our lives, change ourselves, change the way the Future must be re-imagined. It’s sad and savage work.  It takes a lot of Mending and Amending.   Amending the soil often involves putting a lot of shit in it and stirring it around.  From that enriched soul will one day come the nourishment we need.

I guess, 2024, I can thank you for that.

With a pissy sort of gratitude,

Yours aye (defiantly so),

Nancy

A Pint of Silence

Greetings Dear Ones!

This might be a long one…It’s been a minute since I have had the band width to sit and write and metabolize a little of the banquet of absurdity that is my precious life here in southern Vermont. A series of unfortunate events—which taken individually seem unfortunate indeed but taken collectively border on the ridiculous—has made my inner efficiency manager extremely thirsty for adult beverages.  The inner fitness guru tells us to get on the treadmill and run, do yoga, eat broccoli, sleep well, (not all of those on the treadmill!) but everyone else in my head says “nah… let’s flop into a pile, binge watch every season of the British version of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and eat rubbish instead.” Internal benevolent dictatorship has succumbed to mob rule.  Prudence has taken to collapsing on her fainting couch and calling for laudanum all hours of the day and night.

It’s gone something like this:

 Each week, a Cosmic Waitress appears and announces that all we have on offer today are mandatory dried shite sandwiches on moldy bread. “Can I have soup instead?” I ask.

“The soup is shite too,” she says, “just warmed up and in liquid form.” 

“I would like something like a summer’s day on a gluten free bun with a side of sweet corn,” I say politely.

“Tough luck,” she says, “All we have left of Summer is the bug bites.”

“I don’t like the crap you are serving me,” I whine. “I’m not hungry.”

“Life is a banquet. You have to eat and this is all there is…” she huffs impatiently as ash from the cigarette clamped between her greasy lips falls onto the plate she hands me.  “But you DO get to choose your sides…. So what’ll it be?”

I survey the menu.  There are two columns—Gritches and Gratitudes.

“I’ll take the Gritches,” I say grumpily.  The gritches turn out to be This is NOT fair, I don’t deserve this, We should have…, Why didn’t somebody else… 

Talk about a lousy meal! Whew!  Gritches are so bitter—it’s incredibly hard to swallow a fully ripe resentment.  I find myself chewing and chewing and chewing…  and the heartburn and gas afterwards…yuck.

I’m making an effort to order the Gratitudes.  Those meals go down much better.  Some of them taste, if not good, at least nourishing in some way.  The rancid umami of a dried shite sandwich is balanced out by sincere appreciation for a saucy bunch of flowers or the piquancy of a melody played in tune.  Any Kindness is like sugar. Luckily, the Gratitude section of the menu is endless.  On particularly tough days, I remind myself of the joys of being able to sit, walk, or stand unassisted and to use the litter box all by myself and to wipe my own bum.  That’s a gratitude that some of us forget about but it’s a pretty big deal to those who can’t.   My dear heart beats without the need of wires or pills.  I am blest.  My lungs breathe without the need of canisters or tubes.  Yippee!  The shite sandwiches seem quite tasty after gravy like that.

It’s not just me gulping and choking—those I love dearly have been struggling lately, and that struggle ripples through our whole network of kinship and community.  Having Bad Things happen makes it harder to do Good things and Fun things and Just Because things that make life so sweet, savory, and yummy otherwise.  Luckily, my animals need feeding every day too and it gives me the chance to sit quietly and wait for a cat to find my lap while I observe the herd munching their hay. There is nothing like the peace that infuses the barn shortly after feeding time, as all the residents settle into a deeply contented chewing groove.  They never actually say Grace before their meals but the Grace is all around them. They are always grateful. (I’m pretty sure that’s how hay manages to taste so good to them.)

“Tell us a Good Story, a Happy story,” say the lambs as they munch. “We need to forget about how Muffin tied her head to her back foot with a stray scrap of baling twine and walked in circles for half a day.”

“Alright!” I agree cheerfully. “It just so happens that the most amazing story came true today!”

“What happened?” they want to know, gathering around for scratches and corn chips.

“Once upon a time, in 1995, there was a band of musicians who played at a place called The John Harvard Brew House in Cambridge Massachusetts.  They played there every Monday night for a few years. They always invited any person who came into the pub alone to sit up at the table in the front with all the friends they had not met yet. The band leader called it the Misfits table and everyone loved it. In fact, two weddings resulted from people meeting at the Misfits table.  One night, the band noticed a young man sitting alone.  His dark eyes were like thunderstorms.  The band leader invited him to join the misfits table but he did not respond.  He just continued his intense staring.  During the break, the bodhran player approached the stranger and realized he did not speak English. This was why he had not understood the invitation. She asked him if he was enjoying the music. He nodded darkly and said “Goot. Very Goot. Record? Record?” She said no, they did not have any recordings. He said again “Record? Record?” she said “Yes, you can record us, of course!” The next week, he was back:  Same intense man, same intense staring at the music.  “Record? Record?” He presented her with two blank tapes.  “Yes,” she said. “Did you bring a tape recorder?”

“Excuse me,” interrupts a lamb, “but what is a tape recorder?”

“A tape recorder was a device that could take sounds out of the air and put them on little magnetic tapes so that we could hear them again later.  The tape wound itself in little reels inside a plastic rectangle.”

“Did the young man have one?” asks another lamb.

“No.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, the bodhran player told him that she would bring her own recording device the following week and record the band then and give him the tape. But the man looked very sad.  “I go home before next week,” he said.  “Where are you staying?” she asked. “I will make you some tapes and bring them to you before you go.” “That will be Goot,” he said. “Very Goot.”  

She went home and made four tapes for him of tunes and songs and sessions and anything she had of Celtic music that she thought he might enjoy. Then she drove to where he was staying in Cambridge, left the car double parked, with the hazard lights flashing, and dashed up the stairs to the little flat on the scrap of paper he had written for her.  She remembers it like yesterday.  She went home and wrote it all down.”

“Wait, are YOU the bodhran player?” the lambs ask.

“Yes.”

“Can you read us what you wrote?”

“Sure.” I fetch my 1995 journal from the suitcase of old writings I keep in the attic.  The sheep nibble the edges as if it is food. For me, it is…

When I arrived, I found the table laden with cakes (the sister had baked all day) and the tea boiling. The flat was tiny—sparsely furnished, no carpets on the hospital tile floor. The mother and father were there too. They had lived there for three or four years with the daughter but now the father was dying of cancer and the son had come to fetch him home to die in the company of his childhood friends and relatives in Armenia—among those left after most had fled the terrors of war. The mother had fallen on an icy walk last week and shattered her shoulder.  Her arm was in a sling. Both parents were in a great deal of pain but warmly hospitable and spoke very good English. They told me how their son had returned from the pub all three Mondays and written poetry—some in Russian, some in Armenian, until the wee hours of the morning—twelve ballads in all. He read one to me in Russian—the cadence tripping like a jig. Another was like a reel. I could hear “Tammy’s Tarbukas” in the back of my head as he read. He seemed much happier and relaxed than he had at the pub, showing me photos of his four year old son. His wife is expecting his second child now. His parents have never met their grandson so all are looking forward to going home.

I was stunned by the peace I felt in the room. The old man was dying and everybody knew it. Tonight, the daughter will hug her father for the very last time on earth. She will stay here working and sending money home to support her family. Without her, says her brother, they could not survive.  He only makes ten dollars a month as an art teacher. The parents will live with him, his wife, a new infant, and a young child and he will try to care for all of them in a place with no electricity, no gas for heat, and only sporadic phone connection. Even the mail does not get through sometimes. I cannot send packages to them.

He said seriously, “In Armenia, Art is everything. Food is very expensive so we have theatre, art, dance instead. Tickets are so cheap that people go to see art of all kinds all the time.  It keeps them alive. You cannot have art without hardship and you cannot have hardship without art. In such times, Spirituality, Fantasy, these are the only real worlds there are.”

Part of me believes he is right. I am profoundly changed by this brief meeting with a man so filled with grace though we only spoke, with the help of his sister’s translations, for a little over an hour. All day today, I feel as if I am in a dream. My dreams were vivid through the night—I dreamt I went back to their empty flat and filled a sterile white refrigerator with silver grey metallic fruit, the color of the tapes. If only Music were enough to live on… He seems to believe it is. He listened like no other person I have ever witnessed before. Tonight, he will be on wings back to his broken homeland and I will be bashing out the same endless, mystical, ancient tunes that have helped generations survive for ages. May they rise like prayers and fill his heart in the dark sky where he flies…

As for me, I am having fiddle for lunch followed by a long drink of Silence.

“I understand how you could eat a fiddle,” says a Fawn, “though I doubt it would taste as good as a corn chip. But how can you drink Silence? I like water much better.”

“Yes!” says Flora, “except for when Fergus and Festus poop in it!” Sheep are relentlessly practical when they aren’t panicking.

“How about your car? You didn’t leave it double parked for an hour, did you?” worried Prim.

“No, I moved the car when I saw the tea kettle,” I said.

“Anyway,” says Fergus, shoving Flora playfully, “I thought you said this was going to be a Happy story.  We must be in the middle because it isn’t happy yet. So far, it sounds pretty sad.”

“Yes, right!”  I continue. “This week, I got a notification from the agency that books me to do educational performances in schools that a person from Armenia had found them online and was looking to contact me!”

“Was it him?” asks Fern.

“Indeed it was! After thirty years, he found me again!  So I visited him at his sister’s house and hugged his mother, who is eighty-six now.  His second son was born the very same day his father died.  The family listened to those silver tapes for years. That second son grew up with those melodies in his ears and they worked their way into his heart and all the way back out to his fingertips again. He plays fiddle, guitar, whistle, bodhran. He grew up to be a professional musician who plays Celtic music in a band he created and he leads a wonderful choir of young people who sing folk music from Armenia and around the world. He has founded a Celtic music festival in the capitol city of Yerevan that happens every year on October 31st. Can you imagine? 

And guess what, my little sheeps!  I gave his mother one of your shawls!  I took your wool, spun it, dyed it, knitted it, and changed it forever into Art.  And now his mother’s aching shoulders are wrapped up in all that Love and warmth.  You have no idea when a Shepherd comes in and knocks you over so that you give just a little of yourself how much might be made of it by someone else.  With simple, tiny kindness, we change the world.”

“That is the BEST story we have heard in a long time,” said the lambs.

Wishing you sew much love, my Dear Ones! How we love, how we give, how we grieve—this is how we reveal  who we truly are. Keep nourishing our world with the Good and tiny fruits of your labor.  No small act of generosity is insignificant.

Yours aye,

Nancy

Little Miss Sky Eyes

Greetings Dear Ones!

If things were going to plan, I’d be at the vet’s right now, dealing with one of my little feline friends who needs to have a cancerous eye removed—a gruesome task for such a beautiful day.  But Fate smiled on the little guy, as he exploded out of the carrying crate, jumped out the nearest open window, flashed four middle claws at me, and disappeared. (I’m still struggling with the grammar on this one—does it read like Fate jumped out the window? Or the cat? It feels like both.) So here I am, plans and carrier in tatters, boundaries escaped, stewing in a brew of frustration and guilty relief.  For a while longer it seems, we all still have our eyes to see this precious golden day.  I’m not sad about that.

There is nothing quite like Vermont in October.  (If one is going to lose some vision, perhaps November would be better—though indeed not if one is voting!)(Please Vote!)

Last Sunday, I took a rare day off from the grim drudgery of slip-covering brides during Wedding Season and went with a friend to the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival in Tunbridge for what we giggled was “a play date.” We feasted our eyes on colors, textures, and fibrous beauty of every description. With over thirty fleeces yet to process from this year’s shearing, I promised myself I was just going “to look.” The drive over Putney Mountain to her house at 6:30 am was like a movie scene: Dawn hit each hill and leaf like a novice lighting director playing with the set before the show.  Heavy mist lifted like curtains as the spotlight shone in random directions on the road twisting like a river through the valleys.  I saw the Sunday papers at the bottom of driveways getting gently covered by falling leaves before sleepy coffee sippers came to fetch them. What if they could not find yesterday’s news before today’s glory covered it completely?

All the towns we passed were nestled in the folds of an enormous quilt of Autumn colors.  There were frequent white churches with iconic steeples stabbing at blue from green commons.  Farmhouses bordered the squares and high on the calico hills, large, empty barns looked down on us with an air of historic holiness to them, like ruined cow-thedrals echoing the simple hymns of life long ago.  Cotton candy clouds spun of maple syrup stuck haphazardly on the satin skirts of the sky.  We emerged from the car in Tunbridge—Artists free to touch and taste and roam within the Painting.

We went from vendor to vendor admiring Gorgeous Ingenuity and Patience plied with Talent. (I bought bottles of homemade hot sauce and an etching of oxen pulling a stone boat but no yarn or wool, thankfully!) In the Unhurried rush that is a festival, Time was piled up all around us—hours of birthing, feeding, cleaning, shearing, scouring, sorting, spinning, felting, plying, knitting, weaving, collecting, deciding… Most folks sold their time for pennies on the dollar.  I think every creative person must.  (Socks with a nine thousand dollar price tag don’t sell that fast.)  And most creative people are Givers who struggle to receive because they do not understand the value of a skill that comes naturally to them.

Everywhere I looked, I saw HER again—Little Miss Sky Eyes.

I met Little Miss Sky Eyes at a Scottish Festival here in Vermont in August.  I was demonstrating spinning wool on a variety of spinning wheels and showing off some of my dear sheep in a small pen next to me.  The dance competition stage was our nearest neighbor so many dancers came to pet the sheep and hear stories.  One of them stayed and got to spin her very own book mark using one of my “cranky spindles.”  It’s a tool I made from a coat hanger and a turned baluster from a stairway. The wire is bent into a hook at one end and a handle at the other that passes through a hole I drilled in the baluster. It’s not a traditional way to spin but it is a very user-friendly way to help unlearned hands experience quick success at spinning. It eliminates the months of “potty mouth” that one must use if one is actually going to acquire this skill for real.  This girl spun a long thread with ease and squealed with delight as I took it off the hook, pinched the yarn in the center and then watched it ply itself into a twist with a sudden, magical twitch. She looked up at me in wonder—with huge blue eyes that exactly matched the color of the sky all around her tightly coifed bun.

“Can I do this again?” she asked. Light was streaming from her being.

“Of course!” I replied, handing over more wool.

After she had made a second one, she said “I finally found the thing that I am good at!”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Eight,” came the distracted reply.  She was reaching for more wool.

“I think you are going to be good at many things in time.  Eight is very early to be good at something already. These things take time. Eight is the perfect time for learning something new.”

“Can I make as many as I want?” she wanted to know.

After she made her third piece of yarn, she decided to tie them in a knot and make a bracelet.

“I’m going to need a lot more wool,” she announced. “These bracelets are so good. I need to make one for all of my friends.”

She set to work building bracelets behind me in the back ground as I told my stories and taught people how to spin.  By mid afternoon, she was an expert. A half hour later, she was taking charge of my show. When a crowd would disperse, she would go out and drum up business.

It was hot. I was tired. I was losing touch with my connection to the sense of enormous Privilege it is to Share. Every time I wanted to slump in a chair during a lull, or trudge to the water closet, or spin my own wool in silence, there was Little Miss Sky Eyes darting through crowds piping “Who wants to learn about spinning? Who wants to make a bracelet?”  She ran at the herds of families with children with the energy of a young Border Collie, directing them to my tent. She was spinning up bracelets and telling me I should sell them and split the money with her. She was lecturing grownups about the history of Shetland Sheep in America. She went off briefly now and then and won five participatory medals in the dance competitions yet I hardly knew she was gone. She was always back in a minute with more friends who needed bracelets.  She kept the crowds crowding us all day.

“Don’t you think you should check in with your parents?” I selfishly asked this dear little pest more than once. “They might be missing you!”

“Oh no,” she answered quickly, grinning. “I told them I would be here all day.  It’s the only part of the festival I want to see.  I also told them that when I am old like you I am going to have my own sheep and a real spinning wheel.”

I never met this girl’s parents.  I have no idea who was in charge of her.  I don’t remember her name. I only remember her eyes and the way I felt when I looked into them—like I was lost in a wild blue heat of earnest innocence.  It struck me how she knew already how to justify her joy by means of suave generosity. 

 “I want to be so good at this, I get to do it all the time, like you” she said sweetly. She has no idea that that’s exactly what I want for myself too!  We all want to get so good at something we love that people will pay us to do it for them.

Old… Like me…

She IS me.

And if you are any kind of craftsman, writer, artist, musician, builder, mender, healer, Giver—she is YOU too.  Do you remember that joy of discovering a new skill that would come to define you? The endless energy and hunger that come with fresh Approval? How even that cannot compare to the intrinsic pleasure of doing the thing itself, with no thought of product placement? The heavy relief of realizing you have something of value to give?

Towards the end of the day, Little Miss Sky Eyes slumped down next to the sheep, her arm through the fence resting on the back of a tired lamb.  She looked a little sad.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, offering her a scone.

“My friends don’t want any more bracelets. They say they have enough.”

“How wonderful!” I said. “You’ve saturated the market. Excellent. Now you must make the best one of all for yourself.”

She looked at her bare arms and shrugged.

Together, we spun another long thread. I let her use colors I hadn’t given her before. She wrapped it around the neck of her toy stuffed animal and smiled.

“Can I make another one for my mom?”  

At Tunbridge, I surveyed a field filled with tents within the circle of velvet hills. Each white square housed creative spirits with eyes of sunlight, wanting to be part of the Transformation that true Beauty requires. We know the labor that Love demands. We have learned that progress requires participation and prizes cannot replace the blessing of Community.  At such festivals, we seek each other as teachers, siblings, students, playmates, and pals to nurture and inspire and solace our inner Little Miss Sky Eyes.  

Don’t forget to make something beautiful just for you, Dear One!

With SEW MUCH LOVE for all your Good Work,

Yours Aye,

Little Miss Nancy

Here, Kitty Kitty!

Cat: “A small, domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractable claws widely kept as a pet.”

Lady: “a woman of superior social position, especially one of noble birth.”

Cat Lady: “an archetype of a haggard, mentally unstable, willfully isolated eccentric older woman who lives alone with a large number of cats” 

Greetings Dear Ones!

Ever since I heard that “our country is being run by a bunch of childless cat ladies” everything makes sense to me.  One thing’s for sure—it’s not being run by semi-feral women who live at the edge of the woods with a pack of Jack Russells. Or chickens. Or sheep. Or oxen… You never hear about Ox-ladies running for office or taking their goads and making the local school board tow the line.  This is where I seem to have gone wrong. Who knew? For years, despite all the hair on my couch and clothing, and my mentally unstable and haggard demeanor, no matter how many critters felt at liberty to dine off my kitchen counters without permission, it doesn’t count towards my personal power if I am not also forced to sift little poopies out of a box of sand in the corner on a daily basis.  That seems to be the basic difference between a cat and a Jack Russel:  A cat will poop consistently in a little box of grit, whereas a Jack Russell prefers to defecate on antique oriental carpets all over the house. (A pile of clean towels will do in a pinch.)  Jack Russells are basically just incontinent cats who bark and hunt tennis balls. Both will stare into your eyes with utter devotion and then proceed to do whatever the hell they want, regardless of your feelings.  They are the ultimate in addictive/toxic love relationships.

Don’t get me wrong—I like cats. I like all animals.  But I have never been “a cat person,” never mind a “Cat Lady.”

“Who says you are ANY kind of Lady?” asks Prudence loudly. looking at my disheveled state.

Lady or not, I have always had “dogs.”

“We are NOT dogs,” insists Nigel from his basket by the window. “We are canine ninjas in fur pajamas, thugs in clown suits, light-pawed secret service men with keeping an eye on your every move who like to steal butter.”

“I love dogs,” I say, “and whatever else it is you think you are, you adorable little despot.”

I’ve always been a dog person. Cats are the one domesticated animal species with which I have never really bonded. This is not so much by choice as by consequence.  I was married for twenty years to a man who was allergic to them.  My son has asthma. Growing up, my sisters had allergies that meant the barn cats had to live, well, in the barn.  One sister would carry them around in her coat while she did chores and they adored her but none of them were allowed in the house. (We let my sister in occasionally.) I was more into the rabbits and the goats. I carried a rabbit around in my coat while I did chores. (A goat wouldn’t fit.) I would tie a string of baling twine around the middle of my jacket so that the rabbit would not fall out as I worked.

This summer, when I found out that it is actually the Cat Ladies who are ruling the world, I did what any normal, insane, power-hungry, middle-aged menopausal woman who lives in squalor would do. I adopted FIVE of them. Yep! That’s right. The Crazy Cat Lady Starter Pack. It comes with five adult cats ranging in size from 13 pounds to 17 pounds.  They have fleas, they have worms, and they each have a completely unique set of neuroses.  One even has eye cancer and needs to have an eye removed as soon as I manage to catch him again.  The entire pod once belonged to my deceased friend N. who passed away in June. We were unable to locate the ideal homes for them where they would be able to continue an indoor/outdoor existence far enough away from their original farm so they wouldn’t try to go back.  They have been competing with raccoons for their lunch and untouched by human contact for months. A wonderful person fed them and checked on them regularly but they were getting feral. Eventually, he trapped them one by one, took them to the vet (at his own expense), got them vaccinated, and enlisted friends to drive them 80 miles each way. It took five trips. (I’ve been getting a cat a week for five weeks now.)

I’ve needed a lot of help.  Not being a cat person, I have a lot of questions.  “What does it mean when they drool and smear that drool all over you? Are they sick? Did the rabies vaccine backfire?”

“Oh, that’s LOVE!” they say. “They are love bombing you.”

“What does it mean when they present you with a dead mouse?”

“Oh! How Sweet! It’s a Love Offering!”

“How about when they are purring like mad and then suddenly slash you with a claw?”

“They are just overwhelmed by their emotions.”

“What does it mean when they nibble the length of your arm like it was a corncob?”

“Love! Love! Love!! You are so lucky! They love you!”

So….

Let’s just admit it. Cat love is Gross.  This notion of “love” feels like I am being gaslit by my cat-lady colleagues.  At least when one picks up a dog turd in the shape of a canine middle finger, left in the middle of the living room for all to see (where he is not allowed), the communication is Quite Clear.  With dogs, things mean what I think they mean.  Not so with cats.

It’s taking me a minute to realize that sometimes Love is Gross. True Devotion is juicy, bloody, Nasty—a whole lot of work for a discarded mouse gizzard on your kitchen floor.  (Um… YUCK! No thank you!) It also takes a lot of patience to get them to be this “nice” to me.  

Let’s pause and talk about the shop.  Have I told you lately how much I love my customers?  They are amazing people.  It is a privilege to meet so many incredible members of the community who do things much, MUCH harder to help humanity than spending six hours removing three yards of lace from the hem of a wedding gown.  One is the mother of an infant amputee. One is a family services worker with a caseload that has her weeping in court when she has to testify about the conditions a child must endure. Some are veterans, some police officers, some nurses, some counselors, some advocates, some doctors, some mental health specialists…  I am so nourished by our interactions and discussions. I am in awe of the intelligence, skill, and training they have.  But what impresses me more are their hearts—their willingness to get really Dirty and roughed up by the love they bring to their vocations.  

At home, I crouch on the floor, extending a hand into a dark corner, singing softly to a creature who fears me, and hear the words of one customer who recently was called out to restore order in a group home with a person suffering a mental health crisis.

“You cannot teach trust,” he tells me. “There is nothing to explain to someone in crisis; only DOING counts. Caring for others is not the same as parenting. Too many people think they can parent another person. We can’t discuss whether someone’s needs are reasonable or not. A lot of our people are the way they are because their needs were never met.  The only way we can invite trust is to be trustworthy—to see the need and meet it.  We can’t judge the needs, just meet them. People whose needs have never been met are very fragile, sometimes dangerous.”

This is so true with the cats.  I meet their needs for food, for shelter, for security and peace.  I sit and read to them.  One by one, they come to rub and drool and murder for me in gratitude. (I hope they get the mouse that made a nest in the glove box of my car and ate my registration!) Now that I know how to interpret feline affection, I am smitten.  I am grateful for the lesson and the chance to understand once more that we need to hold ourselves accountable consistently and then Wait. Trust is a seed that grows slowly.  These cats need to decide for themselves that they are home now.  It will come from within them when the time is right and the conditions feel authentic, predictable and stable. Sometimes those we are attempting to serve will never appreciate our efforts. Some of these cats are traumatized more than the others.  That’s ok. It’s Good for us to do what is Good anyway, without thoughts of reward.  (The rewards might be unexpectedly yucky anyway.)

Perhaps I will make a half-decent Cat Lady afterall. Most people think I am nuts for taking this on. But we already knew that, cats or no cats. To be honest, I feel more centered, peaceful, and powerful already.  Maybe it’s the way my heart resets itself next to a heavy, furry purr.  Maybe it’s related to the soothing daily zen garden designs I make in the litter boxes—deeply satisfying!  I make time to just Be With, rather than train or “parent” these animals. They arrive as they are. I am grateful to have the challenges I have, which are sweet and furry (even if a bit drooly) rather than the horrors others face.  Each of us hears on the wind a different howl, moo, meow, cluck, cry, or sob—each of us has to decide how we will respond to Love’s invitation to Do Something, no matter how icky it is.

Thank you to all of you Dear Menders, for answering those calls—the unique queries and plaintive meows in your own lives. Thank you to all you Magnificent Cat People, Dog People, Goat People and People People—all you Dear Ones who have the courage and tenacity to keep Learning, Keep Giving, Keep Growing, and Doing What is Right, with the patience to do today’s chores and simply Wait…..

Meow! I love you so much!

Your newest Childless (don’t tell my kids) Cat Lady,

Nancy