In Tuition

“When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.” ― Kahlil Gibrán

Greetings Dear Ones!

Prudence Thimbleton is cranky. For one thing, the recent heat wave (all two days of it) is hard on her—she hates the sensation of sweat gluing her toes together inside of the thickly-seamed dark brown pantyhose that she wears everywhere, even in shorts. (Gasp! Prudence Thimbleton would NEVER wear shorts!)  Having spent the past ten months grumbling about the cold, we must make good use of this precious and fleeting opportunity to crab about the heat. “It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity,” say the locals, looking like drippy candles after a short walk from the parking area. “The air is so thick and you have to chew it thoroughly before you can swallow it,” observes my visiting Scottish nephew.  I am doing that old New England trick of opening all the windows in the house at night and running box fans in the windows until dawn. Then I seal up the house and pull dark curtains closed against the solar heat and the house has to hold its cool breath until I get home at 5:30 before it can exhale again.

In times like this, nothing makes Prudence’s deodorant expire faster than answering the phone to hear a caller say “Yeah.... Um…” in place of a salutation, before launching into the business at hand: “Yeah…um…I’m...um… a bridesmaid in a um…wedding. Um…How long will it take you to fix a dress for me and um…how much do you charge?”  

“Who ARE you? (With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?) When is the wedding? (Cause if it’s this weekend, I’m afraid you don’t have a paddle for that creek full of excrement you are up) What is the dress like? How many layers? What, exactly, would you like us to do to it? (Is it a tad big? A teeny tinch small? Or does it have enough slack in it to smuggle wombats? And while you’re at it, how long is a piece of string?)

 Poor Prudence is instantly hijacked by one of her “Um” tallies and by the time the customer has hung up (twenty-seven ums later) I cannot remember a word the girl said.  It doesn’t matter. Nothing can be known until we actually see the dress anyway.  Hopefully I told her to just come in as soon as possible for an estimate. I sit back down at my table and listen to Prudence rant about how “People Today” know how to do everything on a cell phone from private banking to global navigation but they have completely forgotten how to use it for its original purpose—which was to communicate politely, profficiently and Properly!

It takes her a while to stop steaming. To tell you the truth, she’s been pretty frazzled since the men moved in with her. Men, you ask? Yes. Men.  I found out we can call on our Spirit Guides for help with problems and these two showed up instantly, took a shine to Prudence and haven’t left yet. Now she can’t leave her dark brown panty-hose to drip dry on the radiator anymore and she is always fretting that one of them might pinch her bottom. They haven’t yet. But they might.

 I like them. They are great fun and jolly useful since they know a lot about the work I am trying to do. They are my blood ancestors: Cesare Zambarano, my great grandfather, a tailor born in Italy who moved to America as a teenage apprentice at the turn of the last century, and a chap called Michael Barton, also a tailor, who was born in Co. Tipperary 1778 and died in Rochdale, Massachusetts in 1872, according to Cousin Mary, our family historian. I’ve sensed their presence for some time now but just not had names for them.  They are the ones who provide the answers to problems I could never solve without In-tuition—the teaching that comes from Within. They have all sorts of useful ideas and guide me with impulses and insights that work beautifully when I am open to receiving them. No doubt there are a number of wisely Silent women helping me too—but they are not as flamboyant as these two characters. I’ve learned that they help when I ask, only when I ask—and sometimes the asking is actually begging.  This is the thing with Spirit Guides.  They don’t seem to help if they are not invited.  They just sit around laughing, swallowing pints of Guinness and Chianti and pestering Prudence.  Like the tailors featured in most fairytales, they are incredibly resourceful, imaginative, and unbelievably cheeky.  But they work fast.  Their insights come at blinding speed—though never exactly in the moment I want them to.

“You cannot solve the problem you just got yourself into while you are still looking at the problem,” they seem to say. “Play us a tune on your fiddle! Take a nap! We’ll sort you out…”

“But I can’t take a nap or play the fiddle!! I’m at WORK!  I need to get this done! There is a lady here with two giant gaps on the sides of her backless dress who expects those gaps to go away by tomorrow.  The dress has got rhinestones that have to be moved, all sorts of ruching over the top layer and the lining is that cheap knit shit that runs faster than Usain Bolt when you poke it the wrong way with a needle. My sewing machine just pooped out a lump of black bobbin grease on a white pair of pants and what about that guy whose head is half-way down the hill on the other side of his shoulders—we need to get his suit collar to lie down on his neck instead of resembling an open grain scoop sticking out of his back. What about that?”

I look down at the table below me.  I have pulled too hard on the fabric rushing under the needle—it’s stretch fabric—and now the crotch I have been repairing has an undesirable “wave” to it.  One of the tailors in my head begins to sing “Wavy…wavy…crotch it” to the tune of “Davy, Davy Crocket, King of the Wild Frontier.” This is NOT helpful! Though I cannot help giggling. Then I feel familiar panic and decide that the best thing I can do right now is shave my head, grow a beard (my chin is trying to anyway…) and move to Bora Bora and never tell anyone ever again that I know how to thread a needle.

“Please, guys!” I wimper. “You’ve GOT to help me.  What about ‘ask and thou shall receive,’ eh? I’m ASKING!!!!”

“Ah,” says one cheeky devil, crossing his legs and lighting a pipe, “but you are not ready to Receive. The energy difference between a Problem and a Solution is huge.  We’re old men with nothing to do.  Time doesn’t exist for us. We’ll wait.”

I’m flabbergasted.  I want to scream. These problems are so huge and I have no idea what to do and people are counting on me. I’ll have to go on Youtube during my lunchbreak to see if they say anything about how to bring the collar of a man’s jacket down to where it will actually take a passing interest in his neck. It’s probably the first thing they teach you in Sewing School, but I didn’t go to that.  I’m making this up as I go along, as I do everything.

“Drop the problem,” say the jolly Tailors again. “You cannot see the solutions while you are obsessing over the problems. Stop arguing for your limitations. Stop explaining why you cannot do this. Stop feeling like a victim.  We have a slew of fabulous suggestions for you as soon as you stop wimpering like…well, a thing that wimpers a lot.”

“Wimpering is what she does best,” says Prudence, who cannot help herself. “If she had tried harder in Math, she could have a REAL job and not be in this mess in the first place.”

The tailors glare at her. This IS a real job. The Best Job. A Useful gift to the world and to people who might otherwise have to roam the earth with their ankles hidden for all time. The Irish one draws his sword, ready to duel. The Italian one just grins at her and mimes a “pinching” motion with his hand. She flees.

“Prudence doesn’t know the first thing about sewing,” I explain, “but had she ever learned, she should have been a great proficient!”

“Aye,” says the Irish guy, “like most armchair Experts.”

A customer in the early stages of Alzheimer’s comes in to the shop to collect his clothes. “Have I been here already?” he wants to know. “Yes, we say.  This is your third time today. You already got everything when you picked up the first time.”  He smiles in a fragile, concerned way that contains no joy.  He is confused. The voices in his head are not saying the right things to him these days.  Some are going silent.  He is floundering, cut off from his inner “knowing.”  He shouldn’t be out driving alone. We make plans to notify his daughter as soon as he leaves the shop. There is a sobering chill that penetrates the heat in the shop.

 “Tuition” can mean many things. Parents of undergraduates know it to be the thing that means “no discretionary income until graduation” that shackles them to a form of modern indentured servitude. Actually, it comes from the Latin root tueri, which means “to watch or guard.” I assumed the word “intuition” would be related, since it seems to have a similar root. My best guess would have been “inner teacher or inner guardian.” Instead, intuition comes from the Latin verb intueri translated as "consider" or from the late Middle English word intuit, "to contemplate". Plato is the first philosopher to discuss intuition, which he defines in The Republic as “a fundamental capacity of human reason to comprehend the true nature of  reality” Jung defines intuition as "perception via the unconscious": using sense-perception only as a starting point, to bring forth ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.  In more-recent psychology, intuition can encompass the ability to know valid solutions to problems and decision making.  Yep, that sounds like Mick and Cesare, alright. When those wise guys get around to it…

Eventually, when I am in a calmer state, looking only for Solutions, they help instantly.  Suddenly, I can see that by treating the inner lining of the backless dress separately from the outer layer, I can put a big dart in it to take up the excess fabric, and reconfigure the fashion fabric over it to conceal it, trimming where necessary.  I remake both sides, taking a total of four inches out of the back, and no one is the wiser. The man’s collar I can lower by removing the felted bit under the collar and putting a similar dart in the very top of the coat.  When he comes back to try it on, he is in raptures. “I never had a coat fit me this good in a long time!” he crows. “This body ain’t an easy fit.  Look at me! This is as good as the old-world tailors of when I was a boy.” (Upstairs, Mick Barton and Cesare are slapping each other on the back and beginning to snuffle around for their tobacco pouches and whisky.)  “Yes Sir,” I say to the man. “It is indeed. Those old boys teach me a lot.”

There is incredible power in our inner minds, when we stop to listen, when we seek Solutions, instead of focusing on problems, when we open to Suggestions. I am incredibly excited about this discovery.  I think it is at the heart of any Creative Process—or problem solving. Have you ever noticed how often you wake up with new innovations after a break or a nap? I think the Unconscious Mind is something like our modern cell phones in that they are tools that can do SO MUCH MORE—with so much capacity it boggles the mind—than just the basics.  Though, at the heart of it all, it is a Listening Device for the purposes of Communication.

“Yes…” says Prudence, “AND…I would like to remind you that your Unconscious Mind also ate half a paper towel wrapped around your breakfast sandwich on your way to work this morning, while you weren’t looking!”

Be Well, my darlings!  May you hear Helpful Things from Within.  And no matter where it comes from, Let there be Learning!  Thank you for your Loving Work today and always.

Yours aye,

Nancy

Imposters

It’s helpful to have some arrogance with paranoia. If we were all paranoia, we’d never leave the house. If we were all arrogance, no one would want us to leave the house.’ Chris Martin

Greetings my Darlings,

An energetic woman is in the fitting room clawing at the neckline of her dress like it is a rash.  To compensate for her short-waistedness, we have had to take up the shoulders about three and a half inches.  Now she feels like she is being choked.  Two angry red flares are showing in her cheeks and her eyes are flashing glassy with held-back tears as she glares at the dress in the mirror. She turns to me suddenly and says, “I hate this dress but I need it to be perfect.  I shouldn’t even be going to this wedding.  I don’t belong.” I understand her perfectly.  I can lower that neckline by an inch by tomorrow so that she can breathe.  Sometimes breathing itself is a tall order when we feel we don’t Belong.

Meanwhile, a fabulous young man has started working with us in the shop.  His life goal is to join our little Seamster’s Union.  When I ask him if he would like to be mentioned in this blog, he claps his hands and says, “Oh, Yes!  Only I want to portrayed as a Middle-aged White Woman who doesn’t really need this job.” We all laugh.   She brings in samples of her work and we ooh and ahh over her sense of texture, color, style.  This kid is really creative, for a Middle-aged white woman who doesn’t need this job.  She whips up things like “Sandy” had for Bette Middler’s character  “Barbara” to wear in the 80’s movie “Ruthless People.”  Bold, imaginative, with strong lines and colors--it’s incredible stuff.   She taught herself all she knows, which is so impressive.  Unfortunately, she did not teach herself how to shank a button, how to alter clothing (only how to make it from scratch, which is a completely different ball of wax, or whacks, as the case may be…), and she has never used a blind hemmer or a serger or any of the other specialty machines we have in the shop.  Now she is stuck hemming jeans and struggling with patching faded jackets that really should be put out of their misery and up-cycled into tea cozies.   It isn’t long before I find this poor, Middle-aged White Woman slumped over the blind hemmer, trying to rethread it for the fourth time, mumbling in despair, “I thought I could sew… I feel like I can’t sew… This is just awful…I can’t do anything…”

“Chin up, honey,” I say, “Seamsters are Tough.  Seamsters don’t cry.   You can do this!  You are doing fine.  We’ve ALL Been There!”   And it’s true.  We have.  But she continues to shrink—the shame waves billowing off her are palpable as she submerges herself in despair.  She cares SO much.  It’s so important that she be Perfect. Immediately. Without Practice.  Without Instruction. Magically Perfect.   It’s adorable,  how innocently arrogant she is, to think she ought to be as good as those who have been doing this for more than thirty years already… Skill is dearly bought. Muscle memory takes thousands of repetitions. Learning takes failing.  I want to hug her and smack her and “fix” her all at the same time. Instead, I turn away and let her feel what she is feeling. This is a powerful “Ego-in-the-woodchipper” moment for her.  Who am I to deprive her of it?  I know enough about Ego-in-the-woodchipper moments to know the blessings they bring.

Imposter Syndrome is all about lurching or sashaying between arrogance and paranoia, and bumping up against our ignorance or lack of experience in the middle.  Anything worth doing well is worth doing badly but it takes some arrogance to want to do it in the first place. Then we have to live with all the growing pains.

Some of us feel the yearning in our hearts to do things or Be things and we attempt them despite the steep climb ahead of us because we know that to ignore this Call, this Gift, this Invitation is to abort a part of ourselves we could never be otherwise.  I grew up in a community that talked a lot about Vocations, but when it came right down to it, the options were few and did not seem to involve sewing machines or sheep dung.  While it was clear very early that my talents veered towards music, art, and stories, I was consistently told by Those Who Knew Better, that I needed to do remedial math courses instead.  It was like telling a fish to ride a bicycle. A conversation that NEVER happened (but was clearly Understood as though it had) went something like this:

            Me: “But God would not have given me both these gifts and the yearning to use them if I wasn’t supposed to Use them for His Glory!”

            Those Who Knew Better: “Well God has no idea what the current labor market is for storytellers and folk-musicians.  He clearly wasn’t thinking straight.  You need to learn how to do Calculus this semester so that you can be a Specialist-who-needed-Calculus-to-get-Certified. If you don’t have a piece of paper saying you can Do Something, your life will be a Colossal Failure and you will wind up in mis-matched socks, smelling vaguely of cheap gin on the road to perdition.”

            Me: “But what if, as God’s Child, He just wants me to be Happy and he gave me these things so that I could be very, Very happy serving his Other Children?”

            Those Who Knew Better: “That’s Ridiculous. God does not work like that.  Money may be the root of all Evil but you’re still going to need plenty of it and you can’t make money being “happy.” Besides, we aren’t supposed to be happy.  You are here to Suffer.  All of life is Suffering.  (Hence Calculus).”

            Me: “Wait…I thought this was a Catholic School…Are we Buddhists now?”

And thirty years later, I didn’t ever manage to pass Calculus and my life has been…well… the life of the Perpetual Imposter. I wasn’t “supposed to be” who I am.  I was supposed to be Something Else but I could not pass Calculus.  And I must confess I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun on the detour!  I’ve been a mother, a seamster, a teacher, a cook, a gardener, a farmer, and a dabbler in all sorts of things that defy labels.   I’ve also wasted monumental amounts of time in sweat-drenching, colon-twisting anxiety about What Others Might Think and feeling like I don’t Belong.  This has led to an untellable amount of heartbreak and disaster. 

What I have learned is that if your heart gets broken, that turns out to be a Jolly Useful Thing.  It just means you have pieces you can share now, like cuttings from a house plant, that you can give to others whose hearts need healing as they Dare to be Themselves.  Those heart cuttings, properly tended, can grow new roots and flourish in gorgeous new ways when others lose heart, lose sight, and think they are imposing or Imposters.   

One of the things I enjoy most is telling stories.  The only way I can do that is to Write and tell stories.  So I do.  Hence this 4:am blog.  Sometimes it’s excruciatingly raw and embarrassing.   I don’t know how to do the basics—the equivalents of shanking a button, or using the machinery.  (Mere Children have to show me again and again how to post on Instagram.)  Sometimes I hit “publish” and feel nausea.  Sometimes I see my threads of thought get tangled or unraveled but I have left myself no time to edit, or rewrite.  I vascillate between triumph and despair so often and so much that when a “Professional Writer” for prestigious publications mentions that he might read an entry, I go into a shame spiral the likes of which make the Middle Aged White Woman slumped over the blind hemmer look like she just had a mild menstrual cramp.   I instantly “un-friend” him and block his phone number for days. I just don’t want to look this Stupid.  

Nevertheless, I persist….

My darling Scottish Nephew, whom I adore, comes to visit for the weekend.  He is handsome, wise and kind and, at only twenty years of age, the very pinnacle of physical perfection. He dances for the Royal Ballet in London and they have just been on tour in Japan and L.A. I ask him how it feels to be in those big shows, on those massive stages, traveling around the world.  “Do you ever feel like you don’t belong, like an Imposter?” He smiles sheepishly, “Of course! All the time. It helps me focus and work harder.  But My worst days of all are when I think, ‘what’s this all about anyway? What am I doing with my life but striving to entertain or distract wealthy people…’ That’s when I have to think seriously about the nature of Art and why it’s worth doing. Why anything is worth doing…”   His answers take us trudging up a nearby mountain, through dinner, and deep into an evening around a campfire.  When we do things for the sheer Love of them, without thought to audience or paycheck—when we get to experience that sensation of a soul in flight, in pure Flow—Nothing is Frivolous.  Nothing is not worth doing.

Who are we to look at our gifts, our calls, our talents, and say that our God/s had no idea what S/he was doing? That we don’t have Enough? Who’s to say that the mere Wanting to fulfill a dream is not Reason enough to do it? Are these calls not also Divine micro-vocations?  (from Vocare: Latin for “call.” )  All I can say for sure is that Not Answering is far more dangerous than looking like a total arse in front of other humans who are secretly terrified by the idea that they look like arses too.   As I used to say of my housekeeping habits “I am here to make you all feel Wonderful: The Slackers can see they are not alone and the Achievers can enjoy an enhanced self-satisfaction that they can do better than this. Everybody wins!”

Erma Bombeck said, “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'.  For some of you, that is going to take some doing!  You have SO many talents. And to anyone contemplating the Vulnerability of risking your True Self in public, I say, let’s Do It. Hold my clammy little, calloused hand.  Let’s JUMP! Let’s make a big fun mess and learn as we go. I’ll lower our necklines, if necessary, so we can breathe easier.

Thanks, dear Friends, for the Good Work you do—especially if it takes Courage, especially if you are an Imposter filling in for an “expert” who has yet to show up.

Yours aye,

Nancy

An Inside Job

Some mistakes are worse than others: wearing your underwear inside out isn’t as uncomfortable as wearing it back to front.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Greetings Dear Ones!

I am making Sunday brunch for friends and the kitchen is out of eggs so I dash to the henhouse to gather a few.  I feel terrible robbing their nest while they are looking—usually I offer a distraction like a treat that makes them all run squawking outside while I quickly plunder their smooth, warm treasures.  Lately it’s been difficult. The little ginger hen has been particularly broody lately. Refusing to abandon her post, she crouches in the box, hissing and protecting her darlings from villains like me.  It’s been very warm here recently and when I get back to the stove and crack the first three eggs, they explode with a faint Pop.  A brownish liquid runs from them into the glass measuring cup where I break them one by one before adding them to the pan.  For a second, I wonder why they don’t smell, the way one wonders if that hot sauce is really hot, just before it sears a whole through your tongue.  Within moments, I am running for the compost pile gagging. (I should write a book on how to hostess the most exciting brunches.) From the outside, the eggs looked just fine.  From the inside, I’m going to have to leave the windows open and fans running for a week.

This is often how it is with clothes.  They look fine on the outside but inside they are rotten.  Sometimes gaggably so.  And to fix them, very rarely are we able to do anything topically.  We have to take a blade and dig right in there.  We must excavate and explore the interior spaces, learn every back alley or hidden tunnel, while the body dirt falls on the cutting table and ironing board.  (A co-worker calls beach sand and bugs “surf and turf.”)  Sometimes, we cannot answer a single question without exploratory surgery first.  We get to see ugly like you’ve never dreamed it could be, inside a forty-year-old velvet tuxedo whose wearer appears to have liberally smeared his nether regions with Preparation H before each formal event.  Some of the prettiest dresses on the outside are unmentionably gross on the inside. Often, as we cut along the seams and reveal the seam allowances on the inside, we see what color the garment was when it was made, before it was stained or faded or patched or dyed with mystery beverage by those who serve party punch in trash cans.  There are all kinds of information to be gleaned behind the seams.

We never know what we are going to find inside someone’s clothing but the solutions to their problems begin there.  We must go Inward if we are to solve Outward.  It’s pure Zen.

A woman comes in with her son’s trousers.  The little pucker lines around her mouth reveal her obstinancy. “Can you let these out and lengthen them?” she wants to know but in a way that is telling, rather than asking us. A flushed and starry-eyed Bridesmaid is confused about why her gown looks smooth on the outer layer but she feels the lining “has lumps in it.” A jolly, portly man with dimples wants to know why his suit jacket lining falls down every time he puts his hands in his pockets.  A forlorn bride wants to know if we can let out her gown a trimester’s worth.  To each of them I say, “The only way to answer is to go In and go Deep.”  We cannot tell by looking at the outside what is truly happening on the inside.  We, quite literally, must turn the In side Out. The only barrier standing between the answers we seek and the surface mysteries is our Courage.  We must dare to Sink.  The answers to all these surface questions lie Under.

It’s a fascinating world beneath the linen. A man brings a sport coat to us and insists that we need to do it over for him. We’ve done it wrong, he insists.  He says we were to shorten it but it flops in a disagreeable way that vexes him.  After he leaves, I take it to my table and begin the archeological dig.  I see the work of at least two tailors who went before—the one who made the jacket in the first place, and where the next tailor made some alterations.  It’s as easy to spot the differences as it is to distinguish between people’s signatures.  We each have our own “way.”  With relief, I immediately ascertain that it was not I who caused this problem.  Eagle-eyed Prudence insists we check again to be sure.  She fully expects me to be to blame. But I am not. I am certain I have never worked on this coat before in my life.  Neither has any other person in the shop. None of us do things the way this person has done this work.  The jacket was shortened by folding up the bottom and blind-hemming it in place—leaving a huge wad of fabric tipping outward against the back of the outer layer of the jacket.  Nothing was trimmed off. The bits near the corners were cut and left completely open.  Someone had “stitched in the ditch” in the wrong color thread—probably whatever was conveniently to hand (indicating a lack of professionalism)(or a lack of bog-standard, ubiquitous black thread)(“Nonsense,” says Prudence, “how can it be ubiquitous if there was a lack of it?”)—on all of the vertical seams, making it billow and pucker oddly.  Most home sewers do not own a blind hemmer, so this was obviously some sort of professional—perhaps very old school, working quickly, who didn’t want to charge the guy a lot of money?  Who knows? The speculations are fascinating.  When I show the other ladies what the inside has revealed, we all agree. None of us did this work.  The man must be mistaken.  He is a regular customer and we fix a lot of his clothes—perhaps he got confused.  He bought the jacket second hand and it probably came this way.

We all leave our indelible marks on each other—inside where we cannot see them immediately.  They are marks of love, of trauma, of conflict…the scars of learning and growing.  At least, where clothing is concerned, it’s fairly easy to correct mistakes—once one identifies the problem, it’s only the work of a day to sort things out.  I wish people themselves would be as simple!  If only I could cut through my own seamy-ness, peer under a flap of my own soul and say, “Goodness! Look at this tangled up mess!  What is this??? Is this YARN?” and begin to unwind myself and straighten myself out.  Sport coats are way easier!

Once I understand how the extra fabric in the man’s sport coat is causing his problem, it’s easy to trim the excess, reattach the lining in its proper place and anchor the seam allowances so that the bottom does not sag.  With a good pressing, the jacket looks much better, “Normal” even. 

A young friend eating my now-eggless brunch, smiles at me and says “I’m so glad I have people in my life who challenge me and force me to change my ways!” We have been talking of someone who recently inspired her greatly.  “He called me out on some of my nonsense and I had to agree that he was right.” I gaze at her fondly.  I can appreciate how she has changed, how she is blossoming and coming into her own power, and I am so incredibly pleased for her.  It’s a privilege to see her relinquish all sense of victimhood and step into her own Grace.  She is Magnificent.  After a pause, I say “well, I hope you never expect ME to be that kind of friend!”  She laughs. “Why not?”

“I’m way too lazy.  Besides, I really don’t have the stomach for telling people what is wrong with them. All I can see is what is Right with you.  I’ll be the sort of mushy friend who likes you No Matter What.  The kind who, when you go off your diet, admits that she ate not one but TWO pints of Ice cream the day her sugar-free daughter went back to college.”

“Oh, my God…” she says, snorting tea into her lungs so fast that tears pour down her cheeks as she tries to breathe without laughing. “You didn’t!!”

“Oh, but I did!  And I won’t be the sort of friend who bails you out of jail either, so don’t make me your one phone call…”

“No doubt you’ll probably be locked up with her,” says Prudence, snarkily.  

It’s not my job to change other people. Hell, it’s hard enough to change their clothes!  Besides, I have yet to figure out how to change myself.  The 18th Century Sage, Samuel Johnson  says “The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”  Yep. Just as I suspected, Happiness, like clothing, is a job one must do from the inside.  After a lifetime of offering “Helpful Suggestions” to roommates, offspring, siblings, a spouse, I may not yet be a fountain of Content but I certainly agree that all attempts to Change Others only multiplies the grief we propose to remove.   (Boy, have I multiplied some Grief in my day!)  From here on in, I’m sticking with pins and pens to do my crafting.  We can work on each other’s clothes, not each other’s souls.  It is not for us to decide how others ought to be internally. Likewise, only we can decide for ourselves—only we know for sure if the Inner and Outer worlds are fitting well, stitched together securely, and Aligned properly.  The Answers are Within. We each get the privilege of Tailoring our own One Precious Life to fit us as we choose.

Be Well, my Dearies!  I love you Just As You Are, ragged Insides and all. Thank you for your Good Work today and for all you do to bring your lovely Light to this world!

Yours aye,

Nancy

With Liberty and Justice for All...

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell

Greetings Dear Ones!

Liberty and Justice are hard to find when one is self-employed and trying to keep up with the whims and waistlines of New Englanders embarking on a summer of beaching and barbeques.  As a friend likes to joke, “When you work for yourself, you can work any eighty hours a week you like!” Trying to please people who have no idea what they want is its own kind of tyranny—and where is the Justice when bitchy brides like “Brittany” decide to stiff you after more than forty hours of work?  (Such are the joys of Capitalism.)  Of course true Freedom comes from many things—ironically, the most important ways involve focus, awareness, discipline, and the myriad of tiny, petty, unsexy ways we choose to sacrifice ourselves for others or a Greater Good.  Dedicated practicing of any skill leads to freedoms and privileges that Proficiency unlocks.  Sacrifice: the Sacred Trade. I know I must Contain Myself but I keep escaping, much to Prudence’s despair. 

This week, I am a Bell at Liberty—the shop is closed, as are many of the area businesses, including dry-cleaners whom we service.  Most folks are going on some sort of vacation but to me, the real treat is in getting to stay home with my lambs and animals.  In the absence of my usual daily and weekly routines, I am pondering freedom and anarchy.  To ward off the anarchy of “free” time, and make certain jobs seem more fun, I have given myself a game of “Chore Bingo.” I make a grid and fill in the boxes with things I want to accomplish in this precious week of “spare time”—things like “mow lawn,” “clean attic,” “throw out all the frozen food that is more than two years old so you can fill the freezer with yarn instead” (to protect it from moths), “find out what that dank smell in the basement is…”  I can do things in any order and I color each box as I complete the task.  I had planned to reward myself for completing each row with unseemly amounts of ice cream but my twenty-one-year-old daughter ruined it all by coming home and announcing that sugar is POISON and that I must support her in a total renunciation of anything refined.  As a college student, she’s learned A Thing Or Two… She has compelling Science to prove her points. She is adamant.  

So, here I am, unexpectedly attempting to live an UNREFINED life, which puts me in mind of that Gloria Steinem quote: "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off, " which is pretty much how I feel foregoing having the most amazing, local, farm-stand-fresh-from-the-cows-staring-at-you-over-the-fence, what-New-England-does-Best kind of ice cream for supper for a week.  Apparently, I will feel better and radiate a glowing vitality in sixty days or less… How nice for me…. (slump…) Apparently, breaking the chains of my sugar addiction will bring me freedom from all manner of ills, including the aching in my hands, and if I don’t live forever, at least it will feel like that. (How soon is lunch? What?? THREE more hours??) Apparently, the urge to poke this child of mine repeatedly with a sharp fork will pass, along with the cravings… 

It’s good to have freedom from the shop…The last few days before the break were fraught with the demands of people who could not contemplate attending Uncle Louie’s holiday barbeque without the appropriate seasonal attire.  Chowing charred weiners and warm potato salad in celebration of America’s Independence in a flag-colored mini-skirt that gaps a little over the hip was a fate that did not bear facing.  For one, the Pursuit of Happiness involved making a seamstress redo a jacket four times to make it look like his clothing comes in cans.  Another woman demanded we make a one-piece pull-over dress that looked like something that should be used in the annual family sack race be “um…you know…tailored to flatter her figure more.”  She kept grabbing fistfuls of fabric from around her middle and asking why we couldn’t “do something.” Explaining that we could not take it in as much as she wanted or she would not be able to get it off over her head again was futile.  She looked at us as if we were just being difficult.  Our Nation has not gone to war, nearly every single generation since 1776 to defend Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Bargains so that she could wait two weeks for this either.  She needed it Friday at the latest.  I was tempted to stitch her right into it so tight that she could not get out but I knew I would just have to do it over, so I curtailed my freedom of speech and held pins in my mouth to help me be quiet.

All month, people have been exercising their dearly-bought rights to bare arms and belly rings and cleavage and something called the “under-bum” which I had no idea had a name.  Prudence views such outfits as a total scandal.  She does not think that the farmers of Lexington and Concord took their pitchforks in hand and drove the “lobster-backs” through the streets of Arlington so that future generations could glimpse under-bums.  Liberty should not be extended to the fleshy parts of humanity that belong under several layers of knickers, bloomers, and Spanx.  For the love of all that is Holy, why can’t we bring back petticoats to the ankle? All men might be created equal but all bums are not. (This, I am certain, is what ultimately caused the Great Depression.)

On July 3,1776, John Adams wrote to Abigail: The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illumination, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore. 

Ok, so the poor man was off by two days… Still, Two hundred and forty three years later, his visions are mostly correct—if we keep the view very fuzzy and from a great distance.  We’ve gone a little scanty on the solemn acts of devotions to God Almighty but we’ve more than made up for it in pomp, parades, and Chinese Firework purchases from roadside stands in New Hampshire, from guys like “Hank” who have spent their dental hygiene budget on tattoos instead (hence the need for beer and potato salad as their main form of nourishment).  Who knows? I even believe (in fact, I am quite certain) that the founding teenagers were just as concerned about hem-lengths and displaying a shapely calf as their twenty-first century counterparts.

Thanks to those brave Patriots, sweating it out in the 1776 Continental Congress meeting in July in Philadelphia, we have thrown off the yoke of British Imperialism and are free to consume as many mass-produced, poorly fitting internet purchases from China as we please.  As Napoleon Bonepart commented, “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide." Word. Dude, Totally! I see it in the dressing room every day—women paralyzed by the choices before them:  backless or strapless? Spanx or no Spanx? Buy the next size up or wire your jaw shut until the wedding?

And let’s face it, as Patriotic Americans—we have a lot to decide in the hours and months ahead: Burgers or hotdogs? Coke or Pepsi? Current Washington Politics or Sanity? Fish, or cut bait? The Democratic Republic our Founding Parents set up ensures that we get a vote.  It’s not necessarily a vote that counts but so what? Vote anyway.  A well-functioning democracy means that less than most of us get to be unhappy.   

Prudence is of the opinion that in order to enjoy freedom, we really need to control ourselves—the way a well-structured gown is actually easier to move in than a loose-fitting sack that gives no support.  If you intend to go strapless, then you will require a lot of boning around your mid-section. You need Stability to go free. Anyone who has had her knees bound together by sagging panty-hose will tell you this.  Freedom is not the absence of structure—it’s getting the chance to be who we really are—or never thought we could be because of the fabric of support enveloping us.  Freedom is what we continue to co-create from all that has been done for us beforehand, behind the scenes.  Whether you are in a mob cap or baseball cap, go forth and exercise Ye Olde inalienable right to be Dowdy or Dazzling, Dapper or Drab! Thanks Be, you are Free to Choose.  (But you might not get your orders done until next week!)

Yours aye,

Nancy (Liberty) Bell

The Straight of the Goods

“Wobbly seams charm no one.” –from a Vintage sewing book

Greetings Dear Ones!

Once upon a time, a tired little seamstress woke up feeling somewhat out of sorts.  She lay in her bed and considered the day ahead—filled as she knew it might be with clogged bobbins, snaggled threads, mischievous measurements, and middle-raged customers.   Her internal celestial “channel” was not tuned to the Divine, but rather her dial had shifted to some rather horrible static, as if she had hit the AM rather than FM button on the radio.  In fact, it was AM—very early AM, thanks to the bleating of the lambs and the thimble-sized bladders of her dogs.  She thought, “I have plenty of time--all I have to do is get my circuits realigned and All Shall BE Well.  I just need to Meditate, journal, do what my children call some New Age sort of “Hooey Pooey” with my Angel cards… When I am tuned in properly, I can do Good Work and find any customer Adorable, even if he or she is being ornery. But if I stay in this frame of mind, it will be a horrible day, no matter how nice people are.” It seemed like a good plan.

 “Rubbish,” huffed Prudence. “You just need to get up and Do What Needs to Be Done for the sheer hell of it. You needn’t feel good about it.”  But our tired little seamstress realized that she was at all times responsible for her own mental state.  Besides, who wants to work with a woman in an anti-virtuous mode of mind resentfully sewing lace on a wedding dress, or cursing crotch crud in a pair of trousers that needs to be let out? Happiness is not circumstantial. It takes inner practice, just like scales on a violin. She did her morning chores, fed her animals, then started running the bath water for her morning ablutions. (Ablutions sounds like a more fairy-tale sort of word than “scrubbing her pits.”)  She thought about how Delicious it is to meditate in a bath of warm water—to lie down and feel one’s abdomen rising and falling, floating and sinking, with each breath.  She had one toe in the water when, from the next room, she could hear the two male Jack Russells getting into a difference of opinion about whose turn it was to lick a recently-emptied bowl of food. Before she could reach them, they had each other by the ears and were tearing the fur off each other.  She grabbed a towel, and threw it over them. One was hanging from the other’s neck and would not let go.  She did the only thing she could think of—she threw the whole bundle into the tub of hot water.  Eventually, sputtering with rage, one spit the other out and she was able to run, naked, wet and bloody, down the stairs to evict each snarling villian.  She took one look at the bath water laced with tendrils of blood as if there had been a miniature shark attack, drained it, and showered instead. 

Still devoted to the idea of Raising her Consciousness, she decided to listen to some Sacred Music while she made breakfast.  Perhaps she could achieve Serenity with a little multi-tasking.  Then she remembered the chickens needed water.  She dashed outside in wellie-boots and a bathrobe to water the chickens.  When it came time to leave for work, she could not locate her phone. For twenty minutes, she behaved like a deranged criminal in her own home, ripping cushions off couches, opening and slamming cupboards and drawers, dumping things, overturning things…all in quest of the damn phone.  Then she remembered. She had been listening to the music on the phone—sure enough, it had fallen in the chicken coop.  At least the chickens looked more sedate after listening to chant for twenty minutes…

Now late, her herbal-organic-hippie-crunchy granola-scented deodorant had already given out, her house was trashed and she needed another shower.  So much for her Morning Tranquility Practices! She dove into her car and sped off.  En route to work, she noticed the car in front of her was weaving all over the road.  The driver was either texting or had just dumped scalding hot coffee on her crotch.  If that car was a horse and wagon, she would feel compelled to gallop alongside it and grab the bridle and bring it to a safe stop like they do in old westerns. 

At the shop, the first Customer of the day wants ten panels of curtains hemmed. They are cheapo curtains that, straight out of the packages, are ten different lengths.  She considers trying to explain to the customer why they will never hang straight but decides to nod and keep Silent until the customer leaves.  They have not been cut on the Straight of the Goods. What is the Straight of the Goods, you ask?  It has to do with following the grain of the fabric.  Grain, as you well know, is something useful in the production of whisky. Although there is no actual barley in fabric, we do refer to “grain” as the direction of the warp and the weft in a woven fabric. The threads in a woven fabric are set up on a loom in a lengthwise and crosswise orientation. The lengthwise grain is used to lay out the garment pattern pieces. The crosswise grain runs from one selvage edge to the other.  What is selvedge? That is the hard edge that runs parallel to the grain, or warp, of your fabric, the bit you think you don’t need. If fabric were a cheese, it would be the rind.  It sounds a bit like “salvage,” which is what you are often trying to do when you have to go back and cut out pieces as close as possible to this finished edge.

To find the straight of the goods, one must either patiently pull out one of the weft threads, or, more simply, rip the fabric along the weft line. These draperies, mass-produced at some factory somewhere, have not been ripped.  They have been cut.  And not cut straight, although they masquerade as rectangles to the average eye. They are not on “the straight of the goods.” Neither is the fraying little Seamstress in this story. She gazes around the room, at all the things hanging higgledy-piggledy around the shop and begins to giggle. She is blessed with an abundant appreciation of the Ridiculous. Today’s topic is clear: Alignment. (a.k.a. “Welcome to Oh, No, Not Again!”)  Alignment is just as illusive Spiritually as it is in drapery.  She will need a Teacher.

He arrives in the form of a little boy who comes into the shop to hang out with his mother.  After he rearranges all the pins in the pincushions into fascinating geometric patterns the seamstress can not bear to disturb, they decide to let him try to sew on one of the machines.  She traces the first initial of his name on a piece of cloth and he tries to stitch over it using the machine, while her friend works the foot pedal for him.  The boy labors at this intently for some time until he manages to make something he is proud enough to take home to show his daddy. 

It occurs to her, as she watches his small, doughy, untrained hands try to manage the direction of the cloth, that the major difference between a Novice and an Expert is the number of corrections he makes.  This works for everything from bowing a fiddle tune to trying to sew a straight line.  You might think it’s that the novice has to make more corrections.  The opposite is true.  If you watch a novice attempting to sew—he will make a few large, awkward over-corrections that will result in all kinds of zigging and zagging.  The expert is making so many micro-corrections—so fast and so small—that they seem invisible to the naked eye as they are happening.  It’s like she has mental telepathy to tell the fabric where to go.  One simply cannot sew “a straight line” without thousands of adjustments.  The same is true for walking, or driving a car along a highway.   Sewing a line and being in Alignment ourselves are both progressive acts that take constant moderation and correction. People who make it look effortless are doing the exact same amount of work—just less of it more often, perhaps even constantly.

It turns out in this fairytale, that “Happily Ever After” has no “After.”  It’s just Happily Ever-ing.  It doesn’t stay as a static thing. It’s like being balanced in motion, while dancing.  When you are bashing into everything and everyone, Pause. Take a beat, not a beating. Find the Music again (check the chicken coop) and Carry On.   Happiness is a practice, as is sewing a nice straight seam.  The novice swings from wild motion to wild motion, dropping phones in chicken coops, running naked in her wellies and drowning dogs in the bath.  Gradually, she learns to align her thoughts with things that make her laugh, with tunes or friends or plans for the future that make her heart sing.  Sometimes, the fastest way to make something straight is to give it a nice, swift, clean Rip. So rip it, Dearies, Rip it Good!

Some days each of us is fighting a hard, unseen fight—Each kind thought or deed you do is a blessing to this world. So thank you for all your Good Work!

Yours aye,

Nancy