People are Animals...

All God’s Critters got a place in the Choir; Some singing low, some singing higher;

Some sing out loud on the telephone wires;

 some just clap  their hands, their paws or anything they got now…”  Bill Staines

 Greetings Dear Ones!

On my way to the tailoring shop, I pause at a red light behind a car covered in paw-print stickers.  The bumper reads: “I don’t need a Higher Power. I have a cat.” And “I [heart] cats—it’s people I can’t stand.”   As soon as the light changes, she starts honking at the slow car in front of her.   With a wild wave of arms and flashing turn signals, she swerves left with unnecessarily violent acceleration.  Foul-smelling Anger in the form of dark exhaust fumes pollutes the intersection as I drive straight through.  I can’t help giggling for some reason.  I send the pissed off Cat Car a Blessing even as Prudence begins her commentary.  I remind Prudence that it is wrong to judge people.  She seems to think judging People Who Judge People is just fine. It’s really not.  “People should not MAKE me Judge them,” she huffs.  It’s one of her favorite lines.

I love people; really, I do.  If it were not for People, especially two people in particular, I probably wouldn’t even be here.  I used to think I only really got along with animals—that people were confusing and tricky—that is, until I realized they were just large, somewhat less furry animals in cloth costumes.   So I sympathize with the Cat Car driver.  Sometimes it feels like “everyone else” is out to get us and that only animals are safe.  We forget that any creature can bite.  I wonder about what softens in her belly when she gets home to her feline family—her personal domestic welfare population circling her ankles in search of the sound of a tin opener—no doubt they are needy and demanding but in ways that don’t bug her or insult her personal boundaries as much as an anonymous fellow motorist delaying her for three seconds at a red light.

In the shop, everything is bright and cheery against the gloom of the grey windows.  These past few days have had only the damp, foggy lights of a photographer with his strongest filter on, as the October rains extinguish the fiery maple and oak leaves and wash them to the ground.  My dear co-worker is in the corner working on a set of window drapes she has had to re-hem three times for a persnickety customer who has no idea how a tape measure works.   “I don’t know why it bugs the [poopy] out of me to have to do things twice, never mind THREE times!” she says.  I understand.  Someone with a perfectly “Zen” mindset sees everything as a “first.”  We wish we could do that.  Somehow, there is a big difference between hemming the same drapes three times and having three different customers come in separately with the same drapes.  We rely on a sense of forward momentum to maintain morale.   She steps on the foot pedal of the machine and the needle jams.  I hear both the machine and the seamstress whine.  Next, I hear a sound I do not recognize immediately—a low rumbling sound.  I know I’ve heard that sound many times but I cannot quite place it now.  My eyes widen. “Are you GROWLING???” I ask my friend in disbelief.  She sounds like a Rottweiler issuing a severe warning to someone about to lose a leg.   The growling snaps quickly and shatters into guilty laughter.   I howl with glee.  “Don’t tell anyone!” she begs.

“It’s Ok to growl,” I assure her.  It’s ok that we love our work and we hate our work.  It’s ok that we love people and harbor secret contempt for their choices too.  It’s too early on a grey day to succumb to being annoyed with People, so to cheer myself up I decide to use my magic powers to turn all our customers into animals.   For some reason, animals are so much easier to love than ourselves.  Animals are the necessary, blessed bridge to our own humanity sometimes.

First in is a very tall, somewhat meddlesome Hare with long, long legs attached directly to her back.  She is taking tango lessons and she wants us to make some adjustments to her dress to make it look as though she has a sexy bum.  She laments that she towers over all the Latin men with whom she dances so she never wears heels.  Her skirts don’t need hemming but she has taken elastic bands and bunched up the fabric between her pelvic bones in the back.  “Can you do something like this?” she asks.  “I really like the look of this.  This will be really easy for you—see? No sewing!  You just use a hair band. Simple!” On and on she goes, turning this way and that in the mirror, smiling and telling me how Simple it is going to be for me to do what she wants with “no sewing” whatsoever.   (I confess—I panic a little when people tell me how “easy” my work is going to be for them.)  What she has created, Hare-brained as it is, truly looks like a little rabbit’s powder puff of a tail.  Seeing her as an animal in a cute little fable I am creating helps me restrain the urge I feel to smack her.

Next in is a woman whose clothing smells of kitty litter.  I am tempted to turn her into a cat but she has the loyal, mournful eyes of a rescue hound.  She has nine suits from the late nineties that she has dug out of the back of her closet.  Thanks to a strong muzzle and regular leash-walking, she has reached her goal weight and wants all these suits updated for her “new” look.   The suits hang off her in a listless, apologetic way.   “I haven’t been this size in twenty years,” she says in a voice utterly lacking triumph.  The shoulder-pads look like benign tumors that need to be resected from under the faded hanger marks.  We have to take in all the skirts by eight inches—basically remaking them from scratch—then hem the jacket sleeves and take in the backs as much as we can without distorting their shapes and making her resemble a barrel-chested bulldog.  At the end of the day, these suits will still look exhausted, uninhabited, and baggy, like she herself does.  I desperately want to give this woman a good brushing—to scratch her behind her ears and find her something she likes to play with.  I want to see her eyes sparkle. I want to see what makes her bolt and bounce for Joy.  I want to tell her to ditch these old clothes and spend her tailoring money on getting something fresh that fits Who She is Now.  But she is still trying to be Who She thought she should have been twenty years ago.  She is loyal through and through, in a weary, saggy, resigned sort of way. 

A slim, slinky weasel with bright, cunning eyes and a tiny, pointy snout comes in next. She is adorable and perky.  She is upset that she cannot buy jeans with low rises anymore. Someone in the fashion industry has hit the “Up” button on the elevator of Women’s waistlines and she can no-longer reach the lowest floors so she needs her old jeans mended.  She has to keep them on life-support until the elevator hits the top and begins its inevitable descent in eight to ten fashion cycles.  She also squeaks about how baggy a certain brand of jeans are in the bum. “They just put too much fabric in there” she sneers, “—and it’s stretch fabric too!” My ears perk up.  “Tell me the name of those jeans again,” I say, “the ones you don’t like? Exactly WHO makes those terrible jeans with the big bummage?” I grab a pen and a scrap of paper to take notes.  (I have a good lead on where to shop now!)

The phone rings.  I cannot tell whether the voice on the line is a Goose or a Gander or just a heavy smoker. “Can you hem a pair of pants for me today, if I come in right now?” I pause to scan the shop and see how busy we are.  Before I can answer, the voice says with some impatience “You’ve done this for me before!” as if I should not hesitate to say “sure.”  I hang up, wondering why this person bothered to call if [they?] were already assured of the required services.  Eventually, the person with ruffled feathers comes in.  We take the necessary measurements and I agree to have the pants ready before closing time.  At no point during the interactions am I certain of which pronouns to use—even the trousers themselves are no clue—which is fine with me. I don’t need to know a person’s “pronouns” in order to do a good job on a quick blind hem.  Those species of waterfowl lacking visible displays of sexual dimorphism have enough trouble without having a gender-muddled seamstress adding to their woes.  They find themselves swimming upstream enough!    

A middle-aged house cat is just about to pay for his dry-cleaning when he pauses and burps.  He proceeds to cough up a small hairball, chew it, swallow, then comment on it for the next five minutes.  We learn all about his acid reflux, how he can no longer eat mice, how he’s allergic to certain kinds of kitty litter and how much he loves salmon but it plays havoc with his delicate bowels.  Instinctively, we all give him the averted-eyes body-language that indicates discomfort with his bland candor about his bodily functions. Languidly, he ignores the social cues and continues to behave as if he might through an ankle over his shoulder and casually lick his own arse right in the middle of our carpet.  Finally, with considerable relief, we get him to depart the shop by asking him where he has parked.  When the door shuts, we all talk at once, as if we have been simultaneously holding our breath.  “Save your confessions for a priest!” mutters Prudence to the departing car. 

“Do we LOOK like bartenders?” asks one exasperated seamstress.

“Jeez, Louise, I had no idea how far he was going to go with that…is there no one else in his life who can listen to that verbal diarrhea?” says another.   I think about how we interpret the actions of strays in animal shelters—Someone, somewhere, must have pampered him and convinced him that he was entitled to endless feminine attention.  Clearly, he’s just lonely and self-centered, with no one to rub his furry tummy. (Yuck. Now Prudence has a hairball.)

Some customers are difficult. There is no doubt about that.  Sometimes it takes a little imagination to see them as the funny, loveable creatures they really are.  But it’s work worth doing at the end of the day—not so much because they actually “deserve” it but because WE do.  It’s worth it to our own souls to laugh more, to love more, to see ourselves as Abundant enough to be able to afford any kindness to a stranger or a rangy, gentle Moose Mother who wants her Otter Son’s wedding to a Fish to be perfect.  Those strangers might be “Angels in disguise,” or they may be fellow animals in search of food and shelter and a cheap, quick way to cover up the tails they wish to hide. 

It’s Halloween, “All Hallow’s Eve,” the ancient Celtic New Year—a perfect time to notice the Cats, Critters, and Costumes around us—a time to prowl the Darkness around our hearts in search of Sweetness and the return Home.  These orphaned creatures craving attention, affection, and Milk Duds—they are US.  We can notice how awful we are and point it out to others via caustic messages of intolerance on our bumper stickers, or we can trust the Blessedness of our Inner Beings to bring light and warmth for one another as the days grow short and cold. It’s our fierce and free Choice.

 Thank you, Dear Ones, for the Good Work you are doing.  On this Hallowed Eve, I wish you happy hearths, hot cider, and much Mischief, Mirth & Music—tonight and ever.   I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

It Must Be Nice...

Greetings Dear Ones,

 I am sitting at the laundromat crocheting a new finger-top to a pair of mittens for a customer while I wait for the machines to get done masticating my laundry.  This is a new laundromat for me and I am all charmed up because it only takes quarters—not those new-fangled credit cards that you charge up, then misplace in a pocket of the shirt that just got locked into the machine… The twenty dollars’ worth of pirate’s booty that the coin machine spits out is as hefty and reassuring as pieces of eight.  I am tempted to set sail for Bora Bora immediately. Who would spend such a heap of treasure getting crud off of clothes anyway?  How droll.  I can’t remember the last time twenty dollars worth of coins has made me feel so giddy, so Rich, so Invincible.  But dutifully I feed the coins into the eyes of the machines and my soiled clothing into the open mouths and begin the long wait.

 I love laundromats. I love getting everything Clean & Sorted all at once.  It does something almost as positive for my soul as for my wardrobe. Out the big picture window, the sky smolders a smoky grey above a hillside ablaze with oaks and maples in full glory.  Each leaf is like a scrap of flame as it flutters.  The mittens I am working on are shades of purple and green and complement the scene outside.

A woman waiting nearby sees me working and says, “It must be nice to be able to do that,” nodding towards my crochet hook. “I could never do anything like that.  I just haven’t got the time.”  I peer at her quizzically.  We are both sitting at a laundromat. I’m going to sit here with busy hands and she isn’t. Which one of us, exactly, has More Time?  “Well, you’ve got some time right now—I’ll show you!” I offer. “Oh no…” she stammers hastily. “I’ve tried before.  I just can’t do it.  I don’t have the patience.” Prudence raises her eyebrows but says nothing.  NOT having patience is one of the anti-virtues most likely to prompt her to get a run in her tights.  She also has strong thoughts about people who make Excuses instead of Efforts but at least she has the sense to take this rare opportunity to shut up.  “Patience” is a funny concept.  Personally, I don’t have the patience to sit still with idle hands! It drives me batty to go somewhere and forget my handwork.

The woman watches the yarn inching through my fingers, drizzling itself over the hook into tidy coils, like the watery sand-mud of a drip castle at the beach, then hardening into a firm line of neat, tight stitches. She sighs. “It sure must be Nice…” she says softly.  There is something about her wistfulness that melts me.  She feels a certain call, a certain yearning to be a Maker but she keeps churning up reasons why she cannot do it.

Normally, when I hear comments like “it must be nice…” (which I hear quite a lot actually! “it must be nice to be able to sew…it must be nice to be able to spin… it must be nice to be able to fix your own clothes for free…”) it brings to mind my Least Favorite Fairy Tale.  Perhaps you have heard it?

It’s a Grimm tale called “The Three Spinning Women,” first published by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm in 1812, and it is certainly grim, in every way.  Firstly, there is a daughter who refuses to spin flax so her mother beats her.  A queen, rolling by in her fine carriage stops and asks what all the ruckus is about. The mother, embarrassed for her lazy daughter, lies and says she cannot get the daughter to cease her incessant spinning and that the squeaking of the wheel is driving her nuts.   So the queen tells the mother to let her take the daughter back to the castle with her, where she can spin to her heart’s content. “I have plenty of flax for her to spin and there is nothing I like so well as the sound of a spinning wheel in use. I am never happier than when the wheels are humming!” (I heartily concur.  This is the only part of the story I agree with—the pleasantness of humming wheels, that is, not the kidnapping of other people’s daughters.) Back at the castle, the queen tells the terrified (yet still lazy girl) that if she spins three huge rooms worth of flax, that she shall have her son’s, the Prince’s, hand in marriage and one day inherit the kingdom. “I don’t mind if you are poor—for Cleverness and Industry are dowry enough.” (Ok, I agree with this line too.)  So the poor girl is locked in the first room with all the flax and cries herself to sleep.  (“We HOPE she is regretting her Laziness,” insists Prudence. “I’ll bet she’s saying “It Must Be Nice to be able to spin flax now! If only I had bothered to learn, instead of frittering my time away on Social Media and Sit-coms…”) The girl cries for three days because that is the rule in fairytales—things happen in threes. On the third day, three kind fairies show up—one with a big foot, one with a big thumb, and one with a big lip.  They tell the girl that they will spin all the flax for her if she will agree to invite them to her wedding, call them her aunts, and seat them with her at the table. She agrees. (People who are desperate and lazy will agree to pretty much anything.)  So the kindly “Aunts” spin all the flax for her and she gets to marry the prince.  As promised, the Lazy Bride invites the Aunts to her wedding, where the rude, outspoken prince questions them about their “deformities.” The one with the big foot says her foot grew large from treadling the wheel; the one with the lip says it grew from having to moisten the flax with her spit; the one with the thumb says it grew from the flax rushing through her hands as it was being spun.   The Prince is aghast.  He bans his new bride from ever spinning again because he wants nothing to spoil her beauty.  And they all live “Happily Ever After.” Yeah, right… (sound of retching noises from Prudence)

There is just so much that is annoying about this fairytale.

Yet I cannot help being fascinated by the idea that the constant spinning had somehow “deformed” the three aunts.  As a fellow spinner, I can say that different parts of our bodies DO come to “embody” the wisdom that comes with many repetitions.  There IS such a thing as “muscle memory.”  Understanding how to do something and being able to do it well are two completely different things.  For example, my left foot “knows” how to treadle the wheel but it can’t—I am completely “Right-footed” in much the same way that most people can only write their signature with their dominant hand.

Being able to “Do Things” is NOT nice.  When people comment, “It must be nice…” Well, No, actually, it isn’t.  People who can do or make things have been at it a long time.  They have sacrificed parts of their body to endless repetitions that create deep-tissue “knowing” and change their bodies and brains forever.  There is a tailor I know whose hand-sewn button-holes are a work of art.  I long to be able to sew buttonholes like he does.  But whereas I have only done mere hundreds, he has done thousands. Therein lies the difference.

People who do things well make them look “easy” and effortless—like it might be “Nice” to be in the middle of a flow like that, with such economy of effort for such a rich result. Because hard work eventually looks “easy” people begin to think it is “nice.”

Last weekend, I watched a friend dancing at a fundraiser for our favorite public radio station in Boston.  She was floating about the stage as if she was weightless, as if she were reaching down with her feet to hit the beat on the deck below her, instead of pushing up off the ground.  She dances as if most of her body is the liquid representation of Sound.  Someone next to me commented, “Wow, imagine dancing like that!  It must be nice to be able to move with such grace…” I nodded.  What I did not say to the admiring stranger is that my friend has been in a horrific two-year battle with Lyme disease to be able to move at all.  It’s not just Nice that she can dance like that—it’s miraculous—AND she earned every bit of that miracle through her own daily persistence and the strength of her spirit.

Writhing behind her on stage sat my son and his merry band of music-makers. Each slice of their fiddle bows cut open a vortex between worlds for pure notes to enter, gush, splash and splatter all over the slickened dance floor.  I stared with pride and awe. I envied their ease with their instruments, yet I know there is nothing “Nice” about being able to play like that.  All creativity begins as some form of self-defense. I have heard him for YEARS, practicing until the wee hours of the morning; driven to claim his Powers; striving to create his identity through Skills, rather than the jeers of misguided middle-school peers who labeled him differently as a result of his learning style. 

What it comes down to is that there are two kinds of people: the Makers and those who marvel and say “It must be Nice.” What the Makers do is love the thing they do more than they love their own comfort.  That’s it. They embrace the inconvenience of doing things badly in order to begin to do things well.  They take the time it takes. They risk. They grow. Their change their bodies with their minds.

The now-done laundry before me is a harvest I pick over critically, deciding what to cull and what to keep.  I can’t help thinking of the line from poet David Whyte, “anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you” as I sort. 

Our bodies DO change by what we teach them.  What we have to do to them over long and patient hours is not the least bit “Nice.”  We are not “deformed” as in the fairytale, but we are Re-formed in our own image of ourselves as Dancers, Doers, Makers, Givers.  That which brings us Alive can’t help but make us Bigger. “Beauty” might be something girls in fairytales are born with; Magnificence isn’t. 

Autumn is the season of fires and farewells, a time of hoarding away or discarding in the liminal space between the tender, languid riot of Summer and cold Permanence of Death.  Is there something that you think would be “nice” to do?  Is there a part of yourself you see in someone else’s habits or craft? Plant that bulb today and one day it will shine a Light from within. You DO have Time. Grab it, Claim it, Pummel it by the hours, bit by bit, until you know the full Meanness of what it is you have accomplished.  And someday, someone might look at you doing That Thing it is you have chosen to do and say “Wow, it must be nice…” and You, with your big feet, your big lips, your thick fingers and aching toes will say, “Damn…It’s NOT Nice. It’s MAGNIFICENT.”

Be well, my Darlings! Thanks for your Good Work.  I love you Sew Much!!!

Yours aye,

Nancy

The Story and the Teller...

“Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution -- more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.” - Lisa Cron, Wired for Story

Greetings Dear Ones!

An amazing and wonderful thing happened to me the other day. Some children came to visit Hermit Hollow.  They weren’t just any children—they were sweet, old-fashioned, Magical children! (“Like the kind YOU were before video games were invented,” says Prudence.) They knew how to cup their hands to make fine china for make-believe tea; they knew how to take a blanket and throw it over a chair and make a palace or a cave; and they knew how to transform instantly into any kind of creature from pigs to kitty-cats, complete with authentic sound effects.  I crawled into their Shanty Blanket town and fell in love.  I was supposed to be “getting a lot done” on my day off from the tailoring shop. I was supposed to be doing office work and laundry and spinning wool into yarn I can sell, as well as a myriad of other useful, Boring things. Grudgingly, I pulled out the spinning wheel first, thinking it might entertain the children while their father talked with the other men of Hermit Hollow about Serious Grown-up Things.

“Do you know the story of Rumplestiltskin?” I asked. They did. 

“And Sleeping Beauty?” They nodded. They were up on their fairy tales.

“We’ve heard them all,” insisted the five-year-old politely. Her name is Ruby Rose and she wasn’t being cheeky—it was the truth.  Her parents had read every last one, multiple times, to her and her brother Toddle-thump, who was only just two.  They had also read a good bit of the Red Wall books by Jacques and other classics like My Side of the Mountain and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle—so many of my favorites! Instantly, we had a common language. I was thrilled. Prudence finds it so depressing when youngsters today have no idea who is Rumplestiltskin!

“We live in a cabin in the woods,” said Ruby Rose, “just like Hansel and Gretel. And every day they read to us,” jerking her head vaguely in the direction of her father.  It turns out that this family, sired by an ex-marine who has seen multiple tours of duty around the world, lives off grid and goes to bed with the sun and stories every night.  There is no such thing as T.V., electronics of any kind, or even indoor plumbing. These little ones have known no other life than the one of a pump-handle well and bulk barrels of beans and rice. They play outside in all weather.  Inside is where you go if you are sick or need to sleep. Prudence was enchanted.

These Magical children lay on the floor by my smallest traveler’s wheel, passively watching it whir around and around as we discussed the merits of flax vs. wool and how much work Cinderella really had to do.  They liked feeling the wool with their hands and helping me treadle with their stubby little feet along side of mine, all of us barefoot.

After we had done a bobbin’s worth of spinning and chatting, I asked if they had ever played a real harp--harps being the original instruments of storytelling.  I was not surprised to learn that Ruby Rose already had her own tiny Celtic harp.  When I dragged mine out of its enormous, padded case, her eyes widened to the size of hens eggs.  “It’s HUGE!” she squealed, clapping both hands to her cheeks. It towered over both children. The two-year-old looked up at it longingly.

“Peas?” he said imploringly.

“He means ‘please may we touch?’” Ruby informed me in that tone big sisters have when they have to serve as translator-diplomats for younger siblings.

“Yes! Of course!” I said. “I only bring out the toys I want to share. You are so good at knowing how to touch things gently, I felt sure you could do a great job with my harp.  I’ve only had it a little while now and I can’t really play it yet.  But isn’t it Lovely?”

Ruby Rose looked at me and wrinkled her brow and button nose in confusion.  “What do you mean you don’t know how to play it??” she queried. “All you have to do is go like this!” She swept her hands across the strings, making them tremble with sounds, back and forth, back and forth, like the sound of the waves or wind. “See? Easy!” She looked at me reprovingly.  I nodded.  I love how most five-year-olds are such excellent problem solvers. There was no point in trying to explain about hand positions and scales and whatnot.  The way to play a harp is simply to play it. Just like that. Easy. We all laughed at my silliness.

“Want to see my favorite way to play it?” I asked. They nodded.

“I like to make up sounds to go with stories.  Maybe you can help me—what do you think the Giant’s voice might sound like?” They picked among the strings until they settled at the bass strings—the longest, deepest sounding ones.  They came up with scary sounds and rhythms that sounded like the rumblings of a discontented giant—or a stomach that should not have eaten mystery food of indiscernable sell-by date from the fridge.

“And where are the fairy voices?” I asked next.  They made their way to shorter strings and more cheerful melodies.  “How about the wind? How about the storm? How about tiny raindrops?”  On and on we went, exploring the ways we could make sounds on the harp.  Finally, we were complete with that.

“Good!” I announced. “We have found all the things we need to tell the BEST Story EVER.”  They started hopping up and down with glowing eyes.  It was like I had just announced we were having ice-cream for lunch. 

“Once Upon A Time…” I began, as they plopped down on the ground and attempted to twist their legs into pretzels, “There were two Adorable Children…”

“Named Ruby Rose and Toddle-thump!!!” piped Ruby Rose excitedly, as if she could not wait a moment longer for me to say that part of the introduction. She was wiggling all over and patting her own chest and Toddle-thump’s head proudly and expectantly. (If the Audience cannot expect to see itself in the story, why listen?)

“Yes,” I continued. “However did you Guess? They were called Ruby Rose and Toddle-thump! How did you know that?  Have you heard this story before?”  They looked at me wide-eyed and shook their heads. 

“Well, Ruby Rose and Toddle-thump lived in a beautiful cabin in the middle of the woods, just like you two, and just like Hansel and Gretel, and they were the bestly behaved children anyone had ever seen.  They loved to go into the woods and hear the sound of the wind singing through the branches…” I motioned to the harp and they jumped up to help make the sound of the wind singing in the branches.

“One day, it started to rain,” announced Ruby Rose in a Theatrical Voice, switching to rain sounds. “And Storm!” roared Toddle-thump going for the bass strings. There was the equivalent of a Nor-Easter on the harp for several moments.

“Shall I continue with my story now?  Is it safe? Has the storm passed?” I wanted to know.  Ruby Rose held up a hand to stop me. “I’ll take the story from here,” she said, dismissing me as if this were a horse only she knew how to ride.

Now, I’ve been a “Professional Story-teller” for nearly thirty years—telling tales in libraries, schools, festivals, and birthday parties all over New England.  I’m always on the look-out for great stories or new ways of telling old stories.  One of the Best things about working as a seamstress in the tailoring shop is that every single customer is a Character and every single article of clothing they drag in there is a Problem with a Deadline. What is a Character with a Problem? I’ll tell you what—it’s the making of a Story!   As you might surmise from scanning this blog, there is simply No End to the Stories in my corner of the Shire. That’s because the two Most Human things we do, the things that separate us fundamentally from every other creature on this planet, are Tell Stories and Wear Clothing.  (Sometimes I like to do them both at the same time!) For as long as people wear clothes and need them fixed, I will have stories to tell. Some of the stories are boring and tiresome but most are not. It depends on who is listening.

You might think that I would be insulted to be pushed aside so readily by a Five-year-old who had not done her time at the feet of Duncan Williamson or David Campbell years ago in Scotland, or spent her college days devouring the works of Joseph Campbell and the ancient Greeks.  Frankly, I was relieved—she was going to do the heavy lifting and I could just rest. I was tired. I was also Curious. What does she know of setting, plot, and rising action, pivotal moments, or satisfactory resolutions?

Well, Everything, it turns out.  Five-year-olds who have been read to consistently from birth are some of the Best storytellers in the world.  They use complex words like “incidentally” and “regrettably” (which almost always improve any story) and their plot twists are real zingers, especially if they sense the listener glazing over! I listened to her with my eyes and ears and whole skin and suddenly realized she was teaching me a Wonderful New Thing about Storytelling that I have always partially felt but never really thought about cognitively until today.  This little girl reminded me that the most important thing about any story is not the Teller, nor even the story itself:  It’s the Audience.  Masterfully, she kept checking in with me to see if I was engaged—was I listening or distracted? Was I overacting my reactions? Was I, heaven forbid, paying too much attention to the little brother? How her “audience” responded shaped her telling visibly, audibly, continually. 

There is a holy Trinity between Performer, Craft, and Audience, in every art form—whether one is performing fiddle tunes, writing for the Tightwad Gazette or staging an Opera. Even hemming a wedding gown.  The Rules are universal—the audience must know it is Valued. The circle cannot be completed without achieving some sort of capacity to Receive, engage, ignite or delight. You can strike flint on steel all day long but without some form of tinder to catch it, there’s no fire.  If you are performing because you want it to be all about “you,” so that You can be loved, then you may wind up very sad.  If you are sharing something you love so that others might love it too, you might get a few more takers.  But to really hit the big time, you have to love your listeners.  Ruby Rose showed me that a good storyteller loves her stories.  A GREAT storyteller loves her audience. I could tell because we all got “squgged” at the end. (A squg is a squeeze + hug, she explained.)

I’m so glad these wee teachers came to visit!  I’m so glad I “got nothing done”— Sometimes, what I lose in forward motion, I gain in depth by sitting still and Listening.  And remembering the truth about Stories is probably the most valuable thing I have done in weeks.   It’s all about YOU, dear readers.  If you cannot see yourselves in these tales, and remember who it is we are deciding to love by doing our Best Work, then I’d better go back to mending socks and making anonymous thunderstorms on a harp. Or laundry… Yuck.  Who wants to do that?

Be well, my Darlings!  And be on the lookout for good stories!  They are all around us, like pumpkins and mums this time of year. We need them now, more than ever (stories, that is, not pumpkins and mums!), as the nights begin to gnaw away the margins of the day and we must seek Sunlight Substitute by the hearth. Stories not only bond us to other humans, they are the most human thing we can create, besides a pair of jeans that don’t fit. I wish you warm and merry, with many fond tales to tell and listeners to hear your love.  I love you sew much.

Yours aye, incidentally, with a big tight “squg”,

Nancy

Needs, Wants, and Desires...

“Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and the Damned 

Greetings Dear Ones!

A Cheeky little bridesmaid who has nipped in for a fitting just before closing time pops her gum and looks at her phone as I write up her slip.  Her gown needs to have the shoulders taken up, the sides taken in and three layers hemmed but she has forgotten her shoes so we have no idea how much. She will have to come back for a second fitting. “How soon do you hope to get this done?” I ask. “Is there a rush? When is the wedding?”

“Oh, no…” she says blithely, still looking at her phone. “There’s no rush.  I don’t need it until Friday.”

“This Friday?” I say, eyebrows raised, noting with a sense of panic that it is already Tuesday after 5:pm.

She gives me a startled, is-there-a-problem-with-that look.   “I don’t NEED it until Friday,” she says again with emphasis, as if this should fix everything.  

“I NEED this by Friday/Today/Tomorrow/2:pm….” We hear some version of this almost daily.  It always sends Prudence into some sort of rampage. “Oh really?” she screeches. “Need? Seriously NEED? As in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Is this a physiological need? Are you planning to eat this gown to survive the winter? Or are you simply going to shelter in it as near to a buffet table as you can manage? Is it necessary for your safety, security or health? Is it your key to love and belonging? Esteem? Self-actualization? Do you have any idea what Real Needs are? Would you ever guess that there is a woman who uses our cutting table to make cloth, washable, reusable maxi-pads for homeless girls in Africa? What exactly do you think a NEED is, Madam? Perhaps the verb you seek is DESIRE. You desire to have this work done at your earliest convenience, if no one else’s!”  

Needs, Wants, Desires… What a struggle for us all!  You know that if I begin a blog with a quote about “desires” I must have spent the past weekend at the Vermont Sheep and Wool festival wrestling myself out of a lot of “wants” masquerading as “needs.”  No, Nancy my love, you do not NEED some Icelandic lambs no matter how silky their fleece feels to touch (nor ANY lambs for that matter—back AWAY from that beautiful morrit Shetland ewe!), nor do you need rainbow-dyed roving when you have TEN trash bags full of roving ready to spin already (yes, but it’s not rainbow…), or an antique CPW spinning wheel with a wobble… It’s exhausting to listen to my inner self begging in such a degrading manner.  She really should have been a lawyer, the way she can make cases for the Absurd, without a trace of irony or guilt. It’s like taking a toddler to Disney Land. It’s a jolly good thing my inner parent brought only enough money to pay for admission and lunch!

At the end of the day, when I return to Hermit Hollow and sit by the fire spinning my dull grey roving, I find myself very much amused and contented.  Desires are a wonderful way to tell us if we are on the right track—if we want more of what we already have, then it’s a twisted form of Gratitude, I suppose.  If you leave a session hungry to play more music; if you leave a dance looking forward to the next dance; if you enjoy your work and want to do more of it after a break—it’s quite possible that you are a Very Lucky Person indeed.  

A grandmother who recently attended her town’s Fall Fair comes into the shop.  She presents us with some pink fur and some other glittery fabric.  “I need you to make a unicorn pillow for my five-year-old granddaughter,” she says. “She did not win one at the fair and it was a disaster.  A Total melt-down. I looked at it and thought it was a cheap piece of crap anyway.  I don’t know why she even wanted it. I figure you can make her something better.”  We all smile at the little grandmother hobbling away from the shop, confident that she can make her granddaughter’s new and improved dream come true.  Prudence shakes her head in wonder. “Who says dreams have to come true?” she wants to know.   I find it endearing and also slightly naïve that this loving grandmother thinks she can edit and substitute and still satisfy her granddaughter’s longing to Win something, long after the moment has passed—kind of how my parents used to say our own home-grown beef burgers, running with pink juice between two square slabs of home-made whole wheat bread were “better than McDonald’s.” No kid in her right mind will buy that!  So many of our desires, no matter how fiercely irrational they are, are just of the moment.  Desires are like hunger pains—they come and pass all day long.   Sometimes it’s better to just go hungry.  Who knows if this kid will even want a unicorn pillow by the time we are done constructing it?

When my children were little, and especially at Fairs, I used to make them crazy by having them distinguish between needs and wants. “Darling, you need food, you want ice-cream… I buy the needs, you buy the wants.”  (They still bristle to this day when I ask if a purchase is a want or a need!) Recently, I got curious about the difference between these two and looked up the etymologies.  By now, I have read enough conflicting reports to realize I know Nothing for Certain, which seems like a very scholarly result:  It turns out that “wants” and “needs” actually were once very similar! No wonder so many children still confuse them. The word “want” as in “lack” comes from an old Norse word, vant, and relates to an Old English word wanian (i.e. wane) which meant “to diminish.”  The noun “need” comes from the West Saxon “nied” and was used to convey peril, distress, lack, necessity or hardship.  It comes from an older, Proto-Germanic root nauti- “death, to be exhausted” which gives rise to Gothic naus “corpse”, Old Irish naunae “famine, shortage”, and Russian nuzda “misery.”  It comes into English as “a means of subsistence” by c 1400.  

When these Germanic “needs” and “wants” get tangled up with the Latin “desire” is when things get interesting. (Who among you is NOT surprised that “desire” is derived from a Romance language?)  Since about the 13th Century, we have tended to agree that “to desire” is to long for or hope for something that is missing or absent.  It may or may not be a “need”—as in a Lover’s desire to be loved, a mouse’s desire for cheese, a Jack Russell’s desire to soil clean carpets… and so on.  But the old Latin definitions seem to suggest the word arises from a combination of de (meaning “away, of, or from”) and sider or sidus (meaning “star” or “constellation”).   Interestingly, the word “consider” seems to have the same root—translating roughly as “with the stars”—as in thinking about something via a form of fortune-telling using astrology or omens from the stars.  But I digress.  There is a newer theory now that an older, non-celestial meaning for “desire” is actually along the lines of “target, mark, or goal.” This too makes sense given that early humans navigated travels by steering by the stars.

As humans, we cannot escape our desires. Christians have a long history of believing that desires, especially carnal ones, were “temptations” sent by the devil to lead us, not upward, by the stars, but to Hell.  As if getting what we want is worse for us than not getting it—that we can be somehow even redeemed by forgoing our wants and “offering them up” as internal sacrifices towards points on our ultimate salvation-tally score-card.  Buddhists would have us believe that Desire and Ignorance lie at the root of our suffering.  And clearly, any grandmother who has witnessed her favorite five-year-old NOT win a unicorn pillow at a Fall Fair has indeed Suffered.  They don’t see “desires” as emanating from the stars but as base human cravings for pleasure and material goods and wants that can never be satisfied.  (The Buddhists, that is; not the five-year-olds.) Suffering is the result of desiring what we cannot have. (And also of dealing with five-year-olds.)  The absence of Desire is Nirvana.  But then, this must also be the absence of antique Canadian Production Wheels, and rainbow-dyed roving, and unicorn pillows, and cheesecake…. And… Who in their right mind wants THAT???

What if the ancients were right—that Desires are “of the stars” which guide us to who we really are and where we really need to be? We may, like the stars themselves, never actually reach them, but they inspire us to work harder, make sacred choices (sacrifices).  Of course, there are a myriad of stars and Desires. Some are not so good. It’s a good thing we have Free Will and access to homemade rainbow socks.  The journey back from where-we-should-never-have-gone-in-the-first-place can be a long one.

Ultimately, we are all “of the stars.”  The sheep’s wool I spin each night by the fireside begins as sunlight hitting grass, which turns to sugar via photosynthesis, which is eaten, belched up and eaten again multiply times by the animal, until it works its way into a follicle and turns into keratin strands, heaps of which I carve off their sweaty bodies each June.  Even the logs aglow on the hearth began as light hitting a forest and return to light on dark autumn nights.

What is our Job while we are here but to Be and bring Light in every form—from  woolen socks to unicorn pillows? And Desires light our path to Light.  What if our Desires are not hungers but instead Food? How we receive them, how we deny them, how our desires evolve as we mature and take on new wisdom—these are the ways we grow in Light and Love—so that one day, when someone meets us or our work, they feel a sense of warmth, of blessing.  Willa Cather, one of my favorite authors of all time, says in The Song of The Lark:  “The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.”

So… When do you actually “need” those pants hemmed? And how will having them hug your bum just right help me bring Light to this world?

Be well, my Darlings!  Thank you for your Good Work!

Loving you to itty-bitty sparkling bits,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Exquisite Inconvenience

Greetings Dear Ones!

I have missed you! I apologize sincerely for the recent lapse in blogs.  I know it was only two (and some of you may not even have noticed) but I have been adrift on rough and wild seas.  I am writing to you now, battered yet resilient, amidst the rubble of the shipwreck of yet another “former” life.  I have sold my cozy homestead in the Enchanted Forest and moved to the wilds of Southern Vermont, where the kindly and beloved hermits of Hermit Hollow have taken me in, along with the sheep and dogs and mountains of clutter I don’t know what to do with.  I don’t think it’s appropriate to get into all the whys and wherefores at the moment—just that it seems to be part of a Grand Plan I’m trusting. 

As with all Epic Battles, the intervening weeks have been an interesting blend of the hideous and ludicrous.  Had Homer known such things in his day, he most certainly would have included in his sagas such tribulations as having the buyer’s bank lawyer research the wrong title, say it was not clear, and temporarily deny funding to the buyer; having the seller mend all the old screens in her attic (at great inconvenience and expense) only to discover that they were not even the screens to the windows of her house. There would be much screeching and gnashing of teeth directed at monsters posing as garage-door-repairmen who put “company policy” over customer satisfaction; most of the army would drop a KitchenAid mixer on its head at least once; and a very tired little witch would drive to Vermont with a fully loaded vehicle, arrive at midnight, sleep four hours and drive back to the cottage in the morning without ever unloading the vehicle! (And not even notice until she opens the door and wonders blearily why she cannot put in any more stuff…)

So! September, which always feels like the “real” New Year to me, packed a wallop! Many hijackings of time and energy propelled me willingly and unwillingly through a series of sheddings and Passages—all of which, oddly, feel like Births.  A dear lady is gone whose life needs to be commemorated with fiddle tunes and tears.  My daughter’s Birth was celebrated for a 22nd annum. (Last week, my own birthday was cancelled due to lack of interest but I seem to have aged a hundred years anyway, instead of the customary “one.”)  New Life, Deep Changes, Exquisite Inconveniences of Epic Proportions…these have Mothering written all over them.  The New tears itself away from the old, amidst much grieving and bleeding, so that it can go forth, rise in glory, learn a few new tunes, and then borrow your car keys forevermore.   Behind every New Beginning is a Mother—someone who claims “YES. Let’s do this. Let’s dive into the Mystery of ‘what if?’ and find out if it kills us.”

I have been thinking about Mothering a lot.

It began two weeks ago.  Inevitably, my slacking-until-the-last-minute collided with the one thing that could trump anything else I do—the needs of my children.  So, at 5 a.m., instead of writing a blog about all the pregnant bridesmaids I have been seeing lately or packing up my yarn collection, I was in the Emergency Room of the local hospital, being A Mother myself, and watching my nineteen-year-old blow the most dainty smoke rings using the mix of albuterol and oxygen the staff had given him to open his cramping lungs.  I was awash in all those usual “mothering” feelings—concern, fear, tenderness, pity, relief and VEXATION—colliding and cascading with their usual turbulence.  He had come home the evening before to help pack and been up all night with a full-blown asthma attack.  He had not had one for so many months he was no longer in the habit of carrying his inhaler—which was back in Boston. He lay on the gurney, blowing the smoke rings and giggling just to tease me, now that he could breathe again.  He saw my face, then got quiet and said, “Sorry Mum… No…really.  I’m really sorry for this inconvenience.”

THAT made me laugh!  Inconvenience indeed…

What is Motherhood, or parenting in general, but the most Exquisite Inconvenience?  Just ask all the pregnant bridesmaids!  It seems like there has been at least one in each wedding party we have done all summer—some poor girl who had no idea her belly would be this size when she ordered her dress six months ago.  “Can you do anything to disguise this bump?” they ask. As what? I wonder—a beach ball you happen to be carrying? A watermelon you can’t put down? “I don’t want to look this big in all the photos!” they whine.  [Side bar: WHEN are we going to convince the women of this planet that there is nothing more gorgeous that a radiant young woman swollen with impending New Life?]  “What if I don’t like this?” a pregnant bridesmaid asks, scowling at her mid-section in the mirror… I’m not sure if she is talking about the changes we are making to her dress or the ones Life is making to her Life.  “Oh, Honey,” I assure her, “the dress is going to be fine. And so are you.” But I think privately, “and you are going to HATE some parts of motherhood like you had no idea Hate could hate! But parts of it you are going to love beyond describing.  You aren’t going to lose yourself—you are going to find yourself.” “Yes,” says Prudence, “a Whole Lot of Yourself.  You may never fit into a size six again.”  I continue.  “You might have to forfeit your waistline and a perky bust for the rest of your time on earth but you will have hand-colored macaroni strung on yarn necklaces that will be nicer than any jewelry you can imagine, and one day, when someone does a turd in the potty, you will clap as if they had just won an Oscar. Your Joy will be Boundless.”  She wrinkles her nose in doubt. Perky tits for turds does not feel like a good trade to her. (YET.)

Talking about the ambivalence of motherhood makes some people uncomfortable.  It’s as if those who have decided to play the role of “Mother” in Life’s docu-dramas are to stick to apple pies, serving milk, and kissing boo-boos—never lifting the curtain on the horrors of hemorrhoids, insomnia, bladder incontinence or other Exquisite Inconveniences.  I say we need to claim it ALL.  Survival is the ultimate in Feminine Power.

Long before I had my first child, I was deeply suspicious of what motherhood would entail.  I had gone to a cafeteria style restaurant with some friends—the kind where you pick up your napkins and cutlery at the end of the line.  Without thinking, I brought enough napkins and forks for everyone.  Sure enough, they had overlooked this and were gushing with gratitude at my practicality and thoughtfulness.  “You’re going to be such a great Mom!” they said.  When I cleared the table, I heard “Thanks Mom!”  I started noticing when people talked about “great” mothers, they were not talking about women who slept until noon, hiked the Hindu Kush or brokered power deals in Real Estate.  They were usually talking about the lady voted most likely to clean up the mess. 

My personal concept of Motherhood crystallized the day of my grandmother’s funeral.  I was 32 years old, 32 weeks pregnant with my son, and had just been released from two months of bed-rest due to pre-term labor.  The only reason I was leaving the house was to attend the Life celebration of a beloved woman I adored and for whom I had been named.  My feet were too swollen to fit into any of my nicer shoes so my mother loaned me her black clogs, which were a size larger than mine and easy to get on my feet.  I wore a huge black raincoat over the maternity romper that would not have looked appropriate at a funeral.  (Why do maternity clothes make gestating women look like overgrown toddlers? We are having the babies, damn it, not dressing like them!)

My daughter, who at two and a half was going through “a difficult phase,” was dressed in a white gown with an ankle-length blonde wig over her sweaty curls, topped with a tiara and a magic wand.  Rounding out her ensemble were fairy wings and red glittery shoes on the wrong feet.  She had missed her nap and was in a nasty mood.  She was vastly displeased at having to sit with me on the hard pews and be quiet.  She alternated between doing an annoying, boneless sort of wiggling in my arms and swatting me with the magic wand.  Three quarters of the way through the ceremony, I had had enough.  She needed to go outside and stop distracting everyone. I grabbed her with more savagery than I am proud of, slammed her on what could be found of my hip after the belly had consumed it, and march-waddled quickly out the side door of the cathedral while she shrieked and hit me over the head with her wand.  As soon as I pushed hard on the heavy outer door, I froze.  I could barely breathe. A contraction gripped me and I knew I was about to wet my pants.  Somehow it passed and I made it outside, where it was pouring rain.  Another contraction hit. I would not make it too many steps before my bladder burst.  I scanned furtively for some bushes where I could relieve myself.  Up ahead, in the mist, I spied some large rhododendrons that would serve nicely.  Still balancing the raging fairy/troll on my hip, with no way to see my feet over the belly, I squatted in the bushes and tried not to fall over as I filled my mother’s shoes with warm urine.  “Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do!” gasped Prudence Thimbleton in horror moments later when we crawled out from under the bushes and discovered I had taken my much-needed piss at the feet of the shrine to the Virgin Mary!  There she was, towering above us in the pelting rain, a gentle, sorrowful smile on her face—looking as many mothers often do, as if she knew she should admonish me but couldn’t keep a straight face.  I closed my eyes, slipped off my shoes, and just stood there in the pouring rain, holding a bedraggled but now-quiet fairy princess. “So…” I thought, “It’s come to THIS…”

Whenever I think about Motherhood, I cannot help but think of that moment—the panic, the pain, the irony, the humor, the weakness, the strength, the need for good shoes—it’s all there, in the truly Human intertwining of the Sacred and Profane—where we do our best and yet make a Mess—a mess no one else will clean but Us mothers—by that, I mean ANYONE who participates with the Divine Feminine in saying “Yes. Ok, now what?”  

As I parent myself through this next chapter and rejoin my Fellow Travelers on this journey, it’s good to remember one other, gooey truth of every Birth:  We keep the BABY—not the Placenta.  We thank all that which has nourished us and fed us to this point. It was necessary and non-negotiable. But to carry some things beyond the need for them, be they possessions, relationships, or ideas, would be um, either problematic or downright disgusting.  Burn them or bury them, thank them and bless them and move on.  Some things are absolutely Vital (i.e. Life-giving) until the moment they need to be shed—then to hang on to them means possible infection or death. The Past belongs to the Past.  (And so do all our clothes that no longer fit! Don’t drag them to a bewildered seamstress and expect miracles!) As Wayne Dyer says “The Wake of the Boat does not steer the ship.”   We each must ask ourselves, “Do I really need the whatever-made-me-Who-I-Was in order to evolve gracefully into Who I Really Could Be? Do I still require food or beverages or relationships which are potentially toxic? Do I really need FIVE spinning wheels, an equal number of sewing machines, and All these Shoes??? (Yes, yes, I really do!) (These astonished hermits have no idea what just hit them!) As someone who has just culled half of her possessions and needs to cull more, I understand how bitter these sacrifices can be—and how Liberating!

I’m grateful to be back in the shop today—looking forward to a new season of Mending and Stitching and lovingly (or grittily) embracing All That Comes!  I wish you, Dear Ones, Good Transitions, happy New Beginnings, Fond and Grateful Farewells, and plenty of Autumn Pumpkin Spice wherever you may be.  Thank you for your Patience and your Good Work.  I love you so much.

Yours aye,

Nancy

Children and Animals

If you hold a cat by the tail, you learn things you cannot learn any other way.”—Mark Twain

Greetings Dear Ones!

You might not believe it, but we are swamped (again) in the shop.  It’s almost as bad as prom season. I explain to a man that it might be a few weeks before we can get his five suit jackets tailored because we have so many wedding parties and bridal gowns with immanent deadlines to do ahead of his order.  It seems like half the county is getting married on September 20th.  His brow furrows in befuddlement.

“Weddings?” he asks. “Really??? People are still doing that?”  The combination of his stunned look and the ambiguity of his question hits me sideways and breaks me into giggles.  I don’t bother to clarify whether he means “I thought June was the month for weddings; who gets married in the Fall?” or “Really? People are still dressing up in thirty yards of silk and lace, eating cake with too much icing, and promising to love each other truly until Death grants one an end to the how-to-squeeze-the-toothpaste debate?” (From the Bottom! Insists Prudence vehemently. What kind of Neanderthal would ever do otherwise?)  I just nod. He shrugs.  “Ok then,” he sighs with reluctant acquiescence, “call me whenever they’re done.”

Yes, it’s Wedding Season in full tilt.  If there’s one thing that New England does almost as well as cider donuts and pumpkin lattes, its starched white steeples etched against cobalt blue skies, every shade of fire in the maples and oak leaves, and stunning old mills with waterfalls as the backdrop of wedding photos.  Throw in a horse-drawn carriage and some pumpkins and Cinderella-for-the-day could not be happier.   The photo opportunities will be perfect, especially when all the Ugly Stepsisters’ gowns (the gowns are ugly, not the stepsisters!) are hemmed so that their big feet and horn-like toenails with chipped summer pedicures don’t show. With all that magical pageantry going for it, you would think people would not have to involve children or animals in the matrimonial circus.   

BUT… NO….

People hosting and planning weddings are usually amateurs under pressure and they have forgotten the number one rule of Show Business: Never Work with Animals or Children. Especially children your siblings have given birth to!  That is, unless you WANT your rental tuxes returned with their pockets glued together by sweaty gummy bears.

Don’t think I am saying that children don’t belong at weddings. Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Weddings are about celebrating Family—of course they should be there!  It’s the best chance ever to mingle with fun cousins and get into just enough mischief to get a glare from an Aunt or Uncle but not a spank from your mother.  Children should be there to snitch olives off the hors d’ouvres table and sneak sodas and compare bike-riding scabs. Totally.  Just not in matching silk outfits they are expected to keep clean for formal pictures.   

One family of sisters comes into the shop to get SIX tiny, matching white dresses—each with about ten yards of tulle and a huge satin bow—tailored for six little girls under the age of four.  These sisters have a favorite brother who is getting married to a naïve woman who thinks it will be Just Adorable to have all the little niece-in-laws in her wedding.  (Have I mentioned that the ceremony is scheduled right smack at nap-time?)  The grandmother, who is in the shop to help wrangle the little ones in and out of their dresses, confides “I don’t know what she is thinking! They might as well set six live ferrets down at the end of the aisle and hope one of them makes it to the altar.”  The mothers look stressed out.  One child is climbing the grandmother like a jungle gym, another is eating crayons.  One has stripped herself of her clothes and is now wandering the shop.  One won’t take her dress off; the other won’t put it on.  These sister want to love their brother’s deluded bride, truly, they do… 

Another young bride comes in and says we need to make a waistcoat for her dog—she wants it to have a little pillow for the wedding rings attached to the back.  He also needs a matching bow tie.  He is going to be the ring bearer.  This makes total sense to me.  You can train a dog to do things.  They will have much better luck getting a dog down the aisle than six toddlers missing nap-time.  In fact, why does this chick even need a husband? If you want someone who will listen to you every time, do everything you tell them to do, and always be there for you for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, a dog is really your best bet.   Unless, of course it is a Jack Russell! But I’m not sure Jack Russells are actually dogs—they are more like tiny, spiteful people who made a wrong turn in the karmic cycle of rebirth and came back in fur pajamas with a serious Attitude problem.  But I digress…

Funny, I have yet to see anyone ever have a cat be a ring-bearer. Does anyone do this? A veterinarian once told me that cats have 32 muscles in their ears—all devoted to ignoring commands from you—that can locate the sound of a tin opener sixteen miles away. People think cats are un-trainable but that is not true.  You can train a cat to do anything it wants to do in the first place.  I’ve heard tell that you can even train them to use a proper toilet instead of a litter box to relieve themselves. Without getting the seat wet, or leaving it up!  What adult male human can manage that?

Cats figure in weddings more than you know.  For one thing, they are irresistibly drawn to wedding dresses for some reason.  We warn every bride who comes to collect her finished gown—“Don’t let cats near this!” They love to climb the dresses, nestle in the layers, and the plastic covering we put over the gowns is a major suffocation danger.  We warn every one--the Dog owners look mystified. Cat owners nod knowingly.

I am in the dressing room with a nervous bride and her mother for a first fitting.  The mother is pointing out all the places where the beading has come a little loose on the gown and will need to be tightened.  To me, the dress, though “new” looks a little shop-worn—like too many people have tried it on.  Maybe it was last-year’s model.  Maybe they got a deal.  I don’t judge; I just make mental notes or put pins where I see things that need to be mended or tweaked.  The bride, who has been twisting and turning to see herself from every angle, suddenly notices all that I am noticing and turns to her mother.  “Was this like this in the shop?  I don’t remember all these loose beads.”  The mother looks like a balloon that has been slowly filling up with water.  Finally, she gushes:

“Ok!  I didn’t want to tell you this but I had the dress lying out on the dining table because it was too long to hang in the closet.  I figure it is safe to tell you now.  The cat has been getting up on it. She LOVES it. Finally, I put the dress in its garment bag to protect it and it’s a good thing I did.  The cat threw up on it. Don’t worry; it didn’t get on the actual dress.  Just the bag and I washed that…  Wha-at!? Don’t look at me like that!  It’s FINE.”  The mother turns to me.  “I’m so glad you’re here. I did not feel safe telling her this alone.” She turns to the daughter, who looks like she has smoke coming out of both ears, “Really, Darling.  Don’t be upset. It’s FINE.”

It’s true.  There is something about animals and wedding dresses.  There is something about the pristine that just attracts the dirty.  I have made several wedding dresses for friends and family over the years.  To my HORROR, one of my dogs once lifted his leg on the bottom edge of one of the dresses as it rested on the mannequin in my sewing room. I had to cut that entire pattern piece out of the dress, buy more fabric, and remake the dress.  (If you are reading this, and I once made a wedding dress for you, don’t worry—it was probably, hopefully, ABSOLUTELY  not YOUR dress!)

Regardless of the specific details, Weddings are about celebrating a new Family Union.  We come together creatively and collectively to make a memory—though in all honesty, one Spouse will never remember and the other will never forget precisely on WHICH calendar day this Memory occurred.  But from this day forth, Children and animals are really what it is all about—why not involve them from Day One? They bring chaos and chaos brings Opportunities.   Opportunities are where we choose our Fabulousness or hideousness for the growth of our Souls.  I have been talking with my children a lot lately about how “we have no more Problems… Problems are a thing of the past.  What we have instead are sudden New Priorities!”  

Involving Children and animals in a formal celebration will provide a lot of New Priorities for their handlers.  (Priorities that probably involve paper towels and wet-wipes.)  Ultimately—each wedding leads to new birth—more children, more animals—more of Life seeking Itself.  They might not necessarily be those of the Bride and Groom, but trust me, New Life will result!  Just ask all the pregnant bridesmaids I’ve been fitting lately! Apparently, nothing makes a woman more fertile than ordering a three-hundred-dollar dress in January and pledging to stay a size 10 until October!

Be Merry and Well, my darlings!  Remember that Mirth is your shield against all ills.  When Chaos presents its choices—choose Love! It’s always there. I promise. I love you all so much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Uniformity

“The uniform is that which we do not choose, that which is assigned to us; it is the certitude of the universal against the precariousness of the individual.” ― Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel

 Greetings My Darlings!

August’s race is nearly at the finish line. Already, we’ve had two crisp nights in the 50’s (Farenheit) and just like that it is time to castrate the Spring lamb (who is suddenly having carnal desires for an elderly nursemaid ewe)(and pretty much anything else with a pulse). Sheep become amorous when the temperature drops… It is also time to round up all the children, scrape the pine pitch off their shins, wash the greasy matts out of their manes, stuff their little hooves into shoes and send them off to school with  conciliatory backpacks with unicorns or superheroes  on them. (Homeschoolers can still roam feral for another month…)  Like the last of the garden squash and tomatoes, it’s time to pull Summer up by its roots and neuter it.

School Uniforms have been flooding the shop in recent weeks, as local families return from their beach holidays and realize that their gritty little Christians, who smell vaguely of hermit crabs, need to be slip-covered in Tartan post haste.  An array of pleated skirts lines the ironing board, awaiting moved buttons and raised hem lines.  Elsewhere, some tiny pinafore jumpers need lengthening.   It brings waves of nostalgia over me as I realize how yet another generation of students is going to get to look as much like misshapen upholstery as I did, over forty-five years ago.  Not one damn thing has changed.  But then, is that not the very definition of “Uniform”?  From the Latin: You (as in you are no longer)/Knee (as in these cannot show)/Form (prepare to be molded).  

I will never forget the moment I introduced the concept of a uniform to my five-year-old daughter many years ago.  We had enrolled her in a local pre-kindergarten program that required them all to wear matching  grey track suits.  GREY. Solid grey…For a five-year-old GIRL who had slithered around the floor in a mermaid costume since the age of three.  Her wardrobe contained nothing that did not have some eye-watering combination of Pink, Purple, Glitter, Cheetah print—or, God forbid, all of the above—accessorized by an abundance of gaudy jewels, plastic shoes, and sunglasses.  I had to plan my moment well: close enough to 5 o’clock so that I could have a stiff drink, not so close to bedtime that she was up all night with night-terrors.  It was worse than I thought. “Why do they want us to look so UGLY?” she sobbed. 

“It’s not that they want you to look ugly, dear heart, they just want you to look the SAME.” 

“Then why can’t we all be in rainbow clothes with sparkly wings?” she wanted to know.  I had no good answer for that.  Left to their own devices, every girl in her class (and maybe some of the boys) would have turned up in Princess ball gowns.

She returned from her first day disgusted.  “You said we would learn to read at school and we didn’t.  And, since we all look the same, they don’t know who we are. We have to wear name tags,” she said, picking off her sticker.

Back in my day (how little-old-lady-ish that sounds!) we had one or two dresses for church on Sunday, the school uniform Monday-Friday 7:am-3:pm, and barn or “play” clothes otherwise.   The only time we could dress how we really wanted was on Halloween.   In High School, on rare occasions, usually to line the coffers of some worthy cause, we could pay a small fee on sanctioned “dress down” days and wear clothing other than our uniforms. Those days were awful.   Neither a church dress nor grubby jeans would catapult one to the top of the popularity poll—but either was far preferable to being the ONLY wretch still in her uniform when everyone else was going wild in their preppy, 1980’s argyle sweater vests, button-down polo shirts and loafers!  Then, it was not a uniform at all.  It was the thing that announced in LOUD plaid that you were a Total Goober to all who could bear to look at you.   Uniforms are only uniforms if everyone else is wearing them.

Well, that’s what I used to think, until I heard about Steve Jobs and how he chose to wear the same thing every day.  What a great idea!  Twelve years of my life were spent wearing the same thing nearly every day.  I could tell the time and the day of the week just by looking down.  One sister (not the fashionable one) and I would sometimes sleep in our uniforms to save effort in the mornings.  I know that sounds repellant—but wearing a uniform had nothing to do with taking pride in our appearance or identity.  It was purely about convenience.  What is more convenient than waking up already dressed? (Prudence thinks the people lurking in the frozen food section of the local Market Basket in their pajamas may have taken this one step too far…)  

As a result, I never really learned to dress myself appropriately until I had my own resident fashion consultant in the form of a Teenage Daughter.   Yes, that grubby little mermaid who used to dry-mop the dusty floors with her homemade glittery tail, who used to “swim” under huge swaths of sheer blue fabric to collect trinkets and seashells, wound up having a far more advanced fashion sense than I.   If it were up to me, I would be like a Von Trapp child, roaming the countryside in up-cycled draperies and yodeling.

There is really no evidence to suggest that uniforms make us better learners—if anything, they truncate the portion of one’s brain that is required to get dressed in the morning.  But they do teach us to find our safety through clothing.   They clothe our cowardice.  Our tribe claims us as members as we become transformed from one who wears the uniform to the Property of the Uniform.  Attempts to get us all to think alike, just because we all look alike don’t always work either.   Back then, our individuality worked its way out in the form of French braids and hair ribbons. Without realizing it, uniforms actually promote personality over attire.  One learns to look for more subtle clues about who someone else really is.

From the moment we were out of sight of our parents, until the homeroom bell rang, we were doing our best to heighten our individuality through the use of staples to hike up the hemlines, rolling our knee socks into patterns around our ankles, and that glaring, daring, dash for dangerous  sensuality—clear lip-gloss.  Don’t think for a minute that we had no idea who the “pretty” girls and boys were.  We did.  And more importantly, we knew who wasn’t.  (Every single one of us, it turns out.) (I thought it was just me.) At the time of our lives when we were desperate to be cool and sexy and fascinating—we were just like my little wee ram lamb—confused hormonal teenagers trying to get the attention of fellow beings who just found us annoying.

When we graduated, there were those who vowed to burn their uniforms.  I never did.  I had a Stockholm syndrome kind of relationship with it.  Secretly, I am very fond of scratchy woolen skirts.   Who’s to say if wearing a uniform is a denial of human rights or the crushing of individuality?  Do they promote school spirit?  I think all these arguments are highly improbable.  Rather, it interests me to think about how “the bad guys” in movies are all dressed alike (think Storm Troopers in Star Wars) and “the good guys” are always some rag-tag band of individuals with non-uniform clothing.  In fact, usually, they are an odd assortment of people one might not think would otherwise be united except against some common enemy.   They come together despite their differences, to unite around problem-solving, shared values, and shared ideals—using wit, courage, and ingenuity in a hard fight that leads to their collective freedom from threatened oppression. Their tribal bonds are forged by commitments, not clothes.  How do we get more of THAT in our schools???

And meanwhile… What the hell should I wear today?

Be well my Dear Ones!  Whether you’ve been Bad in Plaid or not, have a wonderful day and keep doing your Good Work!  I love you so much.

Yours aye,

Nancy

The only Constant...

“We love the things we love for what they are…” –Robert Frost

Greetings Dear Friends,

Cricket season has arrived.  As I go about my morning livestock chores, they dive outwards beyond the toes of my boots shooshing through the waves of grassy morning dew like tiny black dolphins before the prows of ships.  I am both delighted and sorrowful to see them.  I know they are here, once more, to sing Summer’s Lullabye.  They herald Change.  For one whose entire focus, eight hours a day, is on making good Changes happen for other people and their clothing, I have to admit this secret: I don’t love Change.  Sometimes I want things to stay exactly Just The Way They Are, frozen in golden sunlight.

A bride brings in a dress she “just LOVES” but she wants the entire neckline and all the beaded mesh (which is lovely and modest) removed.  She wants her bare cleavage to bulge up more. She wants the thigh area of this A-line skirt taken in very snugly to create a mermaid sillouette that simultaneously shows off her voluptuous bummage and requires that she not sit down at all, ever, during her reception. She needs lace taken off here and beading added there and Way More Bling. Can’t have enough Bling to suit her.   She is the type of customer who brings a Volkswagon to a mechanic, hoping she can tinker with it until it turns into a Ferrari.

I work on this gown, which I have dubbed the “vampire gown” with considerable (and humbling) bitterness.  This thing seeks my blood.  I have stabbed my hands repeatedly with the thread-ripper and pins—each time running for the super glue to seal the leak before I accidentally stain the ivory silk.  The biggest wound comes as I am reapplying six yards of lace to the bottom of the hem and my index finger is unexpectedly bitten by the downward driving needle of the sewing machine. Without thinking, I yank my hand back and tear the flesh from the tip of the finger.  No amount of sucking or gluing is going to stop staining the Kleenex red.  The other seamstresses are cringing and expressing commiserating winces.  These “bites” happen rarely but they hurt.  It’s a savage little reminder to Pay Attention.  Things can change without warning.

While I wait for this fresh leak to stop, I bind my finger in a piece of linen and wait on other customers.   A young woman comes in to collect her gown—a simple wedding gown she is wearing on a beach this weekend.  She tries it on, looking radiant and glowing.  “I can’t see a single thing you did to this!” she exclaims.  “It looks as if this is exactly how it came from the shop!” She cannot contain her surprise and delight.  This leads one of the other seamstresses to comment under her breath, “honey, did you WANT it to look like crap? That’s why you came here. We’re Professionals! That means you’re not Supposed to see what we do!”   I know they take umbrage when customers are surprised that the work is good.  I think it’s fantastic.  I love it. It pleases me no end to “see no change.”  I prefer when things are better by pure, invisible Magic—when we can forget the Effort.

The next man in has three pairs of pants showing signs of severe waistband fatigue.  He pats his stomach and grins. “The summer grilling season has been too much for me,” he says. “You can tell—I ain’t been eatin’ salads. Can you let these out a touch? And by a touch, I mean as far as they can go?  They’re my thin pants.  I can't bear to switch to the fat pants yet.”  We all nod understandingly. This is the same man who comes in February, after six weeks’ worth of New Year’s Austerity Measures and has us take everything in.  I look at the exhausted pants.  I know them well.  They go out and in so often, they might come back as accordions in their next life. I think about Heraclitus, the Greek Philosopher who said “you cannot step twice in the same river.”  This man does not sit twice in the same pants—Change is the only Constant in his wardrobe.

Change is a Constant in Fashion too.  No sooner do we get all the men happily wearing pleated fronts and cuffs that catch everything from dust or falling Doritos to dog hair, then the fashion pendulum swings the other way and we taper their trousers until they are tourniquets.  Pleats are OUT, flat fronts are In.  May every bald or hairy ankle reveal its true glory to the world! Doritos will just have to land where they must.  With women, it’s waistlines.  No sooner have we got everyone shifted into low-rise jeans that show off the hint of bum crack and thong (so that we can all resemble plumbers mending a loo), then the tide rises and we go back to having high waists at our ribs.  Muffin tops are out; bums that climb half way up your back are in. They say you can tell how old toddlers are by what they can do.  I say you can tell how old their mothers are by where they have gotten off the fashion wagon.  To the trained eye, waistlines are as easy to read as sedimentary layers of rock.  The hairstyle is just confirmation.

Some of us think we crave Change. Only, we don’t.   I had a man tell me he had such long arms that he had never ever in his whole life had a shirt fit him correctly.  So I made him a custom shirt with extra long arms.  When he tried it on, they came exactly to the right point on his wrist.  The new sensation of something hanging to his hand drove him crazy.  He hated it!  He came in again and again asking me to take the sleeves up “just a bit.”  After three times, they were at the same length of all his other sleeves! We think that having something “fit us better” would be A Good Thing—but sometimes it is too uncomfortable to live with.  We prefer what we are used to.  This is the premise behind Alain de Botton’s TED talk: “Why you will Marry The Wrong Person.”  We like what is familiar, even if it is bad for us.

Other times, we feel stuck without change.  We are enlivened and stimulated by possibilities and Choices that give our Free Will room to choose new trends, new shoes, new handbags in an endless variety of shades from vermillion to vomit.  We need to clean out the Old and replace it with New.  For no Good reason except that Novelty stimulates our economy. Mostly, we like the changes we choose, and if we don’t, we are always free to choose again!  The changes we dislike most are the ones we cannot Choose—the changes that require us to rewrite our agreements with Reality.

Back at home, a cricket hops into my bandaged fingers. We stare at each other intently for a long while. These crickets are not the same crickets as last year, though they are identical and serve the same Muse.  Essayist/Poet George Santayana reminds us that “Repetition is the only form of permanence that Nature can achieve.”  They teem in the grass around my home. For now, in this golden moment, this individual is not Anonymous.  I think that is the essence of Love—that I have Known One.

These crickets are here to sing us through the change of Seasons using the songs passed down by their ancestors as each generation replaces itself.  I leave all the windows open so that they can sing me to sleep along with Summer.  Tears leak into my pillow at the death of one of my horrible little dogs, whom I love so dearly, and the recent transition of a friend, who has left her place in earth’s choir and gone to Heaven’s instead.  I can still hear her laughter; I can still feel her spirit; but I cannot hug her ever again and that makes me deeply sad.  Another Love is having serious health problems… I am fearful and indignant about what these Changes require of my soul. I have No wish to rewrite suddenly my agreements with Reality.  I have gotten used to the way I like things and vice versa.   

The seasons are about to change and so are we all.  We will change our clothing—haul out sweaters and jeans to replace shorts and T-shirts—and begin the process of defining through colors and textures, tweeds and twills, who we shall Be until the hard frosts come.  Can we change our hearts as well? Can we breathe through the struggles to open the windows of our hot minds?  Can we reach Lovingly towards all that is Becoming and relinquish Gracefully all that went before? (I might have to kick and scream just a little.) I listen to the fresh batch of crickets in the dark.  Do they know what became of last year’s crickets? Is that why they sing?  The only thing that comforts me in times like this is the Joy of what I still have:  Gratitude for what Is and ever Shall be.  Change is not the only constant—Love is.  

This, and Pumpkin Lattes are on their way back!!! Woo hoo!

Much love to you all, Dear Ones.  Be Well!  Thank you for your Good Work!

Yours Aye,

Nancy

A Stitch in Time...

As ye Sew, so shall ye Weep…

Greetings my Dear Ones,

I want nothing more than to write about Pleasant Things, about the glorious weather, and my recent trip to Pennsylvania, and the tiny choir of August Insects tuning their slender wings and legs in the grass to see who’s the next winner of “Meadow’s Got Talent,” and how that puts me in mind of how I once played a duet with a Cricket on my fiddle. The Cricket was not actually on my fiddle, you understand.   I was literally “trading fours” with a cricket. (Isn’t language a funny thing?)  We were doing a cool call-and-response relay that I found enchanting.  Perhaps he was just looking for a cheap date. I will never know. I prefer to think it was a Celestial Connection.   But I cannot write about such magic because ….

I AM SCREAMING!!!  

I have just deleted more than forty-five blog ideas I had collected… My computer battery had expired and when I charged it back up, some Word-processing Force of Mischief asked me if I would like to replace the open files that had not been saved before it crashed.  Stupidly, I clicked on something I should NOT have clicked and deleted my entire file of memos and topics that were to help me slack my way through the next six months of blogging. These are the tiny notes I make on a daily basis when customers come in and ask us to make dog beds out of old clothes, and about how two Rights don’t make a Left etc.... Seriously, 30,000 words’ worth of bums, tums, and thighs and the struggles to slip-cover them in today’s hot fashion colors like Barf-Beige.  

“Look on the bright sight, mum,” says Poppy consolingly, “if you had really wanted to write about them, you would have written about them.  They were just some form of security blanket.”

It’s true. Every week I survey the list of possible collected topics and reject them all.  There is always something more pressing or more topical to tackle.  Still, it was comforting to know they were there.  I have suddenly lost all of my “margins,” all of my “slack.”   It’s as unnerving as cutting ten yards of curtains at the finished length instead of leaving enough extra to turn up for the hem.  It’s SHOCKING to the system to think that I could have done so much damage with such a tiny act—such a miniscule misplacement of a digit upon a mouse.   I could chalk it up to Mercury in Retrograde. Or I could just admit I am an idiot where computers are concerned.  Either way, I am seriously tempted to eat the contents of the freezer as a result.  Well, except for the yarn that I stored there against moths—and that fish my son and his buddy Dylan caught two years ago, promising they were going to grill it one day.

I can’t help muttering, as Eddie Izzard does in his stand-up comedy act: “I’ve wiped the file? I’ve wiped ALL the files? I’ve wiped the Internet??? I don’t even have a Modem!!”

Tiny events have BIG consequences. It’s the Truth. Even ignoring tiny things can create much bigger problems.   My dear Mother-in-Law used to make us carry all our beverages through her house on trays. “I’m a lazy housewife,” she used to say. “If you spill your drink, I only have to wipe up a tiny tray, not shampoo an entire carpet.  It’s purely selfish.  I hate cleaning. Just carry everything on a tray.” She would smile in a blithe and airy way and return to playing her piano.  Her house was always spotless because she was “too lazy” to let it get out of hand.  She was a hard-core proponent of the “Stitch in time” philosophy.

 I think about that proverb “a Stitch in time saves Nine…” It’s hard to contemplate what this maxim conveys in today’s world if one does not mend clothing with hand-stitching on a regurlar basis. The 'stitch’ one makes ‘in time' is simply the prompt sewing up of a small hole or tear in a piece of material before it gets larger.  The idea is that if you stitch one stitch today, while the problem is small, you won’t have to do nine times the stitching later. Clearly, this is meant to be an incentive to the lazy, but they were also talking about saving Time. “Yes,” says Prudence to me, “this one has YOU all over it!  You should print this on tea towels and hang them everywhere!”

The 'stitch in time' notion has been current in English for a very long time and is first recorded in Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia, Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British, 1732, which I just ordered from an online book seller, while I was procrastinating over this blog. Fuller, who recorded a large number of the early proverbs exhorting the Anglo-Saxon work ethic, wrote an explanatory preamble to this one:

"Because verses are easier got by heart, and stick faster in the memory than prose; and because ordinary people use to be much taken with the clinking of syllables; many of our proverbs are so formed, and very often put into false rhymes; as, a stitch in time, may save nine; many a little will make a mickle. This little artiface, I imagine, was contrived purposely to make the sense abide the longer in the memory, by reason of its oddness and archness."

There is just so much to love about “clinking syllables” and “oddness and archness.”  And few things are as satisfying as doing little things in the Right Timing so that they don’t become much larger messes that overwhelm us.  The shop is filled with examples of these “stitch in time” moments—from the cop who blasts in with her britches torn to the man who needs the lining of his bag replaced before it can no longer hold its contents.  Prudence is constantly saying to myself and others “One must do our best work from the outset. If we don’t have time to do it Right the first time, what makes you think you’ll have time to do it over?”  She is, as usual, irritatingly Correct—hovering over me while I use a thick needle until I ruin the fabric then a thin needle until I ruin the needle.

My Darling Son learned at a young age the importance of doing little things in a timely way to avert larger disasters. Many years ago, when he was an altar boy and his sister and I sang in the choir at our church, I woke him on a Sunday morning in time to get ready for Mass.  I swept back his curtains and noticed two things: the dogs in his bed and the towels on his floor.  “Make sure you let the dogs outside right away and hang up those towels,” I said.  The Boy Whom Words Don’t Teach mumbled incoherently as I left the room.

Fast forward an hour and I am in the car, revving the engine and blowing out my vocal chords, which I should have saved for the descant of the opening hymns, imploring my lazy little Christians to get their arses in the car NOW—we are going to be LATE!  The female child appears soon after, with damp hair in ringlets to her waist.  She has no coat but she is fully clothed and in the car. Success.  I lay on the horn for another five minutes until the male child eventually skitters across the gravel with no socks and shoes (they are tucked under his arm) and hops in the back seat.  Upon closer inspection, I can see that although he is in his Sunday Best, he is completely soaked—his button down shirt is sticking to him like a wet T-shirt contest and his hair is dripping like he has been hosed.  “Why are you WET?” I bark. He just looks out the window and says “I don’t want to talk about it.”  I speed off, taking turns on two wheels, berating and rebuking and chastising for all I am worth, while they stare glumly out the window.  We arrive late to church and sprint to our separate locations.

Afterwards, on the way home, I am feeling calmer.  I apologize for the way I yelled at them. I talk about how I am just as responsible as they are for creating Reverence in the way we treat each other.  Yes, they must Honor Thy Father and Mother, but it’s not just a one-way street.  Parents should honor their children too. The energy softens between us.  I look over at the boy, who is dry now.  There is a long pause.  “So…what happened. Why were you wet?” I ask.  He shrugs, “well, I had to take another shower.”

“ANOTHER?” I ask.

“Yes, a Cold shower.  Poppy used up all the hot water on that long hair of hers. It was awful.”

“Oh no! That stinks.  But why did you need another shower anyway?”

“Well, when I got out of the first shower, which was kinda warm, and I dried off, I smelled something bad and realized I had just wiped dog poop all over me and into my hair.”  From the back seat there is the sudden cackle of a Delighted Sibling.  He glances at her but continues. “Yeah, I was in such a hurry—I wasn’t looking and someone had pooped in the towel and it wasn’t until I was smearing it down my legs that I actually stopped and noticed it.”  The sibling is laughing so hard by this point that she cannot breathe—she is emitting faint honking noises.

“SOMEONE pooped in a towel?” I say in an incredulous tone. “What do you mean SOMEONE?  Did you not let the dogs out like I asked?”

“Yes,” he insists uncomfortably, “I DID let them out.”

“Before or after they pooped on your towel?”

“Before.”

“Besides, how could they have pooped on your towel if you had hung it up?”

“I DID hang it up,” he says.

“Really?” I persist. “We are just on our way home from church, so I know you MUST be telling me the Truth.  Let me get this straight—you DID hang up your towel, AND let the dogs out.  So what you are asking me to believe is that Today, of all days, those Jack Russells decided NOT to go potty outside but to hold their feces until they could get back inside the house and somehow, through the use of pulleys or ladders or balancing on each other’s shoulders, secretly apply their jobbies to your neatly hanging towel??? Do I have this right?”  He starts to smirk.  I can’t help laughing. Especially since he had his come-uppance already.

“So, having noticed that you had smeared dog jobbies all over you, head to toe, you had no choice but to have another shower, only this time the water was ice cold and you had no way to dry off when you got out?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I could hear you hitting the horn and yelling so I just got dressed and came out to the car.”  By now, his sister is convulsing uncontrollably. She is going to need medical attention if she feels any happier. We ignore her.   I contemplate the perfection of the situation. What are the chances that those animals JUST SO HAPPENED to relieve themselves on the VERY TOWELS I requested he hang up?  It’s nothing short of a Miracle. I stick my head out the window as I drive and shout up to the clouds above—“Thank you Jesus!! Thank you!” For once, the Mother’s have won one. For once.

I pull my head back in the car and address my son, the love of my heart, my Dear Boy.  “You realize that if you had done just ONE, either one, of the little things I had asked that none of this would have happened? Right?”

He nods.  “Yup.”

Sometimes, doing the Right Thing at the Right Time—no matter how small it is—can make all the difference.  Just do the next Right Thing. Then do another. Big disasters have tiny beginnings. Make that first stitch in Time. Truly, it’s the Laziest thing you can do.

Be well, my Darlings! Thanks for your Good Work, wherever you may be. I love you all so much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

It's So Nice To See You!

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Greetings My Dear Ones!

“Has anyone seen Ernie lately?” I want to know.  For some reason, today of all days, I feel his presence by his absence. We have not seen him for some time though I have not thought about it until now. 

“Well, I know he’s not dead,” says another seamstress matter-of-factly. “I check the obituaries for our customers every morning. He’s probably just lost his driving license or his mind.  One of the two.  But he’s not dead, unless he died somewhere else, out-of-town.”

I am relieved.  He is a difficult customer but one I have grown immensely fond of.  He typically parks his car up on the curb across the street, opens the door without looking, and shuffles through the oncoming traffic with the posture of a question mark, yelling and waving his arms at motorists who are screeching to a halt while peeping their horns at him.  Once in the shop, he collapses on the nearest chair and spends the next ten minutes telling me how there’s No Respect for anything or anyone anymore.  The one-sided harangue lurches between his days in the war (the Korean conflict) and his current prostate difficulties (which he calls Prostrates), with brief breaks to complain about how rotten young people are today.  He is lonely, mad, and scared and I find him totally Adorable.  I make a point of saying “It’s nice to see you again, Ernie!” as he turns to go.  He pauses at this, gives us each a grimace that passes for his breed of smile, and says we are “Respectable Girls.”  Then shuffles back into the oncoming traffic and chaos.

When the sounds of horns and sirens fade, the shop feels quiet.  We start thinking of other customers we have not seen for a while.   Subsequent gossip is inevitable:  “I heard she went out west to see her grandkids…So-and-so said she saw him at the hardware store in a knee brace.  Isn’t she recovering from back surgery?”  Some customers come in weekly with their dry-cleaning and repairs, others we see monthly, seasonally, or only for big lifetime events.  Over the years, some families have come in for so many events—baptisms, bar mitzvahs, weddings, graduations, proms etc… that we come to know quite a few characters.  We have our Favorites and it’s always nice to see them.  Even if a person is brand new to the shop, it’s still nice to see her.  What is a service industry without people to serve?

I don’t interact with any of the customers socially outside of work. I hardly know any of their names.  We are not “friends” in the traditional sense but I am deeply fond of some of them.  It intrigues me how Familiarity breeds the opposite of contempt.  (I wonder where that phrase ever came from?)  Observing an older gentleman barking about how he gets No Respect might be irritating and off-putting at first, especially if he is NOT Rodney Dangerfield and not the least bit funny. Until he does it a hundred times and during those hundred times you see the occasional little sideways shifts of his mask and glimpse an angry boy in there who just wants love.  Then you cannot help but love him.   Some people are just Silk masquerading as Rayon.  It’s nice to see them.

So many people frequent this shop and we are getting so many new customers that we often have trouble recognizing people when they come back to pick up their stuff.  “What is your name?” I have to ask… But special people are memorable.  They stand out.  Some stand out immediately because they are Outrageous or Unreasonable, others stand out for their sparkle, their kindness, their happy auras and easy-going manners and Interesting projects.  Others are quieter, more subdued, and take many visits over many years to gain our affection.  It’s too easy take for granted the ones that are just “normal.”  (Except, you know that we have no such thing as a “Normal” customer!)  Some people are just so special that once they enter our lives, nothing is ever quite the same—they arrive and make such a beautiful impact that Life suddenly becomes funnier, richer, more Zany or Magnificent than we ever imagined.    Most often, they do this just by being who they really are.  Authenticity wins out every time, whether they are cranky-pants or not.  Gradually, they grow and grow in our hearts like trees grow over time in a forest. Then one day, when we suddenly learn via the grapevine that they are gone, the Space they leave behind feels like a desert. It was so nice to see them.

Working with the general public has its challenges.  We definitely meet “All Kinds.” To curb Prudence’s tendency to judge, I have taken to saying to my more devout co-workers “Today I am going to see all our customers as Sacred Children—Manifestations of Divine Wisdom in search of Itself.”   In walks a female version of Divine-Wisdom-in-Search-of-Itself asking me to chop all the pockets out of her clothes because she is worried that they might be adding bulk to her silhouette and making her look fat.  It’s easier to think piously about the three sons who come in to get their old suits let out so they can attend their mother’s funeral, even though one spends his entire fitting looking at his cell phone.  

 All it takes to love someone is Really Paying Attention.   When we do that, we cannot help coming to Know them.  And that song is right—to know is to love.  So is to Serve.  We are bound together by our needs:  I need money and they need to have their pants fit them by Friday.  The love that becomes part of the transaction is optional.  I believe there are no such things as accidental meetings.  People come into our lives for a Reason—even if that reason is only to have us replace all the worn out elastic in their long-johns.  I rarely know how important someone will become to me, when I first meet him or her but I am coming to see that the people I need most in my life are the people who need me in theirs, however peripherally.  Sometimes the best mirror we can look into is the Joy on a happy person’s face.  It’s nice to see ourselves as Useful.  And I mean it when I say, “It’s nice to see you again” when I rediscover a Higher Self through service.  “It’s been a while. Welcome Back!”

Oddly, our most difficult customer of all time is the one none of us as ever seen.  She has been sending her stuff for many years via the satellite partnership with cleaners.  Heaps of clothes arrive weekly in their van with notes pinned to them explaining in terse commands what we are to do.  We have talked to this Mystery Customer over the phone once or twice but she refuses to come into the shop for a proper fitting. When things go wrong, as they often do with such an arrangement, the clothes simply get returned to us with more notes attached.  I try to paint a picture of her in my mind.  Judging from how much we have to hem everything, this is not a tall person.   Nothing else can be ascertained from the wildly diverse collection of colors, trends, fashions, most of which are very high-end.  Working on her clothes makes me nervous.  It’s not just “nice” to see people—sometimes it’s absolutely necessary! I feel about as productive as a chicken trying to hatch a golf ball on these occasions.

From one of her items of clothing I remove a tag that reads: “The Irregularities and variations in the color and texture of this garment are the result of its unique manufacturing and natural dyeing process. They are not flaws.”  Wow! I think, I should wear such a tag! (Seriously, I am thinking of getting these printed!) What a great tag for any one of our customers...  It makes me ponder how often I remember people by their problems instead of their attributes.  As we get to know our clientele more thoroughly, they stop being known as “that lady with the Alfred Dunner pants” or “Mr. Persnickety with the limp buttons issue” and actually acquire names.  When I say “It’s nice to see you,” I must focus on the YOU that is bigger than your issues. 

We take for granted our ability to see people.  And then we don’t. Because of the recent dreadful gun violence in this nation, there are many aching families, torn apart by bullets, who will no longer be seeing dear familiar faces they may have assumed would always be there.  As bystanders viewing this through media coverage, it’s easy to see the numbers as anonymous symptoms, not individual people. Such tragedies remind us how silly it is to take those we love for granted.  When we get to see those we love alive and well, it’s really not just “nice,” it’s the best miracle ever.

Ironically, this blog is helping connect me to a lot of people I wish I could see more regularly, as well as some of you I have never seen, though I wish I could. When I bump into random folks at fiddle concerts or events outside the shop, it is such a delight—“an Extreme Privilege” a friend likes to say—to see someone In Person.  Wherever you are, I am grateful you are here in my world—whether you are the type of customer who says “I’ve been dragging this thing around in my car all month and I never seem to get here. Any chance I could have it done by tomorrow?” or not. I love you more than I first imagined I would.  Please stop by and see us again soon!  It would be ever so Nice To See YOU!!!

Thank you for your Good Work and for making my day!

Yours aye,

Nancy

The Foundation of a Good Wedding

“Mawwaige… Mawwaige is Wot Bwings us Togevah Today…” from “The Princess Bride”

Greetings Dear Ones!

Contrary to popular belief, the foundation of a good wedding is not about the right venue, the perfect dress, coordinating the bridesmaids’ gowns with the napkins, or knowing when to bite your lip and just smile politely at your mother-in-law.  These are just surface elements.  Like Love itself, it is what is underneath it all that really counts. And by that, I mean “Foundation Garments.” Yes. Undies.

As this Summer Wedding season grinds on, it’s becoming unbearably hot and sweaty in the tiny, windowless, unvented dressing room/sauna where our customers go to try on their clothing. The result is an olfactory stew that assaults the senses with a blend of acrid perfumes, perspiration, and someone’s unfortunate inability to digest non-dairy creamers. 

Bridey-locks is here again.  She came in months ago with a gown that was too tight; we let it out. Then she decided to go on a diet and lose thirty pounds; now it’s too loose.  If only I could fill it with porridge and make it Just Right.  She steps into the gown, heaves the front into place and then opens the dressing room door so that she can a. have access to oxygen again, and b. so I can lace her up. As I start threading the loops on her corset-backed gown, there is a faintly bovine smell rising with the steam off her back.  I glance down and see, much to my surprise, a trickle of sweat making its way to the ravine between two ever so lightly furred buttocks.  This bride is Naked!  She is going commando in a Wedding Dress! Prudence chokes and rushes for her smelling salts and hanky.

I have seen this before.  A surprising number of people don’t think they have to wear underwear to a formal fitting. They don’t understand that the primary purpose of wearing underwear is that it serves to keep outer garments from being soiled by absorbing bodily excretions that might stain or damage them.  Other reasons are no less important: to avoid friction, to shape the body, to add warmth, for visual appeal, or for religious reasons. I certainly can understand not wanting to add any extra warmth on a day like today—but seriously Honey, are you really more comfortable having everything stick together down there? Cause it AINT visually appealing!  No wonder certain religions seek to slip-cover the whole business and hide it from sight.

On my own wedding day many years ago, I decided to wear very sexy lace lingerie that promptly installed itself in the most inconvenient of locations.  By the opening hymn, as I made my way steadfastly down the aisle, it was bunching uncomfortably but there was no way to rearrange it through the layers upon layers of fabric, especially in the front of the church, with my back to of all those people.  All through Mass and the Vows and the sign of Peace, it hiked its way North more determinedly than renowned climber Alex Honnold during his ascent on El Capitan.    By the reception it was getting hard to smile without crouching to give myself some slack.  By the end of the night, my legs were fully two inches longer yet I hadn't grown a bit.  What began as an attempt to be visually alluring to my Beloved, resulted in a semi-permanent limp.  

For a very brief period of time, this experience led me to preach the gospel of not wearing underwear on one’s wedding day—something my dearest friend in all the world adhered to with Dire Consequences.  I resolve never to advise this again.   When brides or bridesmaids go naked under their clothes (wait a minute, aren’t we ALL naked under our clothes?)  I ask them politely if they might want to consider wearing some “foundation garments”—like scuba gear and flippers.

As I say, I am still atoning for once advising a very young, innocent, and beautiful bride to skip the sexy underwear and wear only control-top pantyhose with a built-in cotton crotch. I told her she would be so much more comfortable than if her underwear shifted.  Like me, she married in the early nineties, when it was fashionable to disguise brides as enormous lemon meringue pies.  “Everything will be so much easier,” I insisted, “if you skip the panties. You can always change into something pretty later.”   I made all the bridesmaids gowns and matching waistcoats for the groomsmen. I hosted her bridal tea.  I gradually assumed control of the entire wedding, much to the Maid of Honor’s dismay.  Wide-eyed, the poor bride agreed to everything I said. 

On her wedding day, she marched down the aisle wearing nothing but a pair of sheer panty hose underneath twenty yards of chiffon.  I even convinced her to ditch the bra, since her gown was strapless, and use the rubber “cutlets” to fill out the front where her bust was a little scanty.  Bravely, she came—lock-stepping slowly towards the altar to the sounds of “The Prince of Denmark’s March” with rubber boobs and no knickers.  Shall we pause here and just consider the absurdity of some of our matrimonial costuming traditions and what society (and women themselves) imposes on women for this event?  No? We just take it for granted that any of this is normal and sensible and necessary to the plighting of a troth? Ok… Let’s get to the reception then, where it all went ghastly Wrong.

First, we need to back up a little bit and set the scene. The basic ingredients of the plot are thus: The in-laws are god-fearing, law-abiding, genteel Southern Baptists from Kentucky whose expectations of a nuptial celebration include a morning service, followed by some (non-alcoholic) punch and cookies in the church basement where everyone stands around in gorgeous hats and says polite things and then goes home.  That’s it. End of story. Unfortunately, their son is marrying this cute little Yankee harlot from the North whose Catholic relatives are expecting the bash to last three days.  They have planned a rehearsal dinner the night before, the wedding and a big sit-down dinner after, followed by a brunch the next day. There will be approximately forty-seven hours of merriment, decadence, and debauchery amidst rivers of champagne. Have I mentioned that all Catholics are going to hell? According to these in-laws. It’s clear to them at first glance that these other “in-laws” are Outlaws. Nervously, for the sake of their son, they proceed. They witness first-hand the alcohol, the dancing, the loud music.  Mrs. In-Law’s lips get pressed tighter and tighter together until only the thinnest line remains.  To her horror, Mr. In-law is having the time of his life. SINNING. He’s snuck out back to have a cigar and a whisky with the other men.  One of them slaps him on the back and says “too bad ya’ll don’t believe in Confession…you could sin all you want and wipe this all clean on Monday!” He laughs nervously.  Satan, in the form of a voluptuous bridesmaid—the bride’s college roommate—asks him to dance.

The DJ, the bride’s uncle, puts on some swing music and everyone grabs their partners for some jumpin’ and jivin’.  A kilted Scotsman in full Bonnie Prince Charlie attire seizes the bride and begins to dance with her.  Everyone else stops dancing and circles around them to watch. They are fabulous dancers. The music is throbbing and their steps are light and quick as he flings her this way and that.  Everyone is cheering.  Even Mr. and Mrs. In-law can’t help joining the circle to watch their son’s bride trotting around the center of the ring like a frilly circus pony. It’s Magnificent.

UNTIL…..

The Scotsman decides to show off a little more by getting really fancy and flipping the bride up and over his back and catching her in an arial move that SHOULD have been a Fantastic Finale, had it not been for the beading of her gown and his big flashy buttons. They hit a snag faster than a trout line in weeds.  The bride’s front is stuck on his jacket buttons and he is bent over, holding her chest-to-chest beneath him.  She is upside down, legs in the air, with her skirts inverted over both of them.  All we can see is what looks like an enormous up-side-down mushroom whose two high-heeled stalks are kicking madly.  Well, to be honest, we can see a little more than that.  A Lot more. We can see things none of us really want to see. Things we cannot unsee for as long as we live.  There is a momentous pause.  Then a horrible rending sound of fabric tearing as the bride’s gown rips open, stem to stern, along the zipper in the back as the dress gives way. The force of her subsequent fall launches the rubber cutlets into the air in a spectacular arc—which eye-witnesses attest happened in slow motion.  The higher of the two cutlets does a full loop-de-loop and comes to rest right on her new Father-in-law’s foot.  He looks down so suddenly, with such an open-mouthed, shocked expression on his face that his upper plate of dentures falls out on the floor right next to the prosthetic boob.  Not many of us who were there remember what happened after that.  How did we get home? We don’t know. We are stuck, frozen there—teeth by boob—like a slide projector that has jammed on a single frame that has since outlasted that unfortunate marriage.

It’s not just women who need to shore up their foundations. This rule goes both ways. Men, too MUST wear undergarments for the good of their garments and their own protection.  I’m sure you have all heard the unfortunate tale of the young Scottish man whose fuming bride punched him and started a family brawl at their wedding reception in 2017.  When the police finally broke up the melee, and tried to sort out what had started the violence, they discovered that it all began when the Traditionally Attired (sans underpants) groom sat on the bride’s knee and left a small “skid mark” on her gown.  Much blood was shed and seven people were arrested as a result of this young man’s poorly wiped backside!

The moral of this story, for those of you who still require morals, is consistent with most of the Wisdom emanating from the experiences in this shop: Give a thought to what is Inside, Underneath, to what is holding you up and keeping you clean… Remember that it is the BRIDE who is expected to blush, not her guests.  These things are vital to your Success in so many ways.  You never know when your Posterior may become your Posterity.  You might spend hours agonizing over menu-choices and music choices and whether or not to seat Uncle Howard at the kid’s table, all for naught—only to have all the Magic obliterated by the untimely appearance of a hairy ass on the dance floor…  This is more than I can share with the steaming bride in the dressing room today, so I am sharing it with you, Dear Ones.  I know that words alone are not good teachers—at best, they can only validate prior experience—but perhaps the wiser ones among you can glean Something Useful from these tales that leave us all as open-mouthed as a toothless Kentuckian.

Be Well my darlings!  May your linens be clean and your laughs be dirty.  I love you all so much.

Yours aye,

Nancy