Labels

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” Toni Morrison, Beloved

Greetings Dear Ones,

A Beautiful, Optimistic, and Practical woman arranges to meet me at the shop to have her new summer pants hemmed.   We both wear masks and maintain our distances as best we can in my cozy space. I only briefly see her eyes and hair above the mask.  So how do I know all those things about her?  I’m kinda guessing… But deep down I know the following truths:  #1. A wrinkle-sprinkled woman who speaks lovingly of having grown children is Beautiful just for all she has endured, witnessed, adapted to, and created.   Warm and loving, smiling eyes are Beautiful.  They just are.  We don’t have to look any further south than that.   Happy people who laugh easily can’t help looking Gorgeous, even when their faces are covered.  No amount of make-up or hair dye makes a sour-pus look radiant.  #2. She brought in white pants.  Anyone who wears white pants is Optimistic, to say the least.  (The only white I ever wear is dog hair, and then unintentionally.)   Everyone knows that white fabric has been specially woven with microscopic, magnetic threads that act as a vortex for things like ketchup, paw prints, and sometimes paw-prints made of ketchup.  White pants are generally sullied within moments of removing their price tags, never again to regain their former pristine elegance.  I’m not sure a pair would survive a ride in my car, even if I double bagged them.  A woman willing to wear white is a woman willing to take on a lot of laundry and any other Dirt life may send her way.  She dares to spend the whole day standing up. She can cope.  #3. She had five pairs.  Sure, she can cope—but she has a back-up strategy.  She’s practical.  She knows the fate of white pants but she wants them anyway and is willing to embrace contingencies.

“I don’t need to try them on,” she informs me.  “I just need them all hemmed to 30 inches.”

I look at the pants on my cutting table.  My eyes narrow. She makes haste to head for the door and I call her back just in the nick of time.

“Ma’am,” I say, “wait! I don’t think any of these are actually thirty to begin with…” I grab an inseam and stretch it the length of the ruler at the edge of my cutting mat.  As I suspect, they are just twenty-eight inches.  She looks on from the doorway.

“How can that be?” she asks. “Well, I ordered them online.  Of course, nobody can go to stores and try anything on right now so I just ordered them.  And they came and I opened the packages and I just assumed I needed to get them hemmed.  I need to get everything hemmed.”  She is looking at the pants the way the that wife on the 1980’s T.V. advertisements for Stove-top Stuffing used to look when she found out her husband would prefer stuffing to mashed potatoes.  She is visibly rattled.  Her world does not make sense.   She inches closer to the pants and reaches out to touch one.  “Now what do we do?” she asks.

“Have you tried them on yet?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you go in the dressing room and slip on a pair and we’ll see if maybe you want to send them back or make them into capris.”

She does.  She emerges a moment later and they fit perfectly.  Nothing needs to be done to them at all.  It turns out that she is not a thirty either.   The next four are exactly the same.

“You’re turning out to be my toughest customer ever,” I say, “now if you’ll just pay me five-hundred dollars, we can call it a day!”  We both laugh, knowing I am kidding on both accounts.  She leaves happily with her pants, promising to recommend me to everyone she knows.  Apparently, I do good work.

I love exchanges like this.  I love the micro “journey” I take with each customer as we explore the facts vs. assumptions surrounding each order.  So many times, people have assumed the labels are the facts.  If there is one thing I have learned about being a seamstress it is that LABELS are NOT FACTS.  Not even alternate facts. 

Labeling clothes is a fraught business, as folks forced to clothe themselves with the help of cyberspace are beginning to discover.  Labeling people is even more dangerous. 

On Monday, I celebrated being a person’s mother for twenty years.  First he was a “baby”, then a “toddler”, then something Very Interesting that sometimes wore pink ball gowns and sometimes resided for days in the swamp behind our house, then he was a “Teenager”… something he and his sister had dreaded.  (When they were little and would fight, they would accuse each other of “acting like a teenager,” which was the worst thing they could think of.)  Now, the label “teen” no longer applies to either of them.  He’s a braw young man “in his early twenties” (VERY early—as in two day’s worth).  

I hadn’t seen him since March 12th so I drove to Boston and we met outside and walked along the harbor, had cake, and one of those lovely, heartfelt mother-son conversations that make me so grateful and inspired to be his fellow traveler on this adventure.  We sat on a floating dock until the gentle rise and fall of the waves made us feel icky from eating so much cake.  We are landlubbers with sensitive middle ears; we really should stay on farms, eating potatoes instead of chocolate mousse, and venture nowhere near boats! But the strange times of 2020 demanded this.

We talked about how things have changed so much between us in the last year, since he moved out and went to Boston—how my jobs as his mom have evolved with him during the span of years from wet-nurse to cook and laundress to teacher, chauffer, and life coach.  I’ve worked my way up from janitorial services to occasional consulting and banking.   We are no longer within the reach of each other’s arms but fingers, which dial cell phones, provided one of us hasn’t dropped ours in a river, or down a toilet, or left it somewhere stupid with the ringer off.  We talked about relationships and labels and how the best relationships defy labels.   Love has a way of crawling out of whatever box you attempt to call it anyway.  The Greeks tried to sort love into seven simple boxes: Eros (passionate), Philia (intimate, authentic friendship), Ludus (flirtatious), Storge (unconditional familial), Philautia (self-love), Pragma (committed companionate), Agape (empathetic, universal), but I’m not totally buying it.  I think there must be hundreds, not to mention endless hybrid blends of the original seven.

It takes a while for us to live through and correct the inaccuracies of the labels we encounter.   It takes wisdom and curiosity and sometimes requires getting Naked to access the truth. Just like that lady’s white pants, you know you are on to something when you stop looking at the tag and put them on, next to your bare skin, and see how it actually FEELS.  Does it fit you? Good.  That’s Happiness, no matter what the numbers say.

As humans, it’s common for us all to grasp at labels, especially in relationships with other humans.  We need to know what things “are.”  We need to measure, quantify, classify, predict.  But just because we are capable of growing bizarre life forms at the back of the fridge (I probably have the cure for Covid-19 there right now!) does not make us “Scientists.”  Using the scientific method on emotions can have tragic results—usually as a result of our unconscious biases in the trials.

We all want to find our “soul mate,” “The One,” “the love of my life,” –a specimen so highly classified and rarified that we can barely breathe to consider such perfection.  But these labels come with damning standards and implicit judgments, expectations, and comparisons.   Pain, ecstasy, jealousy, insecurity—these all bear witness to the levels of intensity inherent in a certain label.  One expects Grand Things from an Yves Saint Laurent silk blouse or Dolce & Gabbana suit.  When there is “no label” we are free to proceed with Curiosity, Hope, a sense of unattached adventure and exploration.  We are free to check in with ourselves and notice how WE are showing up, rather than how the Other is either delighting or disappointing.

One of the reasons I love shopping for second-hand clothing is that the tags mean nothing.  If you know a bit about the history of fashion, the tags may give you clues, but that’s all.  Companies get bought and sold, manufacturing differs depending on the source of the cloth and where it is assembled, even according to dye lots.   Even size representations have changed many times over the years.  One must take each garment at face value.  The main question is, Does It Fit YOU? If not, what has to change? Can we do that? Or do we need to leave this treasure in the bargain bin where we found it?  It’s the Serenity Prayer embodied in every outfit.

We often assume we are getting what we expect.  Sometimes we aren’t.  We need to look closer, get involved—literally Get IN, to see what’s really what.   Beyond labels is a world of surprises.

We have all worn a lot of “labels” in our lives—as daughters, sisters, sons, and friends—lovers, husbands, fathers, wives.  In my own case, the label of “mother” has meant very different things to me depending on which child I am dealing with, which disaster, which triumph, which era or phase… To the point that I don’t really know what “motherhood” means any more except that I keep showing up and it keeps getting better.  It certainly is NOT what I thought it was.  There have been times when I was rigid and uncompromising and unwilling to change my ideas.  Sometimes I was right to do this—especially when they wanted a “real” fire in their snow fort.   Sometimes I was so rudderless, so out of ideas, so self-abandoned that I had no compass—open to any ideas, including the notion that the Fairies had stolen my children and replaced them with changelings. I’m sure the same is probably true for Fathers too—though I don’t know.  I have not been a father. 

Father’s Day is coming up.  Some have earned that label, some have not, no matter what their participation in the biological event may have been.  But the label itself does not really matter. 

The Love Does. 

For those of us struggling with some of our labels—Labels by which other people judge us or think they know who we are—white, black, pagan, Christian, Democrat, Republican, fat, thin, gay, straight, us, them—the biggest sorrow for us all is that we might not “fit.”  Take it from this humble little seamstress—You DO.   You Matter. And so does that person you think does not like you very much.   Take heart, Dearies--there’s not much that can’t be changed in a life, a country, or in a tailoring shop.  It’s just a question of effort.  Start by forgetting the label. Look at what’s real.

And sometimes, things are already fitting better than we ever imagined.  We just need someone to point that out so the celebration can begin.

Thank you for your Good Work. 

With Sew Much Love,

Nancy

Changing our Habits

Greetings Dear Ones!

I’m turning into a plaid flannel shirt.  Every time I happen to look down these days, I seem to be wearing the same shirt.  It defines the days, signals their beginnings and endings, when the Summer makes no sense of the sky and we find ourselves heading to bed in broad daylight.  We are approaching Solstice and only one dog in particular seems to know what time it is. (hint: It’s Supper Time!) I look down at the soft plaid and know what I must be doing.  It’s that little bit of warmth I delight in at the beginning of the mornings and the ends of the evenings when I go about my chores with the animals.  It is as comforting as the routine itself and makes me less of a traveling buffet for mosquitoes.  Days are beginning and ending all the time, in quick succession now, so I seem to be forever in this shirt, carrying buckets of feed and water, locking up or freeing the wee souls in my care.  Recently, I draped the shirt over a nearby fence and one of the more near-sighted sheep called to it for twenty minutes, hoping the shirt would come feed it.   With social distancing measures still in place, there is no need to look cute, or even clean, so the slacker in me has adopted this habit.

The word “habit” is an archaic word for dress or clothing.  It makes me think of religious orders and how nuns told us their garments were “habits.”  Apparently, like me, they had the habit of wearing the exact same thing every day.   These settled and regular tendencies certainly reduce decision fatigue! Clothing worn in accordance with certain practices, traditions, and significance helps us identify ourselves with our missions and personal humility and dedication.  My twin, diurnal missions are to feed the animals and avoid offering blood sacrifices to the resident bug populations.  Feeding the sheep is a deeply holy ceremony (Were we not told specifically in the Gospels to feed sheep?)  Certainly, they feel it is deeply significant, though it often lacks the dignity and reverence one might hope for—there is as much bawling, pushing, and shoving as at a church jumble sale. 

Usually, summer is when I become a pair of work jeans held up by dirt, sweat, and strong rivets—unaware of how fragrant of meadow and manure I am—until I enter the closed air of a building at the end of the day.  Like most blissful and ignorant people, I have no idea how much history I have, um “behind” me.  Originally designed for miners in the 1870’s, jeans as we know them became the trendy clothing of youth subculture, greasers, and rebels in the 1950’s.  (By the 1980’s they were the standard-issue daily wear of overheated, decidedly UN-trendy and dejected farm girls in Pennsylvania told to go pick rocks out of their parent’s pastures in July.)  For centuries, the fabric itself—a sturdy cloth of cotton warp and woolen weft used primarily for work clothes—was made in several European cities.  In Genoa, Italy, it became known as “genes,” which may be the origin of “jeans.” If the fabric originated in Nimes, France, it was known as “from Nimes” (de nimes), which is probably how we came to have the word denim.  Unbeknownst to most of us, the history of the whole world slumbers next to our tender skin, staining it blue when we sneak a dip in a rain barrel to cool off.

I have also spent a good deal of time as a uniform…Being a uniform gives me slightly more discipline than I have otherwise. I tend to become obedient and faithful,  which is a blessing if you want me to do things like social studies homework, staying quiet during study halls, or serving you coffee when you order it . I look down and see someone else, looking like the person sitting next to me, and the person after that, and the person after that…all in rows like the optical illusion one gets from looking in two parallel mirrors at the same time.  Are they all me? Are none of them me? Who can tell?  Please don’t think I am mocking uniforms.  I am not.  Uniforms are useful for making one feel Knowledgeable, crisp, and Efficient, which are things that do not come naturally to me.  People in uniform generally look More Important than the rest of us.  Official.  Even a third-grader in a navy pinafore with an emblem on it knows this. The problem with becoming a uniform, of course, is that I am no longer myself.  I am in danger of losing my ability to act as an individual, to stand up against what the people who issued my uniform may be telling me to do. 

A couple times a year, I become an apron.  My job is to feed people—hundreds of people several times a day—things that “link their bodies with their souls,” as my grandma used to say.  That apron defines me from the hours before dawn while I make scones, until long after midnight when I stop stumbling in circles, wondering where I could possibly have misplaced thirty pounds of Tofu.   I wash the apron every night and put it on each morning.  I LIVE in it. When the weekend is over, I gratefully yet wistfully fold that part of myself and store it in a pot the size of a cauldron until the next time.  

Certain, magical nights each season, I become nothing more than a fluttering black, green, or purple dress, with all of Life as I know it a kaleidascope churning clock-wise to the count of eight.   My soul extends to the swirling hem of my long, full-circle skirt, caressing the legs and bodies of my fellow dancers.  I sway, swing, and swirl as a living embodiment of melody meeting movement.  I am pure fabric held before a fan, flickering like flame.  

On dark, hollow, unromantic nights I become my grandmother’s blue furry bathrobe—waiting for a phone call or the dawn, waiting for a stomach to stop aching, a child’s fever to break, a wounded Love to live or die. I made this bathrobe for Nana more than twenty years ago, shortly before her death, and it was given back to me as a memento when they cleaned out her closets.  There is nothing remotely flattering about this robe that makes me resemble a wooly, anaphylactic  Smurf but I love it. In times of trouble, it is as strong and silent as the moon, as deeply feminine and resilient as big hips—which it definitely accentuates in the moonlight.  It provides a safe container for both Faith and Unknowing, and holds together all the shattering fragments of a life in the Dark.  It is as if her hand is still upon my shoulder saying All will be Well as something exhausted releases its suffering and begins to sleep.

All these clothes I am and many more.  But I am not just my clothes. I am not even my skin.  I am a fiercely strong and fragile, tragically beautiful, fantastically ugly Something Else, as are you.  As is each of us.  I cannot be summed up merely by the color of my collar (plaid).

Being Naked is very scary.  Like Eve, when I look at my own nakedness, I rush for the fig leaves and a thimble, or the nearest blue furry bathrobe.   I positively hate looking in the mirror.  Lately, I have had my eyes opened to some horrific things about the fabulous Privilege it is to be me, in all my many outfits.  I am also seeing some incredibly beautiful acts of grace and courage from those attempting to teach me.  As a country, we are stripping down, below the level of what we wear, below the color of our skin, to find essential commonality as human beans.  We’re having to look at some tough stuff but it’s necessary in order to change out of our most filthy habits—the unconsciousness that cloaks and veils true evil in our land. You would have thought we might  have learned all this long before but we are a stiff-necked people.  We still refuse to admit that that spandex should only by worn by those fighting crime and Dutch cyclists.

When I was very small, I was sure I heard the priest tell us that we were all human beans, all equal and made in the image and likeness of God.  (I found it very interesting that God was a bean.)  Being a Human Bean is the hardest thing I have ever done.  Being the covering, the shell, is easy.  We clothe ourselves daily in our history, our habits and traditions… our worries and our celebrations… When we see what we are wearing, we know who we are serving.  We look at each other’s “surfaces” and make assumptions, sometimes appropriately, sometimes not.  But when we start to grow, those shells need to break.   We are seeds.  We are here to grow.  Growth means change.

We all fall into these ruts around everything from what we wear to who we are and how we expect others to behave.  Sometimes this is a result of perceived duty, sometimes for convenience, often due to sheer laxity and lack of imagination.   Our “habits” no longer “become” us in ways we might wish.  Tragically, we become them instead. It’s time for a good long look in the mirror.  I sheared the sheep this week and they are still sheep, despite their radically altered appearances.   We Beans, however, we could be really different if we choose to be.

Let the Mending continue, my dear and darling ones! Take courage.  Thank you for your Good Work.

With sew much love,

Nancy

Faith, Trust & Pixie dust

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and Pixie dust.” —J.M. Barrie

Greetings Dear Ones,

A friend has asked me to put a new zipper in her son’s favorite pair of shorts.  I do and it takes me half the time it used to do. I am starting to get less bogged down by zippers! There is such a thing as an “easy zipper!” Woooo-woo! My inner cheerleader hoots and does a few back flips and complicated jump-in-the-air-and-do-the-splits-thingies until Prudence shows up and tells her to knock it off. In the old shop, due to the pace and volume of work coming in, we each did the work that was fastest and easiest for us.  We had a darling Zipper Wizard who did them so beautifully and efficiently, I never had to practice.  I stuck to menswear and bridal.  So this triumph means a lot to me.  It’s not just a pair of pants I’ve fixed; it’s faith in myself and my process.  I think there’s a magical number of attempts we all have to do of any kind of skill-building procedure before we really “own” it.   I look at the completed shorts and realize I am now one small success closer to giving myself the gift of being great at zippers.  Of course, pretty much anyone can fix zippers—it just takes time and dedication—but they can seem very complicated and daunting to the uninitiated.  So much Easier to let someone else do the work.

I remember not trusting that my work would be good enough—attempting with a sense of hope and optimism, then teeth-gritting determination as things went a little sideways, then finding out how to do it better next time. With every single attempt comes learning, feedback, and sometimes the urge to lie down in traffic.  Eventually, I can look at a garment and say confidently “I know what to do and I DO it.”  Unfortunately, some of the best learning moments come in the times when everything falls apart—the “tower moments” when all the blocks tumble.

Our country is in a tower moment now.  So much is crumbling.  There is so much to learn.   Who are our teachers?  Who can we ask for help? We CAN fix our problems.  We must.  We haven’t wanted to practice the skills we need to solve this because it’s always been easier not to, up to this point.  But Patiently, awkwardly, we need to begin.  It’s OUR business now. We own it.  We might not get it right initially. That’s not our fault; it’s just part of the journey towards learning any skill.  It’s not a baby’s fault he falls while learning to stand; it’s not a toddler’s fault for saying “piss-getti and meatballs;” it’s not a fiddler’s fault that she will play her instrument mostly out of tune for years.  We smile indulgently and see that these are necessary stages of development—just as my sewing a man’s pants in such a way that he could not get his zipper down at all was, apparently, just a “growth stage” I had to go through.   

G.K.Chesterton, an English writer, philosopher, and lay theologian (who in all likelihood never had to put a new zipper in a pair of Levis) said encouragingly, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”  How else can we learn a new skill?  He also said “Putting in new zippers has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult; and left untried.”   Oops, sorry, he wasn’t talking about zippers, it was the Christian Ideal—something that no longer seems popular with certain Christians.  Unless of course they are just on a developmental journey of loving their neighbors as themselves and are just doing it very badly at the moment… Sort of the Love babble of immature people who have not yet learned about True Love?   

In the days before we’d ever heard of a man named George Floyd, my daughter and I went for our longest run yet—one of those vicious daily plods we submit to for the sake of our “health and sanity.”  We’ve been running together for ten weeks now and most of the time I manage to keep my wardrobe malfunctions to a minimum.  Lately, she’s been getting inspired by our “progress” which is code for “she hasn’t had to run to the car and drive back to where she’s left her mother gasping by the side of the road” lately and she’s decided we are going to run a half marathon together.  I’ve run several in the past but to do this, she will have to run further than she has ever run before.  She is nervous and elated.

“This is the best part of my life right now,” she says as we run along a country lane at the frothy, golden culmination of a day.  The air, mixed with the sweat on our skin, makes us feel like we have been dipped in chardonnay. Her feet take flight and soar in effortless tandem, gliding her swiftly forward over vast citidels of gravel and ant empires below.  We run through clouds of black flies and gnats. From the ankles up, we belong to the sky.  She is glowing.   Over in the jumbo-jet of my body, things are not going so well.  My control tower has shut down all communication with my legs, which were sending nothing but a steady stream of complaints about the landing gear.  The pilot is nowhere to be found and the hostess is screaming over the engine roar  that she is out of gin on the beverage trolley.  Someone in aisle nine cannot get the headsets to work.  One of our wings isn’t functioning.  I’m losing altitude… I may be guilty of crop-dusting a flowerbed or two.

“This is what Trust feels like to me,” chirps the sleek and nimble Cessna next to me.

“Tell… me… more…,” I manage to grunt one step at a time.  I can’t speak so I focus on the scenery and think about Trust.  Can I trust my legs to make it home?  Can I trust my bladder?

She talks easily, not at all like her lungs are two stiff bellows pumping hard to keep a spark from going out. “I love dancing with a strong partner and knowing he’ll catch me when we do the arial moves.  To me, Trust is confidence in your movements, in landing right, in both the travel and the arrival, all of it.  It’s knowing we SHALL.”

“Shall…what…?” I burp.

“This,” she says. “We’re DOING this! We are really doing it.  I’m so excited.  For the first time in my life, I know that I am actually going to make this happen. I’m not just hoping about it or talking about it. If my fifty-year-old mother can do it, I can. I Am!”  A car comes and she sprints ahead so we can be single file, leaving me with the idea that Trust is a form of movement, action.

I have always thought that trust comes from sitting still and making myself as small and non-acting/non-threatening as possible.  Since childhood, I have spent thousands of hours getting frightened animals to trust me.   I put myself as far from them as possible in their pasture or pen, though conspicuously in their line of sight, and I wait.  I sit there, studiously ignoring them, with pockets full of treats and a book I read aloud in low, reassuring tones.  Movement causes fear.  I freeze. Animals that are afraid are extremely dangerous, to themselves and others, so it is worth it to gain their trust.  It’s also just plain beautiful.  I’m not sure if my animals actually “love” me but they trust me—which means the world to me.

I read and nibble and act non-threatening.  It once took me a whole summer and the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle to win the trust of an ex-race horse.  I learned how to keep my energy very small around her.  Animals, especially prey animals, have a large energetic “safety bubble” around them—one can pierce it with mere eye contact.  When it gets breached, they become alarmed and will fight or flee if able.  This bubble gets closer to their bodies the safer they feel.  I suspect the same is true for humans, though I’m not for one moment comparing animals to humans—not by a long shot.  Humans are a damn sight sillier.  And their motives are way more complex.  (The works of Arthur Conan Doyle only work with some.)  The biggest problem with getting humans to trust is that deep down, they do not trust themselves, never mind each other.  Animals have total faith in their own instincts--“An abundance of Caution” serves them very well. 

We humans try to “trust” in ways that are inappropriate—often we will do anything to try to make lies make sense to us. We override our common sense in attempts to preserve our dignity.  We listen to others, to rehearsed, received “beliefs” rather than the inner wisdom of our own heart’s experience.  We get insulted and incensed when those we have damaged refuse to trust us again.  No wonder we often feel that “trust” is a heavy responsibility.  We get as impatient as a man who has just found out he has to take his trousers down to pee.

Trust is not the same as Faith, though they are often used interchangeably.  The word Trust comes to us from an Old Norse word for strength.  Faith is from Latin “fides”  translating variously as truth, honor, loyalty, authenticity, confidence, or belief.  Obviously, faith and trust overlap like two colors of play dough stored in the same container. Emerson said “Self-trust is the first secret of success.” To me, trusting ourselves means we know our own strength.  It also means we know our own weakness. 

Thanks to my insightful daughter, I now see Trust as both being still and being in action.  Both require strength.   Firstly, we need to trust ourselves, independently.   We need to know from within that we will truly support and fight for Justice in this land, just as surely as we will survive a marathon—one small step at a time. Some of us will march; others will kneel; some will fund; others will teach; some will write; others will comfort; some will be loud and public; others will be quietly invisible.   In every case, no matter how we go about it, if what we do is Consistent, Continued, and Committed, we will make progress.  I promise. Gradually, Gentleness will replace wildness and peace and safety will be created—for everyone, not just the privileged.  It’s not the work of a day, nor even the work of a summer.  Trust is a fund we have borrowed from against our brothers and sisters too many times in the past.  Now there is nothing to draw on.  We have bankrupted ourselves.  We must earn it back in thousands of tiny acts for which we have already been paid.   This is our debt.

So many of my white friends are desperate to help and wadding themselves up in fear that they will get it wrong, that their actions will be misconstrued.  Maybe they will.  But I think people are pretty good at sensing Intent.  And if the Well-Intentioned are truly willing to learn, they will hear how they are getting it wrong and make the necessary adjustments.  I think we can trust Love to prevail in the end.  There is no way to force Trust and no way to trust Force.  Trust can only be built from prolonged gentleness over time.  Trust requires a track record.   One rally, one posting, one night of prayers and tears is not enough—but it’s a start.  It’s a first step on a journey—not to make Ourselves feel better, but to make Those Hurting truly heal—until that glorious moment when we realize WE got this. There is no longer an Us and “those Others” but a WE Together.  

Sometimes we will need to make ourselves available when it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes we will have to sit, watching with our whole skins, attentively and patiently “doing nothing” so that those in terror can come forward when they are ready and explore the space we hold open for them.  Sometimes we will have to put our Big Girl/Boy/Person Pants on (with working zips, of course!) and use our muscles to Do Something—to serve, to help, to stand up and march, knowing we will make it, one step at a time because our elders are with us and we cannot fail.

“Having Trust is not just about grounding us on what is solid and firm—it’s about freeing us and allowing us to soar.”—Katie Bell

Let the Mending Begin.

With so much love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy

Cooped up

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.  There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” --Douglas Adams

Greetings Dear Ones!

Well, the above quote certainly explains the state of things as I see it from the windows of Hermit Hollow.  We have some running around free, who are now in grave danger and some who are still locked up safely.  The ones in lockdown lament their lack of freedoms.  They use every possible transition as a potential excuse for even momentary escapes.   They have no idea how safe they really are in their confinement.  This does not comfort them; they are still anxious.  By contrast, the free ones are happily oblivious to the myriad of threats to their lives.  They think if they cannot see them, they must not exist.  They are free to dine where they please and to congregate at will, though they are way more aggressive, by nature, than those being confined, so they also do a lot of boxing when the mood strikes them.  Occasionally, they just whoop it up so everyone will notice them.

I know what you’re thinking—I should not be discussing the residents of New Hampshire in this way. I’m not. I’m talking particularly about our sweet little crop of Spring chicks.  Of the original ten, four of them have turned out to be roosters.  It has not taken them long to outgrow both the pen and their charm with the ladies.  They were turning into bullies.  To give the hens more room, I have let the bigger roosters free range, while keeping the tiny guy, a bantam, in with the hens, who have no trouble keeping him in his place.  Outside, the three “amigos” now travel together with bright-eyed curiosity around the property, exploring and having adventures.  Every morning, I go out at dawn, can’t find them, assume they are dead, grieve a little… Then they see me and come running from a new hiding spot.  They are quite tame and allow me to catch and hold them, feed them from my hand.  They are very sweet for wanna-be murderous little rapists.  At night, when I collect the hens from their outside run and bring them in their box into the cellar for safe keeping, the boys are in a row, dozing on top of the run, hoping maybe I will capture them and bring them back in the cellar too.  I don’t. I can’t.  So my heart breaks a little twice a day.

One of the harsh facts of farming is that multiple roosters are not needed.  At most, you need one per dozen hens—if you want fertile eggs—which many people don’t.  The hens will lay whether a rooster is there or not so they are actually extraneous altogether, in terms of egg production.   They can be aggressive, loud, and as prone to chest-puffing swaggers and fighting as Glaswegian football hooligans.   Can you neuter them? Yes.  (Roosters that is, not football hooligans, sadly.)  But it’s an extreme procedure that involves making an incision between their ribs, as their testicles are up inside their body cavity. We are not doing this.  Neutered roosters are called capons and usually undergo this procedure so that they produce better meat.   We don’t plan to eat these guys ourselves—but if they are still here in another month or two, we know of a woman who relies on making soup out of other people’s roosters for her suppers.  They are good in soup, so she says. 

I don’t know what else to do with them, except make them part of a food chain that is respectful, grateful, and humane.   In the meantime, I want the condemned to be as happy and free as possible.   If a raccoon, hawk, or fox gets them before Mrs. O’Mallett does, so be it.  (Roosters are a tasty link on a lot of food chains.)  So here they are, strutting their stuff around the yard and sorting out which one of them is the toughest, unaware that they will live just one, short, glorious, lilac-scented season—while their sisters will be sheltered in various forms of protective confinement with carefully-supervised free-range opportunities for multiple years to come, in lifelong bondage to us as a result of their feminine capacities—a genuine Henmaid’s Tale.

It makes me think a lot about the balance between Quality of Life and safety.  It makes me consider who we value and who we don’t, who we “protect” and what sacrifices that “protection” requires from those “protected.”  It makes me think a lot about the Meaning of Life—especially for us all, as we balance out these things for ourselves in our own stages of confinement or expansion.   I got curious so I looked up the word “Meaning.”

It turns out that meaning came to Old English from a West Germanic word that shares an Indo-European root with the word mind.   The interpretations of the word mean were “tell, recite, intend, wish, signify, convey, express, plan, or fate.”  Basically, a Meaning is a Story we have to tell.   Without meaning, we have no story—without Story, we have no Meaning.   We create a story and transfer it from mind to mind where it may coalesce and harden into a collective belief. In our minds, we hold the stories which both tell and create our fate.  We think about ourselves thinking as we think and we decide who we are by what we cherish.

There are a lot of competing stories out there in the swirling chaos of a world pandemic.  Some are being told by roosters, some by hens.  Some are saying that not every life has value—that some lives, some contributions, some assets  are more necessary than others.  Apparently, 30 percent of us are suffering from moderate to severe depression during this pandemic—is it from fear of death or fear of missing out? Is it from questioning our own meaning or value and watching all seven episodes of Tiger King just to prove to ourselves we’re not the weird ones?  Is it all this isolation or is it that swim-suit season is upon us and we should have thought about that before eating our weight in failed baking experiments?  

Too many people are using the word “Meaning” as interchangeable with Happiness—though it is in living out our purpose that we achieve happiness, as a byproduct of authenticity and integrity.  We are all struggling these days, especially those of us who must adapt our attitudes and practices in order to continue to offer our services.  We are all bewildered as we emerge and wonder how we help each other Mend from this calamity.

I went to my dear little shop yesterday and was Happy. I have begun to fix things for people who have been able to drop off or mail them without requiring in-person fittings.  My work output has dwindled due to injury and apathy. I used to be able to do “nothing” in half an hour or less.  Now it takes me all damn day… Gradually, I will have to get myself back in shape.  It was great to be there, with the giant windows allowing both a cool breeze and the heavenly scent of the greening hillside above town to reach me.  My shoulder is healing and I am able to work a little without pain.  It felt good to remember What I Do, if not who I am.  I thought of that Rabindranath Tagore quote: “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I worked—and behold, duty was joy.”

I replaced a zipper in a pair of shorts for a boy. Then I was able to fix an old, exhausted pair of jeans by taking a much better pair of jeans and cutting them up to make patches for the tired pair. Why couldn’t I just give the customer the better pair of jeans? I wondered. Who decides what is wanted and valued and what is not?  Why am I taking good jeans and using them to fix bad ones?  Because the bad ones have value to their owner.  The bad ones are Wanted. The good ones aren’t—they were three dollars in a half-price bin at a thrift store where I go to collect used clothing exactly for this purpose.

It turns out that what we value is what we claim as “necessary,” especially when it comes to protecting our previous investments.   What we claim, eventually claims us.  Value is “Ours, Us, We.”  We tend not to value what does not serve us.   Achingly, I realize that, from Levis to cockerels, Value, like Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I observe two hermits here attempt to sort three generation’s worth of “stuff” in their old barn—one thinks it is all trash, the other treasure: corroding parts of wood stoves, sewing machines, old doors and windows, all with a liberal veneer of rodent droppings. For one, each piece has a story, and therefore Meaning, that makes it precious.  To the rest of us, our eyes cannot get beyond the mold and mouse mess.  We don’t see the Past, we see a grim Future of scrubbing and sanding and painting—an overwhelming and fruitless amount of effort that salvage will require.  What is meaningful and valuable is open to interpretation and unlikely to apply to those “not of the same mind.”  We don’t have the same minds; how can we have the same Meanings?  And yet, we have choices.  We have choices about listening politely and learning what other people value.  We can open our hearts to their stories.  

Can we value the dignity and sanctity of ALL life, regardless of how long or short it may be, how “valued” or not? HOW? These are hard questions for any farmer, seamstress, or citizen.  These are unglamorous questions that make me very depressed.  But they must be answered in practical terms.  There is no such thing as non-interdependent freedom.  Life is a web.  

It’s hard to work.  It’s hard not to work. Doing work helps us find Meaning—it certainly helps me find stories!  I am excited about collaborating on projects with people again but I am reluctant to endanger myself or others.  I am in limbo about what to do and grateful to my aching shoulder for answering the problem for me for now.

Well, my darlings, wherever you may be, whatever you may choose, I hope you are happy, healthy, and just the right balance of safe and free.  Thanks for your Good Work!  May our Mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy

A Story for the Graduates

“Did it ever occur to you that there’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another?”  E.B. White in a letter to Stanley Hart White, 1929

Greetings Dear Ones!

Of all the many traumas some folks are experiencing right now, Graduation is the most wonderful.  It is a time of fantastic panic—usually because parents did not realize they should have made their dinner reservations way back in Freshman year. This year, the panic, borne of amplified Uncertainty about the future, has knickers twisting like ropes.  People who have spent the past four years answering questions are now faced with a whole series of Unanswerables.  This can create Unimaginable Stress, fantastic out-of-the-box possibilities, or an insatiable thirst for beverages requiring I.D.  Perhaps all three.

My daughter, who has been ten weeks in quarantine with me, is “graduating” from college this coming weekend.  Due to the current pandemic, her (proud) father, (relieved) brother, and I will not be sitting in a stadium, along with thousands of other equally-pleased, camera-toting families, basting ourselves with sunscreen as our undergarments overheat, pondering those deep and meaningful questions that spring up like dandelions each May:  “Which will last longer, this commencement speech or my pantyhose?”  “Why did that woman three rows over feel the need to douse herself in aromatic Bath & Body products that are now inflaming my sinuses?”  “We have to have her out of her apartment by WHEN?” (Our daughter, that is, not the woman three rows over who is no longer a concern of ours…) Sadly, there will be no hats, no gowns, no pomp, no circumstance. (Damn it all, I AM going to wear a Hat! Excuse me while I put one on right now!)  Part of me is vastly relieved that I will not have to wear shoes that hurt my feet for three hours; part of me feels tragically bereft at losing the opportunity to cheer my lungs out for her when she crosses that platform to receive not one, but two Bachelor’s degrees—one in English, one in Biology.  I would say she’s worked her bum off for four years but she still has some bum left (she is her mother’s daughter afterall—no amount of Shakespeare or knowledge of the Krebs Cycle makes it shrink). (Prudence thinks we should delete that line. “What kind of mother says such things?!!!”)  Anyway, I am fiercely proud of her, beyond what words or bums or words about bums could possibly convey. 

Sadly, it will be just a “normal” day now—perhaps with a hike up a nearby hill, a sparkling beverage or two, and a sensible dinner constructed out of parts found in the fridge.   The Rest of Her Life, like all of ours too, will come silently with each and every new dawn, sans trumpets or impassioned pleas to donate the last dust from our coffers to the Alumni foundation…

So I am writing this little story in lieu of her getting the chance to be bored/inspired by a Professional Speaker who has written a book or annoyed enough people somewhere to be considered worthy of a hefty speaker’s fee to harangue a graduating class of hung-over people who just want to sleep off last night’s party in peace.    I shall dress up and bore her myself, making sure to be as long-winded as possible, and making her wear a piece of cardboard on her head for the duration of my Talk.  Depending on the weather, I may have her sit on a folding chair in the yard and gaze directly into the glare of the sun.   I want this experience to be as Authentic as possible. This will be my speech to her—but you are welcome to listen in.  I hadn’t got an idea for the blog this week anyway…

________________

Greetings honored sheep, distinguished dogs, and Darling Graduate.  One behalf of the Administrative and Custodial staff of Hermit Hollow, I would like to thank you for coming, though I realize you had absolutely no choice in this—as I stand between you and the Food.  We gather on this auspicious occasion to celebrate a commencement that will commence without ceremony and an ending that, well, will never end.  You have learned how to Learn, which is a Great Good Thing.  Bravo!! Now, I should like to ruin all that (and soak up all the time between now and lunch) by telling you a personal story that will show you how much you Don’t Yet Know. This tale will have great relevance for the over-ripe bananas in the audience, perhaps none what-so-ever for the firm and greenly anxious to be getting on with Things. Like all Good stories, this one is True, as far as I can tell. Some of it happened as recently as last week; some has been happening for many, many lifetimes already.

Once upon a time, nearly thirty years ago, four souls met and quickly recognized each other as dear old friends.   They were, as you are now, on the cusp of finishing their university degrees and ready to tumble headlong off the cliff of Everything They Had Ever Known and into the abyss of All That Could Become.  They hoped the wings they had been sprouting were strong enough to hold them aloft.  They stroked their feathers and roisined their bows but they could not be Sure.

One day, two of these dear friends decided to paint their boots.  They were older, scuffed boots whose polish was fading but the two friends didn’t have any polish.  Besides, the boots looked ever so much cheerier with hearts and spirals and suns painted on them! Later, they happened to wear these boots on some errands into town.  At a little place called Helios Fountain, where there were all sorts of inspiring books and objects of art for sale near a coffee shop, they were surprised to hear a mysterious voice say to them “Those look like Magic Boots—follow me to hear the story of those magic boots.”  (Nowadays, we might be tempted to mace older men who say such things to young women, but thankfully such thoughts never entered their minds!) Entranced, they followed him.  And that was how they met the Swirling Mass of energies, impulses, and wisdoms they came to call Magic Man.  Of course, he had a real name and a real job—a very important one, it turned out—but they were so struck by his sense of magic and stories that he was always known as Magic Man to the four friends.  When he wasn’t being Vastly Important in other arenas like international broadcasting and lecturing, he was obsessed with hunting, capturing, and preserving Stories.  His whole life was a Story Safari.  He introduced the four friends to the secret underground of storytellers who met beneath the city streets, in pubs, church basements, and university dwellings.  The four went, clothed in raggle-taggle home-sewn clothing, painted boots, and daydreams,  and sat, like children round a primal campfire, as myths and legends emerged, glistening and ethereal as soap bubbles breathed into fragile, momentary roundness by their tellers.   These four, who were well-brought-up and somewhat anxious to relieve themselves of the burdens of middle-class Respectability, had never experienced anything so Dazzling or Daring.  They met folks who had been born in Gypsy caravans, travelers from all over the world, and shaggy, barefoot Californians who had changed their names to Gandolf. They saw tears sparkle like diamonds on the leathered cheeks of grown men and heard the moss-soft echoes of faerie laughter at wasted treasures.  Over and over, they returned to the time that was Once Upon-a.  They began to see “stories” in everything they did.

Though they had spent years formally studying Anthropology, Accounting, Education, and Women’s History, they all came to see this central truth: No matter what, Everything is a story.  Of course, being an English Major, you already know this. You know that every story has its Protagonist—this is the character or Being that is Pro the tagonist.  If we are thinking like Romans, this means “for” the tagonist.  If we think like ancient Greeks, then Pro means “first” (from proto), so this is merely the First Tagonist in a story.  In either case, I’m not certain what a tagonist is, but, being a newly-minted graduate, I’m pretty sure you must, so I won’t bother looking it up.  If you don’t know, for heaven’s sake, don’t admit that.  We spent a lot of money on your education—I hope to hell you know at least one thing or two that I don’t, besides how to use Snapchat!   You know also that there are Antagonists—these are the people and forces that oppose tagonists, though they are technically not the opposite of a Protagonist.   These confusing terms and their usages are precisely why people need English degrees.  Thank Heavens you have one now.   (And you thought you got into this major just for the Money…) You, like those four raggle-taggle friends of Once Upon-a, are ready to wake up in the middle of your own tale and write the rest of it from here.

Stories often involve villains and heroes—some of which are the aforementioned Protagonists and Antagonists. Occasionally, there are victims.  No matter what, don’t be the victim in your story.  Stop that.  Even if terrible things happen to you, and they might, Never be the victim.  Victims have no power.  Victims are often just secretly kinky people who get off on lying there, tied up on the railroad tracks, wiggling and bleating as the piano plays uptempo—waiting for a hero to save them or a mustached villain to blame.  Horrific, Tragic things happen to heroes too—only they never cede their power.  They change what happens to them into what happens for them.  Try doing that instead.

Don’t Panic when you think you don’t know how your story goes.  You’re living it Now.  Remember, when two people are lost in a field, if they both run randomly, frantically looking for one another, the chances are great that they might keep missing each other, whereas if one stays still, the other may inevitably come across her, given enough time.  So, when you are lost, STOP. Sit down; kneel down; lie down. Wait.  You are the Highly Valued Precious Piece of a puzzle that is part of a bigger plan.   What you need also needs you.  Your Story is on its way to find you, even now. Don’t Run!  Listen to those spark-joy impulses that tell you to draw your friend’s cat, Or learn a tune, Or call a friend, Or paint your boots. The things that lead you to Joy are your own Story calling softly, hoping you will hear.

As you make your way through Life, like the ancient Maori, you will sing into Being both yourself and the lands through which you travel.  There will be some unexpected plot twists and character changes.  Let the Unexpected teach you what you need to learn.   It is no longer your duty to know the answers to other people’s questions.  Now, and ever more, it is your duty to question their answers.   (This is where your science degree will come in very handy!)  Question EVERYTHING. Sniff out the Rot. Remember, sometimes the story is the one telling You, not the other way around!

When Other Voices try to take over, ask yourself, “Who is telling this story?  Is it Fear, or Love?” Is it saying there is not enough? Then it is Fear.  If it is saying, “My Darling, there is Plenty,” then it is Love.

We each, as Tellers, have two secret super powers—what Westley in The Princess Bride would call your assets against all liabilities.  Even when the very life has been sucked out of you and only moments remain, you still have these: (Wheelbarrows occasionally come in handy too.)

#1, your incredible Uniqueness.   You are, as E.B. White would say, “a party of one.” 

#2, your ability to Connect With Others (through the medium of an open heart, not a clenched fist!)  You are a co-creator—your audience is not just a group of Passive Observers.  Reality is not Television.  You are at a Cosmic Dance.  These people are your partners.

No matter what happens, never lose faith in your story.

Someday, after you have been traveling for many years, you might be astonished to read a message that says something like “I was born in a town where you told stories.  My mother bought cassette recordings of your stories for me.  When I was five, my family moved home to Brazil. Since my new friends could not speak English, those tapes and those stories became my secret world.  For years, I listened until I was afraid the tapes might break and I put them away.  I am twenty-six now and I too am a Storyteller.  I am in charge of a great museum program that is telling stories and making art for our community.  I would not be an artist today if I had not had those tapes. Your voice is the voice of my secret world. I want to hear it again—do you have any more tapes?”  And you will weep tears of Joy.  You will think that despite the MESSES you have made in your life, and how your precious wings, once ready to Soar, are so scorched and burned and folded now to protect a heart so broken, how some days you don’t know why you even get out of bed, somehow… despite all the failures and disorganization and scatteredness and anxiety…some Good made it into the world because of You.  

 And that will be an incalculable blessing.  You will look back and follow the homespun threads of your life and see that while you have done practically NONE of what you thought you would do, only SOME of what you wanted to do, somehow, you’ve done all you really needed to do.

You will follow one thread back to a pair of painted boots and realize that Nothing is pointless in this life. NO impulsive act of Beauty is not worth it. From the smallest of seeds come such wonderful fruits.  Our “plans” are just starting points.  Degrees don’t change the world; People do.  Being Indecisive is the most exhausting energy drain I know, so rather than fight it, embrace the Mystery that swirls around you in these next months and years and seasons.  You don’t know exactly what Good you are here to do, so do any tiny bit of good you can—it might not be what your are “trained” to do.  More likely, your Greatest Good will come as a result of making your own heart Sing.   Other hearts that may not be here yet will hear you one day and sing along.

Whenever you wonder what Life is about, watch “The Princess Bride,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “My Dinner with Andre” again.  It’s about the little, random acts of beauty or bravery we don’t even consider.  It’s anything that teaches us we are here to Love and Be Loved.

I close my remarks now by inviting the Graduating Class of 2020 to rise and ever more, continue Rising!

No matter what, I love you so much.

Love,

Mum

P.S. While I’m up here, I’m going to award myself several honorary degrees for the following:

In Psychology for my work in Operating a 24hour Roommate Crisis hotline

In Geography and Navigation—for the HOURS I’ve spent lost in mazes beneath Boston picking you up and dropping you off, especially that year I drove under there from Thanksgiving straight through until Christmas and never once made it home.

In Culinary Arts—for teaching you how to boil an egg by phone.

Ok! Up with the Hats and Tassles!!! WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Ankle Deep in Mud

“The temple of truth has never suffered so much from woodpeckers on the outside

as from termites within.” —Vance Havner

Greetings Dear Ones!

For a while, I thought Spring had been cancelled, along with all other pre-pandemic activities.  I cannot imagine how the tree frogs are managing to sing so sweetly without sweaters on.  It’s cold! No lawnmowers can be heard yet over the sound of chainsaws of locals already at work on next winter’s wood piles but one Spring sound in particular has taken me by surprise. The first time I heard it, I was jolted from sleep thinking we were being strafed by Gatling guns.  Then I realized someone was knocking on the door and needed to be let in. So I threw on an assortment of mismatched clothes hastily snagged from the laundry pile, added some Wellie boots on the wrong feet, and clambered downstairs to open the door.  The stars were fading and dawn was just throwing a first leg over the hill. I blinked sleepily. Why in Heaven’s name would someone be visiting at this hour of the morning? I peered at the empty driveway for a moment and turned to go back inside when I heard it again, echoing through the valley.  I was Right.  It WAS an aerial assault—by Woodpeckers! Woodpeckers were pecking on the metal roof of the house.  What were they thinking?  You can’t get bugs out of metal! As I watched, a woodpecker slammed himself into the side of the house and bounced off a window.  He shook his little red head and then flew at the house again.  This time, he landed on the gable and began to peck us all deaf. 

Each morning since then, as many as three or four at a time will be pecking on the metal roof with the first light of dawn. The disgruntled and sleep-deprived hermits admit this happens every year for a few weeks in April and May then they forget about it until the next year.  It’s mating season for these guys (the wood peckers, not the hermits). I guess whoever makes the loudest pecks is (metaphorically, of course) “the biggest pecker.” In This Is Spinal Tap terms, they need amplifiers that go up to eleven.  Who needs Tinder when you have Tin-roof?  (At least female woodpeckers don’t have to look at pictures of dudes riding big motorcycles, or proudly displaying dead fish…) Like many lonely males, they assume their lady friends want to hear from them at odd hours so they start hitting the roof with Morse code for “Hey baby…what up?” as soon as they can see straight to dial in the morning.

Being awakened before dawn by lust-wracked woodpeckers makes for interesting starts to days which get even stranger, as we try to assess the risks of opening for business again.  People have started contacting me and wondering if I will be able to be able to do fittings by Skype or Zoom, where they get a co-contained one to pin or measure them, then they send me the work and I send it back.  This week, I actually met an amazingly optimistic young woman in a parking lot so I could assess her sweater damage from a distance of six feet.  (Yup, looks like a sweater. Nope, I have no idea what that fiber is, no matter how many times you stroke it and tell me it’s soft.) I cannot imagine how many funny stories might result from this.  After all, What could possibly go Wrong??? (Prudence is rolling her eyes and heading for the aspirin.)

A woman emails and wants to know if I still have her wedding dress.  I dropped it off at the cleaner’s for her nine weeks ago.  It’s had the same mud and wine stains on it for more than twenty six years but she wants to wear it to her daughter’s wedding, which has been post-poned until autumn now.  Before we could alter it to fit her, we needed to have it professionally cleaned to see if the fabric could survive. She thinks this is a fun idea—wearing her own wedding dress to her child’s nuptials. “You know, it’s such sentimental day,” she said effervescently when we first discussed this project over the phone, “I’d love to be able to wear this dress as part of all that.”  I’ll admit I was tempted (as perhaps you are too) to judge her.  How Awkward would that be—to invite your mother to your wedding and have her turn up in a patched up version of her own wedding gown???  Prudence, who never waits for more information, thought the notion was Absurd. Immediately, she thought someone who got married in the nineties must have glided down the aisle in a dress the size of a float in the Rose Bowl parade, with as many frills and flowers.  Mercifully, this woman did not.

When I met her nine weeks ago and saw the dress in person, I instantly saw that this project was totally possible and that the dress was well-suited to the scheme. It’s a very simple sheath in a pale color (not white) that almost still fits her but not quite.  I can see that she hasn’t really changed that much in weight, but shape.  Her rib cage has expanded, along with her hips, in the bearing of her children.  She is softer and more womanly than the girl who wore this long ago.  Her breasts are fuller and she does not like how low the front of the dress goes now.  She no longer wants her arms to show either. We will shorten the straps, cannibalize the wide, flowing sash and make short sleeves out of it, and hem it all up to something mid-calf in length, which will also serve to cut off most of the mud and wine stains.  It will actually work and look adorable, without making her look like a competing “bride.”

As she turned to look at herself in the mirror, I could see that other young woman of long ago, sparkling with Joy.  She still radiates happiness in this dress she never once in twenty-six years thought of cleaning. She beams.  “This dress still makes you look beautiful,” I can’t help admitting out loud.  “I can see why you want to wear it.”

“It was the best day of my life,” she says. “We had so much fun.  This was not the dress anyone thought I should wear but I loved it. I wanted something simple—not too Bridey.  I like simple. I wanted to look like ME, not like all those brides in mounds of poof and circumstance.  I just wanted to have fun. And we did.” Prudence archly takes notice of the mud and wine and can’t help sniffing, “Indeed. It’s clear you enjoyed yourself thoroughly—um dancing barefoot in a field, while people lobbed cheap plonk at the bride like she was a prize in a carnival, was it? I’m pretty sure Regrettable Music, turned up to eleven, was involved…” I shush Prudence and turn from looking at the dress to this woman’s eyes.  They are bright green and shine with magic. The laugh lines around her happy face tell me that she has been having fun ever since.  She’s still married to the same man and still enjoying the Simple Things.  Even Prudence melts a little.

“People might think I’m crazy to wear my own wedding dress to my daughter’s wedding but guess what? I don’t give a rip. I never have.  I wanted to wear this dress, even though it wasn’t traditional then, and it’s not traditional now. I still want to wear it.  It’s a dress that makes me feel free to move and be who I am. I don’t DO formal.”  Can I just tell you how much I LOVE this woman? I think about how lucky her children are to have her model this kind of Self acceptance.

Not everyone gets to have a Mother this free and feral and wise.  A young friend of mine calls me on Mother’s Day.  She is feeling sad that she cannot call her mother from whom she is estranged.  “Am I a terrible person?” she wants to know. “Shall I call her, even though one of us, probably me, will wind up getting hurt? What is the Right thing to do?”

My thoughts turn to a joyful, green-eyed bride, ankle deep in mud. “What does your own inner Wisdom tell you is Right?” I ask my young fellow traveler. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “That’s why I’m asking you!” We both laugh.

“Your inner wisdom DOES know,” I say. “Absolutely.  The problem is that most of us are taught—often by our well-intentioned, conventional, and domesticated mothers—to ignore our inner wisdom for the sake of others.  We are taught not just to serve to but serve at our own expense.  It makes a huge difference when we get to choose what makes us truly Happy, without feeling guilty about that.” 

“I hear too many things inside,” my young friend laments, “and none of them make me feel happy. How am I supposed to know which one is the right voice?”  I think of Prudence and I understand.  It’s hard to live with a harsh inner voice.  It took me a long time to figure out which the right voice was.  I answer slowly.

“It’s the voice inside that says something that makes you feel more aligned, more whole, more free, more connected to your Source.  A voice that comes from Love, will always lead you towards greater Love—even if that makes you do hard things.  Maybe you have to be still for a really long time before you can feel it.  Keep listening, it’s a very soft voice…”

As a nation, we just celebrated Mother’s Day and all the hard work and self-sacrifice that Mothers do.  Perhaps the hardest thing any parent must do is teach its child Right from Wrong, Safe from Unsafe, and the importance of integrating heart and mind in our thoughts and actions. The outside world can be like woodpeckers on our roofs—rattling us with their own imperative, short-lived, cheap, sexy agendas, jolting us from sleep and making us run out to the driveway looking unprepared and ratty. 

It’s vital that we learn to listen to people who listen to their Authentic selves. Happy people are not narcissists. You can tell the difference by whom they are attempting to please and whether or not they are concerned with their “ratings.” Refusing to abandon themselves does not make them selfish.  These are the ones who are strong and resilient, no matter how the events of their lives may change their waist or bust lines.  They don’t give a damn about conventions when they are led by Love and Joy.  Simple is good enough for them—though Simple, as we know, is not always the same as Easy.

There is something profoundly moving to me about a woman who would choose the same dress, the same man, the same Life, and the same Self all over again and celebrate the fulfillment of all that implies on the day her daughter begins her own journey as a lifelong partner to another soul.  No, I don’t think she is “lucky.” I think she chooses well and was raised to have confidence in her choices because they were hers.  It frightens me to think we live in a world where our young ones don’t know how to access their inner wisdom in order to make their own choices.  Too many of us parents would make our children’s choices for them, based on our own fears.  This is robbery.  

Each day, there are endless decisions to be made about how we treat each other and ourselves.  There IS a true North inside each one of us, leading us home, leading us to greater connection to each other, to our planet, to ourselves.  How do we teach Courage and Discernment if we never say it’s OK to depart from the Norm—(does anybody remember what “normal” looks like anymore?)—in order to have fidelity to what is True.  We know it’s True because it makes us more Kind, less connected to the physical/material and more connected to the Spiritual. It helps us break the cycles churning between offenses and retaliations. It makes us pause and think, “hey, is what I am doing leading me to Shine or Shame?” If I do this, will I reap Serenity or Sorrow? Peace or Pain?

Our old lives aren’t waiting for us to pick them up where we left off.  They are already gone. Our clothes may hide unchanged for twenty-six years in a closet full of old mud and wine stains, but we can’t.  We change shape.  We expand. We grow. Our boobs sag, our wrinkles deepen, our hearts fill up with Life.  Ever and always, as we breathe, we are getting new choices, new opportunities.  In this time of waiting to emerge, we must ask ourselves, would we choose the same again?  If not, what needs to be changed to fit us now that we have Grown?  How and what will we celebrate? We’ll know we are making the right choices if we fall more in love than ever. It’s as simple as that.  If we wish to create a New Golden Age, we’re going to have to adhere to old Golden Rules.

Keep well, my Darlings!  May the Mending Continue!  Thanks, ever, for your Good Work.

Yours aye,

Nancy

A Wretched Thing or Two...

Tra La! It’s May! The lusty month of May!

That darling month when everyone throws self-control away

It’s time to do a Wretched thing or two,

And try to make each precious day one you’ll always rue! –Guenevere in “Camelot”

Greetings Dear Ones!

Happy Wednesday my Darlings! It IS Wednesday, right? It’s NOT?  Well, is it even May? I woke up to snow flurries… I am definitely losing my grip on things here—I’ve been hanging by a thread with such force that I now have acute tendonitis that is making everything from sewing masks to swatting May flies a sparkling agony for my left shoulder. I haven’t been able to lift my fiddle for weeks. I’m definitely tempted to do “a wretched thing or two”…but instead, I am going to take a small break from over-doing things for a bit and just be Quiet in the company of my darling sheep and fellow hermits.  I’m weary and disheartened on so many levels.

By May 3rd, our Southern Vermont sewing cadre had sewn well over 5,517 masks for the Covid Crisis. One thousand of them were mine.  I would be so very proud of myself if I wasn’t also bitterly disappointed that even masks and their wearing has become politicized in this wretched country. “No Good Deed goes unpunished,” chides Prudence. “No one asked you to spend one hundred and seventy hours covering every flat surface this home with what looks like muppet afterbirth.” Each mask takes me an average of 10 minutes to make—that’s over 10,000 minutes in the service to “my country” and the utter destruction of Hermit Hollow’s main living space. First I made them out of cloth I had stashed—sewing my way through 100% cotton renditions of memories, dreams, sale items, and girl-what-the-hell-were-you-thinking-s. Then, generous friends donated a mosaic mountain of similar stories from their own stashes, which were unsentimentally torn into six-inch strips, cut in nine inch lengths, fitted with elastic ears, and sent to hospitals, clinics, veterinarians, and birthing centers.  Over and over the Past came back to haunt us all as beloved friends we had not heard from for many years came out of the woodwork to ask for masks.  It’s been a HUGE labor of Love.  But make no mistake, it is labor. Just ask all the similarly committed darlings with ironing boards set up in their kitchens and living rooms.

Remembering the Love part has been hard when I’ve taken a lot of the commentary on the mask debate very personally, which is a big mistake. I understand it all cognitively but still feel it emotionally. I find myself caught in sour loops of Judgment about what exactly our “freedoms” mean and where our responsibilities towards others and their comfort and safety lie. If I wasn’t so damn tired and sore, I would delight in all the absurdities. But I feel very challenged on a deep level—way more so than my average “opportunity for growth” that comes from cutting someone’s hemlines wrong or losing my car keys in the fridge.  I’m trying to think about how I can learn or grow from this experience.  I can’t help thinking that all the women knitting for the Red Cross in all the past wars did not have to feel so defensive of their attempts to help those on the front. Or did they?  Does every person trying to do a bit of Good in this world feel simultaneously that they can’t do Enough and that they aren’t even sure why they are doing it in the first place?

As a means of comforting myself with a bigger perspective, I always turn to History.  It turns out that we humans have been struggling with our social habits regarding phlegm and spittle for many centuries. To me, wearing a mask in public is the modern rendition of “Good Manners.” Is it not the duty of Civilization to create environments where it is safe to be Fragile? Where we hold honor and compassion for those NOT able to survive a struggle of the fittest? Inherent in the very concept of civilization is the idea that the weak will be protected by the larger community, that Gentleness is the awareness of how our strength might impact others, that through Grace we will not cause others distress via our own selfish impulses and needs?  Through Good Manners, we protect others and demonstrate that moderation of our behavior is not just admirable, it can be downright Elegant.  But to the Un-civilized, moderating their behavior is not a sacrifice they are willing to make in much the same way that the barbarian hordes who sacked Rome mocked the Romans for bathing weekly, trimming their nose hairs, and fretting about their bad breath (even going so far as to brush their teeth with horse urine to eliminate it!)

Manners do not come naturally to us.   It was hundreds of Dark years (Ages even…) before we returned to Roman concepts of hygiene and decorum (thankfully, with less questionable dental remedies).  From the Middle Ages onwards, we can trace the evolution of “Civility” through tracts published to aid the uninitiated who apparently needed to be told “do not attack your enemy while he is in the act of defecating…” (Daniel of Beckels, 1209) Whether he has ten bales of hoarded Charmin or not, it’s simply not Polite to pick a fight with someone taking a dump.  (This might be a valuable reminder in these days of quarantining with emotionally fragile housemates.)

In our human and humane quest for propriety and kindness, wanna-be Gentlepeople have had to be told “in the company of grandees, do not openly excavate your nostril by twisting one’s fingers.” They are also advised to “turn away when they cough or blow out their noses, so that nothing falls on the table.” Good etiquette then demanded that they step on any globs and grind them into the floor with the heel of their boot: “If anything falls to the ground when blowing the nose with two fingers, it should immediately be trodden away.” (There is no record of how many people organized protest riots over this one.)

What to do with phlegm and aerosolized droplets from our mucus membranes has been the subject of intense scrutiny, right up to the present crisis today.  In the fifteenth century, we actually had to be advised, in writing, not to blow our noses into the table cloth.  Through the centuries, we continually have to be reminded not to blow our noses into our hands and then wipe them on our clothes.  We must be told by Those Who Knew that “only tradesmen blow their noses into their elbows.” Those wealthy enough to possess a handkerchief had to be taught how to use it, as it did not come with instructions. In 1558, from Galateo, we learn “Nor is it seemly, after wiping your nose, to spread out your handkerchief and peer into it as if pearls or rubies might have fallen out of your head.”   By the time every Gentleman carried a handkerchief, Kleenex came out with the campaign “Don’t carry a cold in your pocket” which swiftly made carrying a damp rag wadded up with your own boogers repugnant.

Let’s face it.  We all think that Boogers are gross, even the third-graders who openly snack on them.  Now, thanks to modern Science, we are learning that we are releasing virus-laden micro-droplets of all sorts of virulence and filth—microscopically contaminating our tables (still) and accidentally blowing our noses in each other’s hair and clothing.  The medical establishment has been aware of this since the late nineteenth century.

Face masks were introduced for medical purposes in 1897 by Johann von Mikulicz-Radecki of Breslau, Germany and were nothing more glorified handkerchiefs tied about the face—guidelines that today’s CDC were just fine with only weeks ago.  They were intended to prevent infection in the patients by limiting the amount of bacteria that could be spread into wounds from the droplets emanating from mouths of the doctors and nurses. They were not to protect the wearers from airborne diseases or viruses.  They were to protect the patients. Cloth masks with ties were worn by medical personnel until the 1960’s, when they were replaced by non-woven disposable fabric.

Throughout history, we have needed to have formal instructions from the Enlightened/Educated few to elicit changes in the society at large, but now, Heaven forbid it be an Elected Official who decides to guide us!  Then, we will be “oppressed,” in much the same way that wearing a seatbelt and not drinking while driving are oppressive. Can we not think this through for ourselves or will Royal and Celebrity endorsements be required? In the past, if the Elite did something, it eventually tricked through all strata of society. If Being Careful is fashionable, even Glamorous, then everyone will want to do it, right?

Like the curve of the virus itself, public mask-wearing will follow a Bell: A certain segment of the population will be rational and Graceful and embrace this fresh awkwardness with alacrity and they will actually manage to look damn fashionable doing it. (Think Catharine de Medici introducing forks to her dining table and coaxing her elite guests to stop eating their meat with their bare hands...) The middle hump of the curve will eventually, more or less, get off its arse and grudgingly follow suit—either to follow the trend or to avoid looking like those who don’t.

Those whose inner toddlers are running amok will be hosting tantrums at town halls, screaming that they need “their lives back,” that their God-given right to a pedicure is getting trampled, and petulantly insisting “you can’t make me wear that.” They will look to their leaders and wonder why they don’t have to wear masks. They will see those of us who do, not as Gracious, but as cowards sneaking away their Rights to Free Speech, Guns, and Haircuts.    Let’s face it, there would not have to be laws for seat-belts, smoking, and acceptable norms about NOT pissing in swimming pools, if people automatically thought about what was best for their neighbor or themselves.  But they don’t. So, a civilized society must put some muscle behind its ability to protect Everyone, even those who do not wish to be civilized or protected—folks who do not, as the fourth Earl of Chesterfield did in the 1700’s, see “Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self denial for the sake of others.” No amount of good sense would have some people deny themselves the right to breathe all over the carrots at the grocery store.

Lord Chesterfield also advises, “Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner but at the same time, let them feel the steadiness of your resentment.”  I am not making masks to create enemies, nor do I wish to elicit anyone’s scorn—especially after putting in so much effort to a cause in which I have so fervently believed.  I think that wearing masks is a kindness to others but I do not think that vitriol towards those who refuse to comply is kind either.

I guess at the end of the day, my little sewing machine and I—and those like me—are getting a chance to live up to our beliefs and convictions, ten minutes at a time, which, thankfully, we are Free to do.  I believe that people should be Safe, especially from other people.  I believe in Teamwork—especially between Form and Function, Beauty and Science, Faith and Works.   I also know that loving others is a skill to be learnt over the course of one’s whole life.  Our lack of knowledge of another’s humanity is what keeps us enthralled—be it in unrequited infatuation or invested in contemptuous prejudice against them.  People are neither as wonderful nor as terrible as we suspect them to be.  Rather than mortify and depress those with whom we disagree, let’s let our mask-wearing be a symbol of Good Manners—a wish to protect from harm, a wish to preserve Friends, not create enemies.  Let’s not just Look good, let’s also Be good.

Above all, let’s Be Kind.  From Old English cynd(e) Kind relates to Kin. For all our silliness and magnificence, despite religion, despite politics, we are all a Human Family. We are ALL affected by this Pandemic. The concept of an “Us” versus a “Them” is causing more havoc than this virus ever will. When we hurt Some, we hurt All.

Please keep up your Good Work. Let us Mend where we can. I love you all so much, whether you agree with me or not.

Yours aye,

Nancy  

Shearing & Shoulding

Greetings Dear Ones!

Well, we’ve had our first unfortunate “haircut at home during the Corona Virus” episode. The results are pretty dreadful.  I could not wait until the first week of June, as I usually do, to shear one of the yearling lambs because his wool had started to slough off in odd ways, making horrible mats and dreadlocks that were ruining his gorgeous fleece.  Among many of the wonderful traits of Shetland sheep, an ancient breed that retains many feral and original characteristics of primitive sheep, is the occasional ability to “rue” or shed.  Normally, we shear Shetlands in June because the “break” in the fleece, where the new growth is clearly visible, makes the job so much easier. But this guy was so itchy that he would scratch himself with his horns, get his horns tangled in his own wool and then walk in circles until I came to cut him free.  (Who ISN’T having problems like this these days?  Though to be clear, it’s not my horns that get tangled in my mop, it’s a hairbrush, but still I walk in circles until cut free!) His long, silky, beautiful lamb’s first wool was being destroyed little by little each day as he continually rubbed and felted himself.  I called my favorite shepherding mentor and she said that the animal was probably really stressed out during this fall, when I had to put them at another farm for three months before I could bring them here to Hermit Hollow.  He had been in with a bunch of rams who did not give him access to shelter and who were like bullies on the school playground.  He did lose weight and seem traumatized when I went to visit him. Anyway, now he’s otherwise totally healthy and happy but his past trauma is playing out in his fleece. She said to save the fleece, I needed to shear him now and he’d be fine.  So I did. 

Because I am having shoulder issues with a rotator cuff injury, I locked him into the milking bench and sheared him standing up, rather than bending over and trying to wrestle him on the ground. Like my son, years ago when he was young, he loved getting his haircut until I was about eighty-five percent done.  (If only I had thought to lock my son into a milking stanchion to finish the job!) The last twenty percent was a nightmare for us both.  After one of us decided to throw a temper tantrum and poop all over the bench, I wound up setting him free looking like he’d gotten a really bad butt-mullet.  We looked deep into each other’s eyes and knew that the other sheep were going to laugh at him.  Neither of us cared.  He looked almost as “sheepish” as one of our favorite former customers who came into the shop one day with only half of her head trimmed.  She had her four-year-old granddaughter in tow and they were doing errands.  The first errand had been to get granny’s haircut.  Only the granddaughter had been so naughty, that granny was asked by the management to take her away before the haircut could be completed! Prudence had quite a thing or two to say about that!

Prudence has been getting her horns tangled in a lot of woolly issues these days.  She has much to say about people who spread certain kinds of news and other people who actually believe certain kinds of news, though Vexing her Most are the people who don’t follow the green arrows pointing out the proper flow of traffic at the grocery store.  She is generally bugging the pellets out of me too.   (She will be the reason my fleece falls out six months from now.)

“What are you doing?” she wants to know.

“I’m writing. You know, the blog?”

“How can you write a blog about being a Seamstress when you are NOT being a seamstress?” she wants to know. “Who wants to hear about sheep looking like your unfortunate customers?”

“Well, I’m attempting to project a dramatic, literary framework upon every day existence, rendering home haircuts that make one want to take a dip of snuff enjoyable, enlightening, and potentially meaningful.  As an Artist, I have a responsibility to connect people and bring forth Beauty from collective pain…”

“What a load of crap,” says P. “You are just staring into space, attempting to get out of doing the dishes.”  I find this statement laughable because the exact opposite is true. Lately, I have been using any number of ‘chores,’ including scalping an innocent lamb, as an excuse NOT to lift a pen to project a dramatic literary framework on anything.  Writing, like pretty much everything else, including combing my hair, seems like an inordinate amount of effort.  Why bother?

“Perhaps you should vacuum the couch, give yourself a haircut, do your taxes, or capture the chickens who have escaped from their box in the cellar,” she says. “When History comes to write its account of this time, are you going to be content to say you passed The War in untrimmed squalor, ankle deep in mask scraps and dog fur? As the Queen Mother might say, how will you look the East Enders in the face?”

I giggle and think of myself as an old lady (ok, an OLDER little old “late-ee”) sitting in a dappled, sunlit garden, six feet away from several other “little old Late-ees,” sipping tea directly through our calico masks that we never gave up wearing, ever, and can no longer remove except surgically, and dining on fruit and nuts we have scrubbed with a wire brush and straight bleach for a minimum of two “Happy Birthdays.”  We have sung Happy Birthday to our fresh market produce for so long now, we mistakenly think we have been alive for thousands of years.

“How did you get through the Covid Era” croaks one who is sneaking gin into her cup, which has a decoy tea bag label taped to the inside (you know who you are!)

“Well,” says I with an air of dramatic nostalgia, “it was Brutal…simply BRUTAL…first we ate all the Tim-tams…then the Wifi went to down to point five, despite the supposed capacity of the fiberoptics… we could hardly watch the daily concerts…” My listeners roll their eyes sympathetically, acknowledging the collective Suffering our generation endured...

Tim-tams, for the uninitiated, are a very dangerous Australian approximation of a rectangular oreo cookie, only made with better chocolate and dipped in even better chocolate.  This is, literally, the cookie to end all cookies. The best thing is that they are not even called “cookies”—they are called “biscuits” which automatically downshifts their perceived sugar content and makes them sound more healthy.  They are one of the many perils of letting one’s daughter travel abroad without adequate parental supervision.  Addicts and returning foreign exchange students have been known to trade all of their clothing to fill their suitcases with Tim-tams, only to find them in the Import section of their local Star Market, thus spreading the contagion to their mothers…

So many wonderful things are coming from Australia these days.  Among them, is the current research on aerosol transmission of Corona Virus from, um… “down under.”  Apparently, the virus has been found in poo, and even—though it nearly destroys Prudence to tell you so—Yes, gentle ladies and men, Gas.  (Here, Prudence slumps into a dead faint.) According to an article in the New York Post, we are advised to avoid “bare bottomed farting” during this dangerous time, as more than particles of feces are aerosolized and set adrift when we let off.  (Try telling this to the untold numbers of individuals currently quarantining at home, dressed as Winnie the Pooh.)  The ah…repercussions…of this crisis get ever more interesting all the time: People locked at home, refusing to wear pants, eating through their vast stashes of beans and rice…it’s the makings of a Perfect Storm.  Or at least a perfect storm Cloud.  I can see it now—in days to come, as an act of heroic Patriotism, I will have to make Bum Masks with charcoal filters for public safety.  The engineer part of my brain starts to work immediately—I picture something like a cross between a Speedo and Dr. Dentons with the button flap in the back. Women will have bikini ties for closure but those with male phenotypes will have the option of long, elastic loops….  (Prudence just woke up and is threatening to poke our eyes out with a seam ripper…)

“Maybe you should take a break from imagining ways to save the world with your Stitch Witchery,” says Prudence.  “Maybe you should stop writing and Do Something Useful, preferably something that does not involve disfiguring farm animals.”

“Maybe I should take a nap,” I say…

On she rambles with her list of Shoulds…

Many of us in lockdown are unwisely “shoulding” all over ourselves like sheep on a shearing block.  Our biggest fears, and there are many, include dying and the even more harrowing worry that somehow we are Failing Covid-19.  Absolutely Everyone Else is going to emerge from lock-down looking as if they have just spent the last seven weeks at an exclusive health spa—with taut bodies, firm bank accounts, long, glossy hair, radiantly healthy skin, bright eyes and teeth that gleam as if nuclear powered.  They will know an extra language, play a new instrument, and have learned how to make delicious, gourmet pasta from scratch using only shredded toilet rolls and mystery condiments from the back of the fridge. Their homes will sparkle and shine and their children will be ready to skip third grade and matriculate directly to Harvard.  We, on the other hand, are going to emerge from our dens with hairy patches in all the wrong places, looking like a shoulder-lame shepherdess chopped at us for a while then gave up, muttered something that rhymes with “bucket,” and wandered off to guzzle something that rhymes with “cheer.” Like my unfortunate yearling wether, we will take off our Winter pajamas and discover that stress has long-term consequences for our organic bodies, be they human or ovine.   As humans, our stress comes only partly from the Rams in charge.  It comes mostly from our own toxic self-talk. That is something we Should do something about!

Please, my darlings, treat yourselves and each other with extraordinary gentleness—it’s true that you are building your future self today but a global pandemic is NOT a spa.  We DON’T have to look like those fitness gurus who have spent the past forty days bench-pressing bottles of laundry detergent on Instagram.  Our Stress is Real—in sheep and people—our bodies keep the score.  We need extra comfort, extra gentleness, more kindness than ever.  (Ok, maybe we can ease up on the beans…) With more love than ever,

Yours aye,

Nancy

A damn good pair of pants

Greetings and Happy Earth Day Dear Ones!

Well, I never in a million years thought I would say this….. but… I miss Prom Season! I’ve been trying to focus on the many blessings in each day… Last night, the winds howled and it snowed again, but just a dusting. Spring in Vermont gets dressed in all her frills as slowly as a sulky teenager getting dragged to church by her parents.  The apple trees won’t look like bridesmaids for another month yet.  This morning, I took a vacation from my sewing machine and wandered about Hermit Hollow looking for reasons to smile and be cheerful.  I sat for a while in the sheep fold, getting nuzzled and covered in lanolin-smudged hugs. There is a patchy green rash spreading on the hill and I noticed a garden rake has taken its place next to a snow shovel on the porch. Signs of Hope. Despite ice-crisp mud, the frogs have turned the pond into an amphibian brothel. Songs of avian courtship echo from the trees and banks. 

We have ten baby chicks coming along nicely in a make-shift brooder by the wood stove in the basement.  I stopped to count them before going to bed last night and noticed one was missing.  Only nine were cuddling in their little nest in the corner under the heat lamp. I scanned the box, fearing for a moment that one of the Jack Russell monsters might have had a snack.  Then I saw her—sprawled, tiny wings flat out to each side, legs straight out behind her, her chin (do chickens have chins?) resting on the edge of the feed tray.  She had fallen asleep in the food. Being almost the same color as the crumbles, she was hard to notice at first. She was not curled up with her beak tucked under a wing.  She was passed out straight, toes down, resting on her belly, looking replete and peaceful, as only the very young can do. I barely touched her and she squawked and scrambled back to her friends.  Is there such a thing as chicken envy?  It must be nice to climb into a bowl of food and munch until drowsiness overtakes you and you simply fall asleep eating your bed.  How I would Love to lose consciousness, lying in an enormous bowl of spaghetti! Perhaps, for many of us using our couches as dining rooms, this is already a problem.  No wonder our pants no longer fit…

I’ve been thinking a lot about pants these days and how they may be good for morale.  There are a lot of people joking online about how “no one is wearing pants during the pandemic”—making it something of a pants-demic and I am wondering if that is having an effect on our mental states? Are pajamas and what I will optimistically call “leisure wear” allowing blood to pool in our buttocks and avoid circulating anywhere near our brains?  Is this why crazed people are taking to the streets to demand the right to buy wine and haircuts despite the genuine safety risks to others they don’t care about?  Are people seriously so fed up with homeschooling and watching “Tiger King” that they are ready to enact social policies of “trample the weak; hurdle the dead”?  It makes me ponder the quote “my right to swing my arm extends as far as the edge of your nose and no further” which makes me think of my favorite story concerning pants.

Outside North America, the word pants generally refers to underwear, not trousers, though there are probably a significant number of North Americans not wearing undies either during this lockdown. (“Why must you mention that?” mutters Prudence testily. “It doesn’t bear thinking about!”)  To be clear, this story is about trousers:

A customer came in to the old shop years ago.  It was hard to guess his age but he was definitely suffering from “elder shrink.” He was a spry man, full of abrupt, spunky movements as if his entire body short-circuited with every electric thought he emitted or perceived. He told me confidently that his inseam was a 30 but that “these thirties must have been marked wrong because they were way too long.”  One look at him told me he was probably now about a 27.   He radiated pure delight as he slapped his pants on the table. “These are great pants!” he announced, beaming, “so I had to buy two pair. It’s hard to find good pants that fit right.  There’s nothing like a good pair of pants, made right, that fit just right!” His eyes sparkled enough to make the air seem to vibrate and crackle with energy around him. His enthusiasm charmed me.  I very much enjoy people who enjoy “the little things.” He leaned against the table and launched himself heart-first into this memory:

                “I had my first love affair with a pair of pants when I was in middle school.  How old is that now? Ten? Twelve? Fourteen? I don’t know.  I wanted these pants so bad.  They were pistol pants.  Remember pistol pants? With the two-toned pocket going down the leg like a big hot slash?”  I shook my head.  

“No. My era was devoted to a questionable fondness for parachute pants, not pistol pants,” I said.  He sucked his breath in, rolled his eyes to Heaven, and made a sound as if he was tasting his mother’s homemade lasagna.

“Look ‘em up!” he said, pointing at my phone on the table. “They were the Best.  I loved them.  Rockabilly pants. So cool!   My mother said no way.  She wasn’t buying them for me.  She couldn’t afford pants like that.  I think jeans were about two, maybe three dollars then.  These pants might have been ten—three times the price.  She wasn’t going for it.  I asked her if I worked for them and earned my own money, would she let me buy them?  She said yes.  So I did.  God, I loved those pants.  I worked for them for months, a nickel at a time. I wanted them so bad.  I don’t know how long it took me.  I got a dollar for my birthday and was over the moon.  Finally, I could buy my pants!  I went right downtown and picked them out.

The next day, I wanted to wear them to school. My mother said “No.”  I snuck out early and wore them anyway.  I wanted to show all the kids I got my pants.  Instantly, the school bully is on me, taunting me, calling me “mister fancy-pants” and sayin’ he’s gonna poke me in the nose for wearing pants like that.  We weren’t allowed to fight in school so we agreed to meet after school at the playground to settle this.  All day long, he kept saying “I’m gonna poke you in the nose.”  I started to get real worried about my new pants.  I didn’t want them to get blood on them or get ripped ‘cause then my mother would find out. 

So, when school got out, I asked the bully if he would mind waiting to beat me up until I ran home and changed my pants first.  He said sure.  I ran all the way home, changed my pants, and ran all the way back quick as I could.  I didn’t want to be called a chicken.  As I ran, I got madder and madder. Who was this guy to poke me in the nose for wearing my own pants? I decided I was going to poke him in the nose instead! So I did.  I ran all the way back, right up to him, and poked him in the nose as hard as I could and then turned and ran home again just as fast as I had come.”

“That’s a lot of running for one day,” I observed, thinking that modern children have nowhere near that kind of stamina.

He laughed.  “That bully never said another word about my pants. And my mother never knew a thing.”  He shook his head and giggled until a tiny tear squeezed itself out of the corner of each of his eyes, which he dabbed with a cloth handkerchief from his pocket.  “Those were damn good pants,” he whispered.

There is nothing quite like “a damn good pair of pants” to help us decide who we are, remember who we were, and determine who we want to be going forward. Clothing makes us stand out or fit in. It makes us brave and determined, or sloppy and forlorn.  We don’t just dress for others; we dress for ourselves.  Clothing—literally “cloth + ing”—is the cloth we choose to protect ourselves and others, rather like a Covid mask.  As Americans, we believe in a Right to our Choices.  If you are feeling crummy—dress up as you wish to see yourself today.  Whether you go out or not is immaterial. (ha! Pun intended!)  YOU get to decide whether you look like a ballerina, a business person, or the spaghetti-stained victim of a closet avalanche that happened to hit all the leftovers in your fridge.  Just remember, your Choices, be they the swing of your arms or the spray of your droplets, have no right to another person’s nose.

Well, since I’m NOT a chicken, well, not one with access to a trough of food large enough for me to lie down in, I may as well get up and put on some pants.  Be well, my darlings!  Get dressed and Remember who you are.  You are Magnificent.  I love you so much.  Thank you for your Good Work.  May the mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Fear is not the boss of me

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when [people] are afraid of the light.” –Plato

Merry Blog-iversary Dear ones!

We start year three today!  Woo-hoo! Like most normal causes for celebration—including my sister’s birthday, also today—it seems oddly weird and somewhat treasonous to think of making a big deal of it right now.  Writing over a hundred and two blog posts about Sewing and yet never once teaching anyone a single useful thing about how to sew seems a trivial accomplishment in the light of a nation bereft of toilet paper and struggling to learn how to fashion rectangles into viable facial shields against an invisible killer.   So I will keep my hooting and hopping and grizzly, two-fisted consumption of cocoa products as discreet as possible.

Two years ago, this journey started with an icy fist gripping my entrails from within and twisting them around each finger the way one might absent-mindedly basket-weave a strand of beads. I was petrified. What if no one reads this? (Scary theme music)(Summon the toilet paper! I’m going to need a Lot!) What if everyone I know reads this? (Worse scary theme music)(Forget the toilet paper; I might never need it again!)  My friend Emmy, who was living with me at the time, watched me hit the “post” button and immediately want to vomit.  I have no idea how I went to work that day and behaved normally.  (Ok, “normally” might be too big a word here…)  Since then, a small, dedicated, self-selecting subset of the population—a number comfortingly between “no one” and “everyone” chooses to tune into these rambles.  I keep waiting for the weekly Fear to subside.  It never does.  I have the same fear with every single customer, no matter how many times I have cut into other people’s clothes over the years—will I get this right? Please, Dear God, don’t make this experience another grim “Opportunity to Learn!” Make this one a humble, monotonous, unquestioned Success. 

However, despite all I think I’ve learned about garden-variety Fear from years of snuggling with it in my bed each night, it does not compare to what I have been feeling lately.  This morning, as I write, I have a first cousin on oxygen in the ICU, struggling for breath and survival, who tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday.  Our distraught extended family is circled in prayers threaded together over a vast distance of texts, posts, and phone calls.  I worry for all my dear friends and loved ones with pre-existing conditions.  I know actual people who have lost actual people.  The news, staggering as it is, is not about anonymous statistics.  I cry when I hear stories of people saying their last farewells by phone or songs held up to a dying person’s ear, through the enduring generosity of a kind nurse willing to hold her own cell phone.  Will this be US? Meanwhile, I don’t know how thoroughly I have to scrub the cauliflower before it is safe to feed to the hermits of Hermit Hollow.  Life feels surreal. Scattered yet confined, isolated yet united, I am very, VERY much Afraid.

When I start to notice I am living in fear, I realize I am relying on my own strength—strength which is more suited to building split-rail fences or patching denim crotch tears than existential angst in the time of a global pandemic.  Vainly, I resist the suffering; I resist the news.  (I really ought to resist eating the other hermits’ chocolate—which, unlike mine was not vigorously consumed in the early hours of the Easter sunrise.)  It’s time to Surrender and remember that a lot of how things happen is not really up to me. (Ok, maybe the chocolate is…)  It’s time to seek the Light, or at least brandish a seam-ripper towards the Bad Voices, Goblins, nightmares—all the ways Fears speaks to us in the night and tell us it is not safe to sleep, not safe to trust, not safe to rest—as we bob in the Dark on our solitary mattress rafts, adrift on a threatening sea of uncertainty.  

Courage, I am learning, is not the same things as Fearlessness.

Courage is getting up each morning, getting dressed, (I guess pants are optional these days) and deciding to be My Own Boss.  This epidemic is helping me refine a thing or two about how to be my own boss—a very tricky thing at the best of times, which this clearly Isn’t.  As C.E.O. of a new start-up female-owned, small-business LLC, I had to invite myself in, sit myself down, explain to myself that while my work was Excellent, I needed let myself go  (I was very sorry to hear that) and that I would not be getting a severance package, health benefits, or a “golden handshake.” (Sorry, shaking hands is against the law now.)  

I was kind of ok with it because I have other side-hustles I boss myself to do.  Being “Self Employed” means I cannot (technically) ever be fired.  As a writer, I thought Now was the perfect time to sequester myself in a cozy nook in Hermit Hollow and write a steamy bodice-ripper of a novel in which a frumpy, middle-aged seamstress uses “Fifty Shades of Guttermann” to defeat a Virus, mend the Ozone, up-cycle some old jeans, and ultimately snag the love of her life, whom she recognizes as a distinguished older man who lets her fill his basement with baby chickens and bummer lambs and does not complain once about the smell… (This has Best-seller written all over it, eh?)

And then I am back to the Fear—and the horrors of a clogged head facing an empty page, or a clogged page facing an empty head… If I have learned anything about writing in the last two years is that Writing about running half-naked through the streets of my local village is far more terrifying (and exhilarating) than actually doing it.  (I didn’t even know I was doing it at the time; it came so naturally to me…)(see last week’s entry, “Cover Up!”) Then a friend reminds me: “If you are not scared, you’re not writing.”  I wonder; when did writing become so scary?  When did Living?

I started writing when a first class stamp only cost a dime.  My grandparents lived a seven-hour drive away from us.  For my ninth birthday, one of my grandmothers gave me some pretty stationery and matching stamps with roses on them and asked me to write her a letter.  I did.  Immediately, as soon as I sealed it, I thought of more to say so I started a second letter to the other grandmother.   Then, so as not to have the Great Grandmother feel left out, I wrote to her too. Thus began a habit that went on, intermittently, for the next twenty years until one by one, my correspondents perished—let’s hope of natural causes and not split infinitives, misspellings, and run-on sentences in loopy adolescent scrawl….  Reporting to my grandparents on a regular basis became the means of permanently bifurcated my life:  There was the life I was living—going to school, feeding the animals, trying to keep my bed made and my shoes where I could find them—and the life I carefully observed myself living, within the chaos of rambunctious siblings and harried parents, so that I could make a Good Report later.  I was an embedded correspondent, a dispassionate and unselfconscious narrator recording and describing every triumph, nuisance, or crime I witnessed. Gradually, I became conscious of seeking out opportunities to entertain.  A sense of enjoyment is a priceless attribute.   The people I lived with were remarkably unaware of how entertaining they were. Like a bad tabloid, sensationalized gossip usually won the day, particularly as it applied to my sisters, whose beauty rituals and dramatic brawls rivaled the Kardashian’s.   What is Writing anyway, at its deepest core, but a fundamentally human urge to Tattle?

My favorite correspondent was my great-grandmother, a German orphan/refugee who lived to be 99.  She only had an eighth grade education but she wrote the most entertaining letters about her cat, in flowing script that was so pretty I wanted to frame it.   A convert to Catholicism, she  carefully marked a tiny cross and the letters “JMJ” at the top of each letter—her pious reminder that the Holy Family (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph) was watching over us always, in our thoughts, in our words, even in our private correspondence.

Years later, I gaze with freshly peeled eyes through my crumbling, lurching prose, into an adolescent world of aching loneliness. Then, as now, some of my writing is acutely yet hilariously self-lacerating.  Some is just painfully embarrassing.   (I look back on two years of blogging and feel much the same way.) The letters I enjoy the most are also the most Honest—when I was not attempting to tell a tale in a way that made me out to be slightly better than my sisters or brothers—when I wrote like a Polaroid camera not a propagandist.  What strikes me most about my writing then was that it was Fearless.  Childhood, they say, is our only chance to have a truly first-person experience of life.  We have no context.  We know no other stories than the ones we are told.  We need to experience the “outside” in order to see ourselves from a new vantage point, from the second or third person perspective.  Childhood is when we learn for the first time about Monsters.  I had no idea then that stories, especially the stories I had to tell, could ever hurt anyone.

As an adult writer now, writing to distant people who may not love me or hold me in the same regard as the women who taught me how to stitch, knit, and cook, I am not fearless.  It took fifty years but FINALLY, I am more afraid of what will happen if I don’t live according to the call of my spirit, than what might happen if I do.  I believe our interests are what draw us towards our own core.  Deep joy is a signal that we are on the Right Path, doing the Right Work, loving the right people, even if it is dangerous.  We must disregard the fear and keep homing in on the Joy.  Such Joy, even in the face of Fear is like a big jump on a trampoline—sometimes we catapult ourselves beyond our usual context and struggle for a moment to remember who we are used to being—before we sink, sigh, and decide we must Jump Again.  Fear doesn’t have to be a Toxic Blocker—it can be the nutritious anxiety that prompts us to act in ways that are challenging but necessary for our growth.  Those of us falling victim to our current fears are only sensing Peril—not Opportunity.   Good, healthy Fear helps us to focus keenly on where those opportunities lie. (Just ask any rock climber!)

Courage is not the opposite of fear; Love is.  What is Courage but the sure knowledge that we can turn our fear into Love? That we can meet hatred with Kindness;  we can meet pain with Art; we can meet grief with stunning poetry or Song.   We are all afraid of dying, yet dying is inevitable. Fear cannot change that.  It’s Living that’s the challenge. 

When we ditch fear, we can focus on self-expression, rather than self-avoidance or self-justification.  Then, our motivation transitions from proving our worth to exploring our depths.  It’s ok for this to be Uncomfortable.  As a friend of mine once told me, “Who needs to live for Joy only?  What the hell? There’s an entire emotional palette to choose from—why not live them all and just let yourself BE?”

Are you as scared as I am? Does it paralyze you like a rock some days? Be open to yourself and your deep mystery, Dear Ones, especially in these exhausting times.  Make room for yourself and welcome yourself.  If you pay attention properly, you will never find a better teacher than your fears. Like mine, they may never go away—but practicing Courage, in tiny actions, will give you Comfort. Your Faith will emerge from your fidelity to the insights you gain—that to love each other (and ourselves) Just As We Are is the ultimate expression of Grace. Fear is not the boss of us.  There is much to celebrate in that.

Thank you all for your Kindness and your Courage and the many blessings your Good Work brings.  I am so grateful to each and every one of you who reads, shares, comments, and supports me on this journey. I could not do it without you.  You make it Real. All of it—the fear, as well as the Love.

 Let the Mending continue! 

Yours aye,

Nancy

Cover Up!

“Whenever something bad happens to me, I think, ‘Oh good, now I have more to write about.’”

—David Sedaris

Greetings Dear Ones!

As the lockdown continues here at Hermit Hollow (where this is pretty much how the hermits live all the time) some of us are getting confused about what day it is, some of us what month it is.  Yesterday was definitely June; we took our meals outside and listened to the choir of birds and bugs and frogs while the sun toasted us like almonds set on low in the oven. We were warm and golden when we went back inside.  Today, the air smells like sleet and we awaken to November again. The trees are shivering and trying to suck back their buds.

We may not know what day or month it is but Luckily, we have a certain Jack Russell who has appointed himself Minister Of What Time It Is.  He doesn’t wear a wrist watch but he knows precisely when to pester us to get up in the morning and have a meal, a walk, or play time with a slipper we don’t want chewed. He even insists on going to bed at a particular time and will hop on my lap while I’m fiddling and nudge my bow arm until he throws me off my jigs just to refocus my attention on his schedule. He is keeping the days going in a certain order for us, albeit entirely for his own comfort, and if there is one thing I have always needed in my life, it’s a Leader. Like most Dictators, he doesn’t give a damn about where he takes a dump; he just assumes we will clean that up for him.

In between catering to his demands, I’ve been busy sewing literally hundreds of cloth face masks for health-care workers, grocery store personnel, friends, and family.  Somehow, I’ve dropped the Panic and settled into a rhythm that makes it less of a chore.  I’ve stopped trying to save the entire world and am just doing my own little bit, which feels way more manageable. Besides, Something happened this week that showed me the Vital Importance of wearing these masks in public. While it gives me great pain to share this with you, I do believe you might benefit from the Wisdom this sacrifice imparts, so I will proceed:

The following story, like all stories I tell, is MOSTLY true, apart from the necessary emBELLishments. But obviously, as I do with my dear customers, I shall attempt to tell this story in such a way that no one can guess who it is.

Let’s just say that our tale begins with an Old-Fashioned woman working busily at her sewing machine while a pot of beans bubbles merrily on the stove.  She is heartened, nay, ELATED by the fact that most people are now using their final hours before the Apocalypse to learn to cook and sew.  True, this does not figure in most Apocalyptic movie plots, which usually involve more people running around in unitards and screaming and less making of sour-dough starter from scratch. But in real life, where Truth is always more fun than fiction, it seems that people are learning about bobbins and needles and how to work the tension knobs on old Singers they just pulled out of the attic in order to make calico face masks they can wear to the grocery store to buy things they are going to cook slowly while they wait for Little House On The Prairie to download. (Just kidding; I know it’s Tiger King.)

She ruminates that it’s such a shame that physical threat and terrifying political ineptitude is what is driving ordinary people back to their sewing machines. No longer the sole province of clever, dowdy eccentrics, these machines are being excavated and dusted off for Anyone brave enough to load a bobbin for all humankind, for any soul who wants to help her/his/their community stay safe and keep breathing from behind fabric emblazoned with cartooned hedgehogs that was once meant to be a baby quilt instead. In ways that harken back to knitting socks for the soldiers in previous world wars, these good-hearted people are now using their ingenuity and skills to protect those precious personnel on the Front.

This is making sewing Powerful, yes... It’s in the news everywhere one turns these days.  But it’s not making sewing SEXY.  Sexy is what sells in this nation. Before this pandemic, a good seamstress was as rare as a bale of Charmin is now. When this is over, will these people keep up these skills they have acquired in the pleating of hundreds of small rectangles? She wonders.  “If only we could do something to raise the sex appeal of sewing,” thought the haggard middle-aged woman, still wearing pajamas, whose hair looked like nesting material left out for birds. She was wearing a very old, thin, stretched out tank top with spaghetti straps and a plaid flannel shirt that went to her knees with some pajama bottoms that were too long for her. “What kind of rumors will we have to start to keep people sewing after this? How can we leak it to the Major News Media that there is nothing more divinely Masculine than a tailor who knows the cut of your jib (and your inseam) from ten yards away, or Divinely Feminine than a seamstress who knows how to make your bum look like Pippa Middleton’s in denim? And that BOTH roles are open to any gender these days?”

Her musings were interrupted by a younger, honorary Hermit asking her if she wanted to go for a run that day.  She did. But she was in a dead-heat race already, against Time, to get another batch of masks to the post office before they closed. She did not have time to finish her quota AND get properly kitted out for a run if those headbands with buttons were going to make the 4:30 Pony Express to Grace Cottage.  She would have to improvise. She sewed until the very last minute, despite insistent nagging at her ankles from the Minister of Damnit You’re Late Again, who was glaring at her with pop-eyed fury over the leash he held in his mouth. Hastily, she exchanged the pajama bottoms for a pair of leggings and some running shoes and they set off.  There wasn’t time to wrestle into a sports bra. “Who cares if these old poached eggs flop a little,” she remembers thinking, “I’ll just run in this decrepit tank top.  I’ll be alright. I need to get outside and move. I’m committed to getting some F-ing BALANCE in my life.”

At the post office, only three customers were allowed in at a time.  Each waited patiently, masked and gloved, at designated spots thoughtfully marked with tape on the floor, then proceeded with all the lurching dignity of tipsy bridesmaids up the aisle to the altar with the postal scale and credit card machine.

Having completed that errand in the very nick of time, the two women set off for their afternoon “plod”—which is mostly uphill for the first mile and a half.  After the first quarter of a mile, our dumpy heroine was convinced she definitely contracted the Corona Virus, as she could scarcely breathe. Her companion, who is mostly made of some lithe blend of spandex and rubber, was bopping along next to her, pushing the pace, listening to what she termed “running music” but her elder knew to be 1980’s hits she’d first heard at awkward High School dances where chaperones made sure there was “room for the Holy Spirit” between couples.   Their little road manager was on his leash, panting by their ankles, tongue lolling, as they passed a group of bikers off by the side of the road.  Everyone they could see was wearing facial covering of some sorts—some wore masks, some bandanas, some just scarves.  Vermonters are very public-spirited and are doing a remarkable job following guidelines to protect their beloved communities.  Most smile with their eyes and nod appreciatively at fellow mask-wearers.

They reached the half-way mark and could feel the afternoon heat and the effects of the hill rising like steam along their spines.  The younger woman unzipped her jacket and cranked the volume on their favorite song, which had just come on.  Normally, they run with one earphone each, sharing the same set, but today, in the rush to get to the Post Office, they had forgotten them and were listening to the phone in her pocket with the volume turned up as loud as it could go.  As soon as they saw other people, she paused the music and they ran in silence until out of earshot, so as not to disturb anyone else.

Now, with the downhill slopes lengthening their strides and the 80’s Pop music driving them on, they gloried in the fine weather, the sunlight, and one-hit wonders with titles like “It’s Raining Men.” The older woman began to overheat and decided to take off her sweatshirt. In an effort keep running while she did this, she bent forward and did a complicated maneuver, alternating the dog’s leash from hand to hand as she freed her arms and tied the sweatshirt around her waist.  She tied it low and very tightly, as she leaned into her run, then stretched up and kept her pace, feeling extremely coordinated and victorious. The sun on her neck, shoulders, and eyelids felt magnificent as she panted into her mask.  The air had the tingle of champagne on skin that had not seen the light of day since last October.

All was right with the world until they came upon a fellow jogger approaching from the other direction.  They could clearly see his face, since he was not wearing a mask, as he labored up the hill they were now gliding down. He glanced over at the women, nodded, did a double-take, and made a facial expression of Mystified Concern, as one who had just bitten into a MacIntosh thinking it was a Honeycrisp might do.   The young woman stopped the music as they ran.  When he was out of earshot, she said, “Did you see that? What did he mean by that look? Were we singing out of tune?” she asked. “Beats me,” puffed the older woman, still attempting to croak out the chorus to Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero.”  She lumbered on.

After another quarter of a mile, they both looked in exactly the same place at the same time and to their collective horror, realized that the older woman was having what Janet Jackson demurely terms “a wardrobe malfunction.” One of the “poached eggs” had escaped the thin confines of the shabby tank-top, which had been tucked too far down into the knotted arms of the sweatshirt.  Now it was the younger woman’s turn to gasp for breath and fear cardiac arrest between her mad cackles of mirth and schadenfreude.

The only consolation that poor, pale, flabby older woman has, at the end of the day, is that THANKS TO HER MASK no one in the sleepy village near Hermit Hollow will be able to recognize her when this pandemic passes.  So COVER your faces people! It will do even more Greater Good than you might first imagine. The Dignity you save could be your own.

Be well, my darlings! Stay safe! Hang in there—or out of there—and COVER UP!! It’s the Safest thing to do. Let me know if you need a mask. (I’ll leave the sports bras up to you.)

Yours Aye,

Nancy