Unfinished

Groundhog found fog.  New snows and blue toes. Fine and dandy for Valentine candy.  Snow spittin’; if you’re not mitten smitten, you’ll be frostbitten! By jing-y feels Spring-y. –The Old Farmer’s Almanac

Greetings Dear Ones,

Just now, as I scuttle down the Cotton Mill hallway to my studio, with my jeans unzipped, hoping they do not fall down, clutching among other things a dirty coat, a blanket, my phone and keys and a damp, resentful dog whom I have just scrubbed as best I could with liquid hand soap in the ladies’ bathroom sink, I think to myself “Wow, this day certainly isn’t turning out as planned…”   It’s been what can only be described as totally goofy.  I’ve been trying to get this blog done since 5:am this morning but a series of intriguing derailments—most of them in the form of dogs, mud, customers, and chaos have prevented me from finishing…well, ANYTHING, including zipping my pants.  

It’s been a mostly Good Day, but with confusing interludes that included a man knocking on my door at the precise time another customer was due.   

“Cheryl?” I ask, as I open the door to view a heavily bearded man.

“No,” he says, frowning. “My name is not Cheryl.”

“Oh… Sorry, the appointment was for a Cheryl…”

“I’m not Cheryl. I didn’t make an appointment.”

“Oh,” I say, as nicely as I can, “my hours are by appointment—I’m not always here. I work a couple jobs… I just ask for appointments so that I don’t miss people.”

“Well,” he says with some resolve, “You didn’t miss me, so you’re fine. I just showed up. I didn’t know I had to make an appointment. It’s my first time here.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I soothe, “I’m ever so happy to help you. It’s just that I thought you were someone else.”

“I’m Me,” he insists, “and I didn’t know I needed no appointment.”

“You didn’t know you needed AN appointment,” corrects Prudence, silently.

“No problem; Come on in. Usually people who read my website know we need to make an appointment.  By the way, how did you know how to find me?”

“I saw your website.”

“Ah…but…you neglected to actually read it?”

“Yeah.”

 When I woke up before dawn, a small, elderly mammal, remarkably similar in size and weight and temperament to a groundhog, emerged from his lair under my duvet, saw his shadow, passed gas, and attempted to return to his burrow.  He wanted six more hours of nighttime.  I wanted to gag.  I plucked him from his nest and ushered him into the nearest tundra outside the front door.  That tinned prescription dog food he eats is the most effective Morning alarm I have ever had.  

“Do you know what today is?” I ask the sheep when I go to feed them.  They just look at me blankly.

“It’s 2/2/22!!!” I say excitedly, trying to give them a hint.

“Twos-day?” asks Prim, hopefully.

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s Wednesday,” says Blossom bossily.

“I’m Thirsty,” says Chip, pawing at the water bucket.

“No, I just told you, it’s WEDNESDAY,” repeats Blossom, butting him for emphasis, “not Thursday!”

“What’s a Wednesday?” Gus and Odie wanted to know, smacking their chops. “Can we eat it?”

“It’s Groundhog Day!” I say.

No one cares. 

They live pretty much the same day every day, no matter what we decide to call it.

“Is there such a thing as Sheep day?” they want to know.

“That’s Every day,” says wise old Willow, “if you are a sheep, that is.”

At 7:15, I hurry to the kitchen and tune in online just in time to see Punxatawney Phil decide that there will be six more weeks of winter.  Only Six weeks? That would make winter pretty short for these parts.  Winter in Vermont might last until June.  I never take the winter coats off the sheep until the end of May. Around here, we observe “Spring” the way some people claim their ethnicity and culinary heritage but not Creed—we are “Spring” in name only—not in practice.

  “Please, never let me make any major Life Decisions in February,” pleads a friend. Gone is January’s Optimism.  February has a completely different vibe: The main goals seem to be basic survival and discounted chocolate after February 15th.  Still, without much water to haul, wood to chop, or hay to stack, my Winter body needs something to do besides eat Klondike bars and knit. I need to run. Recently, my dear young wood-stacking, possum-wrangling, cabbage-slashing lodger/tenant helped me set up my old treadmill in the cellar.  It’s about twenty years old and seems to be constructed of cast iron.  It takes two of us to move it. As we are struggling to position it, he pauses, surveys the scene, and asks which way I wanted to orient it. On one side of the cellar is a workbench piled high with spinning wheel parts, broken oak chairs, and interesting boards I intend to use, fix, or up-cycle.  The wall behind us contains dry goods—tins of beans, rows of canning jars, small metal trash cans filled with bulk flour and oats.

“Do you want to run towards the food, or the unfinished projects?” he asks.  As I stand there considering, he decides for me: “Probably the projects. They will inspire you to keep going.”

Few things have made me laugh harder.  Honestly, I would run faster and farther towards the food, even if it’s just dried beans and oats.  (I seriously consider dangling a donut from one of the rafters.) There is something about an unfinished project that sags me in my tracks. Poet Mary Oliver talked about “the sag of the unfinished poem” and the “release of the poem that is finished.”  She has no idea how much sag a disemboweled spinning wheel can cause! I look around at a cellar filled with half-baked projects—projects which represent seeds that landed on poor soil, or butterflies that were too weak to claw their way out of the cocoon. Is it my fault or theirs?  (Peevishly, I blame them.  They should have known better than to break!) Sometimes I assume that there is a natural selection to projects and that those not robust enough to sustain my energy or interest are destined to languish in this purgatory. But in truth, it’s not always their fault. Creatively, some things require a lot of “me” and there simply is not enough of “me” to get a job done. I’ve used every inch of “me” to get my jeans on instead. (On, but alas, not zipped…)

The first song on my play list is “Run, Run, Run” by One Republic.  Really, given the setting, and my level of cardio fitness during midwinter, it should be Schubert’s Symphony No. 8--“Unfinished Symphony.”  I take off plodding uphill (the machine is broken at the steepest incline) and think about how every culture has its own story of what Hell is.  To the ancient Greeks, there was no greater punishment than to begin a task over and over and over again and never get it finished.  I feel like Sisyphus, rolling his stone up the hill. Only for me, it is my own thigh meat, rolling upward, as I gaze around at all that will never be Finished.

I think about a friend’s comment.  She has just lost a beloved neighbor. “February is a great time to die,” she says, thinking she is being consoling. “It’s like the whole world is dead too. Somehow, I think it would be worse to go when Lilacs are in bloom and things are just beginning…” 

I disagree.  Dying is Finishing. Nothing is finished in February.

“February is about Love,” I insist, “and Hope and maybe some over-priced roses if you are lucky. Mostly, it’s the idea that perhaps all that feels Unfinished is just waiting for a better chance… Even Death is not the End.”

“Sex and Death,” huffs Prudence, who sat in on her fair share of English Lit classes, “This is what you think of Poetry, and now February too? How convenient that this ‘month of Love’ is also the shortest!”

It’s a short month but already there is so much to celebrate. Yesterday was both the Lunar New Year (Tiger, Tiger, burning Bright! In the Shadows of the night!) and St. Brigid’s Day, Imbolc, the ancient Celtic festival celebrating the half-way point between the winter solstice and the Spring Equinox.  We won’t know warmth for months but at least there is more light and a New Moon. The hens are starting to lay again.  There are hopes, round and dormant, that keep freezing in the nest.  A thaw will come… 

Tonight, after the evening chores, I go into the Winter Woods and listen to all that seems, on the surface, to be dead.  It’s not.  It’s merely Waiting.  

Schubert won so much acclaim for his “Unfinished” work—“work so well constructed, only a genius could have done it.”  Sadly, my unfinished work garners no such praise!  No one wants to rave about a vintage dress from Harrods that has had the sleeves hacked off and the armholes left unfinished.  Ditto the dirty quilt that smells of maple syrup and toddler sweat, nor the jeans that “broke” right at the crotch.  Some things Must be Finished. And as quickly as possible!

Others, like an essay, or a True Love, can never be finished.  That’s why I cannot edit this to explain why I had to wash the dog and could not zip my pants… I'm just going to hit “send” and start over. (Again).

With all that is yet Unfinished in me,

I love you still. Keep mending!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Retrograde

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.”

–William Shakespeare’s “Julius Ceasar”

Greetings Dear Ones!

Is reorganizing your vintage button collection while singing sea shanties in a muppet voice losing its usual thrill for you, too? Does life these days feel as full and dull and messy as the back seat of my Ford? Is it because you haven’t slept for more than three hours at a stretch for over six years now? Is it because your budgeting strategy for the New Year does not involve actually looking at your check book?  Is it because the last “vegetable” you ate was really just ketchup?  Because there is a Pandemic raging for a second year in a row? Because you haven’t danced (with a partner) since January of 2020? (cleaning the kitchen to ABBA blasting doesn’t count.)

Naw…. It’s bigger than that.  It’s bigger than National.  It’s bigger than Global.

It’s Planetary.

Regardless of what you think Mercury in Retrograde is all about, the fact remains that I had nineteen phone messages on my business line that I could not access without spending two hours in my local Verizon store yesterday, pestering a magical woman with serious Superpowers where technology is concerned.  A gentleman customer had limped all the way up two flights of stairs to let me know that my (phone) mailbox was full and that the downstairs door, which I said was “red” on my website was now actually painted green.  It was a wonder he found me, he told me with considerable astonishment.   From the looks of him, it had been a rough journey—starting years ago—that got him to that moment.  After he recovered and we’d discussed his business, he had no idea how he was going to make it back to his car, as he could go UP stairs but not down.  I wound up taking him on a long, meandering walk to the other end of the building, where I loaded him in the industrial service elevator—the kind that is like a huge cage that slides down inside a bare brick tower—and escorted him to the ground floor.   Once there, we wandered a while until we managed to find a side exit to the parking lot.  I don’t even know if it is possible to navigate successfully from the south end of the building to the north and remain indoors.  I’ve never done it.

It’s been a somewhat glitchy week.  A week that reminds me to Slow Down and be thoughtful, to double  and triple check things—like that vest I almost gave back to a man without sewing the inside lining shut, or the coat I almost gave back to another gentleman without also returning the contents of its pockets, which had scattered on the floor when I turned the thing inside out—a summa cum laude pin, a pen that didn’t write, and a vintage envelope of extra buttons.  The spare change I kept and deducted from his bill, since it rolled too far under my cutting table for me to retrieve it.

The Man Who Could Only Go Up left his old ski coat to be repaired.  “I love this coat,” he says fondly “No sense getting a new one when I am already so attached to this one. It’s been good to me.”  He speaks with the resigned devotion of a long-married spouse. Most of my work these days involves coat repair—mostly zippers.  I’ve decided zippers are going to be my Superpower.  When you can’t get out of something, “Get Into It,” I say! I now find myself in off hours perusing sewing supply websites for vintage zipper parts the way some folks shop for jewelry. 

At least the weather has been mild.  Jeff Foxworthy was right; if you think ten degrees is just “a bit chilly,” you probably live in Vermont.  Ten degrees in the sun felt positively balmy after last week’s stint at sub zero.  I had my coat open and my gloves off as I did my evening chores.  If it gets above freezing (32F) and you think “Oh, whew!  Now the bees can take a dump!” you are probably also a current or former Bee Keeper.  Honey bees only take “cleansing flights” when the temps are above freezing.  The rest of the time, they hover around the Queen, trying to keep her warm, while they clench their bums, hold it, and hope for better weather.  Each day, I look at the forecast and picture their tiny, grimly determined faces, looking oddly similar to those one glimpses on documentaries of the residents of Buckingham Palace.  The only one hovering around me to keep warm is wee Nigel and he doesn’t hold anything in!  Neither do the sheep, who have taken yet another cleansing flight in their heated water tub.

“Wally did it,” informs Miss Prim.  Wally says nothing but looks at her darkly.

“Do you believe in Mercury Retrograde?” I ask the sheep.  I am still moving slowly after falling out of the hay loft last week.  “Am I supposed to move slowly, Reflect on the Past, Address stagnant energy? Is that really what this is about?”  

“What’s Mercury Retrograde?” Ask the calves.  “Will it eat me?” worries Gus, the shy one. “Can I eat it?” Odie wants to know with bulky interest.

“Mercury Retrograde is that happy month that happens three times a year when Nancy gets to blame the alignment of the planets for why she cannot find her car keys,” says Willow.  

“Who does she get to blame when Mercury is not in retrograde?” Prim wants to know.

“The rest of the time, it’s her own damn fault,” says Willow, not unkindly.   She’s an old ewe who tells it like it is.

“Well, how else can you explain all the chaos in the world right now?”  I ask.

“What chaos? There’s chaos? How can there be bad stuff happening in the world when there are so many women buying crystals?” interrupts Prim innocently.   

“I’ll say what I always say,” says Willow.  “It’s not about looking back or looking around, but looking Within. Try that.  See what you see.”

I agree. This is what I see:

A friend brings in a beloved coat of hers—“I think the zipper needs to be replaced,” she says forlornly, apologetically.  “I’ve read your blog and I hope I am not guilty of zipper abuse!” She is as penitent in confessing as I was when I handed a clump of phones and wires to the Amazing Verizon Maven.  Upon closer examination, her teeth are fine and only the pulley needs to be adjusted, which I can do while she waits.  (I’m talking zipper here, not Verizon personnel, though her teeth are also good!)    The best news is that we get to have a nice visit while I convince the pulley to do its job correctly. 

“I got this jacket when I was pregnant,” she says wistfully.  Her children, like mine, are in their twenties now.

“That went fast, didn’t it?” I say laughing.  I think of the Robert Burn’s quote “the Life of man is but a day at most.”  Coats, of course, live much, much longer. This coat looks virtually unaltered after twenty years of wear, though I cannot say the same for my friend, who has grown far more beautiful with age, especially since she’s let her wispy curls turn silver around her temples.  The escapees form a halo around her in the light of the dressing room and I cannot help but think that fine lines from smiling give her eyes a knowing merriness that younger eyes could never have.  Joy has been a long and ready habit with her.  Who needs wrinkle cream when twenty years of life can make one look so Experienced and Vibrant?

Virtually the very next day, a young pregnant woman sits in the exact same chair.  She too is absolutely gorgeous, but her story is still in her stomach not on her face.  I have to fix her coat—a large, soft, retro thing that seems to be part blanket, part trench coat—the same day because this is the only one that will close over the unborn son impersonating a basket ball under her sweater.  She only has a few weeks to go before summoning her home-birth team to welcome the boy she cannot name until she meets him face to face.  We talk about what it is like to anticipate the birth of your first child—the excitement, the fear.  She gets up and stretches several times as I sew.  She has reached that uncomfortable point in her confinement when she cannot be “confined” in any position for too long.

I smile at her with an unexpected rush of tenderness that startles me. I remember being Her—a young woman hugging a large belly full of aches and untold stories (and a little gas).  I wonder if I will see her again in twenty years (which is but a moment) and if the coat will be the same.  I know that after twenty years of life with a son, she will not.   By then, her heart will have grown to be a one-size-fits-all, ready to wrap around any fault or failing of his.  Her temples will be as silver as her tears.  She will see him in the faces of all other children and see other children, perhaps even herself, in him.  Her eyes…her eyes will be deeper, brighter, with scribbles at the edges where children drew her smiles.

She holds on to herself, happy to wait…for the coat, for the birth, for the next twenty years.  She is not in a rush. 

I look at her with admiration for her graceful patience, her Serenity—the mirror image of my Yesterday friend’s grateful Acceptance of Life on its terms. Was I that way at their age?  I think not. I rushed. I scurried.  I was all over the place.  My whole life has felt like it was one long hectic planetary Retrograde, punctuated by howling full moons, high tides, droughts, and blazes, changed plans, lost wallets or car keys.  I grew up hearing old people say my generation hadn’t a clue and I believed them. They said we “didn’t know how to work” so we stayed over-busy. We “didn’t know how to save” so we pursued ridiculous bargains on cheap stuff we did not need.  We had “no values” (or value) so we spent years in therapy blaming them for trying to do a better job than their parents had. “Youth was wasted on us,” said our embittered elders—survivors of wars, bell bottoms, linoleum, shag carpeting, Agent Orange and tie dye… so I became a little old lady when I was very young, nostalgic for a past I never knew, before I had even given birth to myself.

I thread my needle, do my Mending, and look backwards, inwards, through the lenses of Time and Story and marvel at the young people I see today (whipper-snappers as young as 97!)  

They are incredible.   Nothing is wasted on them.  They honor the past in their thrift-store finds as they hold the future.   There is no real Retrograde—it’s an illusion.  But if we need to sit down and rest, to stretch while we wait, that’s ok.  We only appear to be going backward.  Even in our pausing, there is only ever forward.  In a few weeks time, there will be babies born, more seeds to plant, gardens to tend. Migratory birds will return.  This cold, chaotic darkness has a necessary shelf life.  Grab your Long Winter’s Nap while ye may!

Beneath Her ancient maternity cloak, Nature nurtures a dark, and feminine magic--creating within an unseen future we can only name when we meet it face to face.

Wishing you peace, tranquility, and Every Blessing as you Mend,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Unzipped...

“If you cannot fly then run, if you cannot run then walk, if you cannot walk then crawl but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s back to being brisk here at the Land of Lost Plots.  So brisk in fact, that some things have ground to a halt, like outside projects not directly related to survival.  After a few days last week at -9F, with wind chills near 20 below, yesterday’s high of 27F felt like a bloomin’ heat wave!  It’s up to 5F this morning, as I write.  When I went to the chicken coop, I could see tiny puffs of vapor, the size of tears, emanating from their beaks.  They have a heat lamp they can gather under and thus remain plucky and good-natured.  Not me.  A few feet from the wood stove and my blood gets slushy and I cease to be able to move.   Back-snapping cold like this is nothing to the native Vermonters and Canadians around me.  With cheerful stoicism, they go about preheating their cars, walking or skating on ice, dressing like contented bison.  They carry on their duties, wearing the large, unisex parkas and boots that are de rigueur here nine months of the year.  Too late, as a seamstress who dreads zippers, I realize I have moved to a land where the average person has on her body at least ten pounds of wool and 1-4 zippers (and is mildly abusing at least one of them) at all times.

This week a young man called and said he had no time to come in to the shop but that the zipper on his only winter coat was broken and he needed it fixed.  I arranged to meet him at the local grocery store and look at the zipper and, if it could not be fixed that day, measure it to order a replacement for him.  When I got the replacement, I would call him and do it the same day.  No one can be without a coat in this weather!

I can always tell where I am in my spiritual development when I get a lot of zippers to repair/replace at the shop. Am I approaching each job with patient, even joyful, curiosity?  Or am I judging the total nincompoop who destroyed this zipper?  (People should not make me judge them!) Very few zippers break just because they are “bad.”  People don’t treat them well.  And because zippers cannot stand up for themselves, (I mean literally…that’s why they come in to see me) we denigrate the victims—we blame them instead of the miscreants who did not seat them properly and carefully before yanking on the pulley, or putting too much lateral force on them.

“This zipper has quit. I don’t know what happened to it but it just won’t work anymore,” they tell me time and time again.

“Hate the crime, not the criminal!” says my better angel.

 “Oh, hell, hate the criminals too” says Prudence. “We wouldn’t have crimes without them.”

The truth is, my old friend Zippy—Dear, departed Zippy, who used to do most of the zipper repairs at the old shop—was right.  If you do enough zippers over time, they become a lot more fun.  These days, I am getting so much better at them I actually enjoy them.  I absolutely LOVE when doing a hard thing becomes easier.  It’s SO satisfying!  I’m not as fast as she was, but I’m Good.  I usually have to do one side twice and the other side three times to get them to turn out right—but that score is getting better all the time.  (I used to have to reposition them as much as ten times!)  I replaced one last week that took four hours and filled the entire shop with down—it was one of those nasty, waterproof kind in a coat constructed in such a way that there were no external seams on the outside of the coat.  Everything had to be done from the inside.   I ate enough goose to think I’d had a Christmas dinner.  But it looked perfect when I was done and the woman who owned it was thrilled.  

 In other news, I have been called up for Jury duty.  I have been sent a lengthy questionnaire designed to assess my suitability for judging my peers.  Ooooh… the State of Vermont has no idea how proficient I am at judging my peers.  Especially when they wear zippers.  [People! Again, I beg of you: make sure the bottom of the zipper is securely seated before you begin yanking! And those with luscious curves, don’t be dragging those jeans over your hips with the zipper only half-way down.  This is how tragedies occur.]

Apparently, the district court system wishes to know what news media I subscribe to, any social media I follow,  what my hobbies are, and especially if I have any religious  objections to judging others.   After reporting that I don’t watch any TV at all, EVER (never have), rarely listen to news (used to obsessively but have had to limit it due to the anxiety it causes), don’t subscribe to a single pod-cast, and spend my precious spare time playing music, chatting to sheep and admonishing mouthy oxen, my housemate commented dryly, “They aren’t even going to have to sequester you, if you get chosen. They’ll probably have the whole jury to live here for the duration of the trial!”  Ha!

Yes, It’s true.  I do live in a Happy Bubble of general obliviousness.  In theory, I DO have spiritual objections to judging my fellow humans but I cannot help it.  I’m pretty low down on the social ladder and spend a lot of time looking up at things people don’t think I can see. From here, I get to see a lot of what my young son used to call “bummage.”  America is full of it at the moment.

A few days ago, I quite literally got to lie for a while at the bottom of a ladder I had recently fallen off.  I had been rushing around in the hay loft and my feet were numb inside my boots so I lost my footing coming down. I got a swift opportunity to think about things from a new angle, while the sheep and calves watched from their pens with mild astonishment.  They were not quite so concerned about my welfare as with the fact that I was not giving them supper with my usual efficiency.  Instead, I was crawling to a hay bale to try to sit up, mentally counting each of my bones and wondering what a ruptured spleen might feel like. 

“Well, this is certainly a fall from Grace,” commented one.

“I thought her name was Nancy,” said another.

“Really, the fall was from the absence of grace,” piped up Prim, who knows all the answers.

“What’s Grace?” asked the young Jerseys hungrily. “Can we eat it?”

As a result of what turned out to be only minor bruising, I got to spend Martin Luther King Jr. Day resting at home with ice packs and Epsom salts, thinking about the Justice system and my upcoming part in it, the social justice issues still present since the Civil War, hoping for Change, feeling the need for healing in our hearts and in our politics (not to mention our backsides!) It was a precious day of peace and pondering. What is a ladder anyway, but another form of zipper?

I remember being in middle school and having our teacher play a recording of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech and crying. We had never heard it before.  I distinctly remember thinking “that man is somebody’s daddy...” and he feels so sad for his children.  It was enough to make me weep and get excused to go to the girl’s room to blow my nose.  I was shocked to learn that his family was not like my family; his children not like me or my white and freckled friends.  I truly believed (and still do) what I had been taught thus far, that we are ALL God’s Children.   Ever after, this holiday has filled me with sorrow. I had no idea that I would grow to be an old lady before anything changed for my brothers and sisters.

I had a chance to chat with the sheep about it on MLK day as we watched the snow piling up around the barn and listened to answers Blowin’ in the Wind.  “You guys are all sorts of colors,” I said. “Are you ever mean to each other based on the color of your wool?”

“Never,” said Willow.

“We are mean to each other to get at more food.  That’s all.  Seamus is eating way more than his share of the Christmas tree, so we have to smash him occasionally,” said Blossom, pushing her way forward, threateningly.

“Seamus? Who’s Seamus?” I wanted to know. “We don’t even have a Seamus.”

Blossom rolled her eyes and nodded with her mouth full towards Chip.

“Whatever… Him, then.”  She has never managed to learn the name of her own son, whom she rejected at birth.

“Well, Chip? How do you feel about this? Do you carry any core wounds from childhood that make you mal-adapted for society? Are there ancestral healings that need to take place?”  He just shrugged.  With his one horn, he looks rakish, no matter what he says.

“Nah… I just live in the moment and eat all I can.”  

Fair enough.

I wish we humans were like this.  But we aren’t.  We DO have core wounds.  We do remember our history.  Well, some of us more than others…  And it’s a tough history indeed.  

If you really believe there is such as thing as a “them,” Darlings, you are sadly misguided and only Rot, numb feet, and Falls will ever come of that.   There is only an Us. Only We. WE the People.  Let us not be deceived by our own proud or petty insecurities.   Some of us think differently, perhaps even behave differently, than others.   That’s a wonderful thing.  We certainly don’t all have to vote the same way, but we should all get the chance to vote.  We don’t all eat the same things but we should all get the chance to eat.  We don’t all pray the same way but we should all get the same chance to pray.  

Zippers may be testy but they have unique power to bring a Left and a Right together.  They are hard to manage and difficult to replace. But we need them. Now more than ever, especially in a world that is SO COLD.   Whatever you are doing this week to mend, to heal, even if it is just your own dear Spirit (or bruised ribs), keep at it Dear Ones!  Menders are in short supply.  Sometimes the hardest work is the most satisfying—especially when we get Left and Right to come out even.  We don’t want the children of today to grow into little old ladies and men in a future where nothing got fixed!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Turnings

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time to every purpose, under heaven

--Song by Pete Seeger

Greetings Dear Ones!

When I heard what my dear niece did this week, I told her mother immediately that she would “wind up in the blog.” And so it is.  But before I “N-Bell-ish” this tale, I beg you to keep in mind throughout that Rabbit is an extremely clever young woman.  Do not let the following events change your mind on that fact.   That’s what makes the story so darn funny. If she were a total nincompoop, we might hear a tale such as this with compassion and perhaps a little pity.  We might smile forlornly, weep a little, and then make a pious donation to a relevant charity devoted to fostering such souls. We would not roar with laughter at her folly, like her mother and I did.  (We are only a tiny bit horrible—not that horrible.)  

No, dear Rabbit is the type whose name appeared regularly on her school’s “Student of the Month” billboard during her Senior year of Highschool.  She is an extremely competent veterinary technician who regularly assists in surgeries and works full time while maintaining straight A’s in college.  She’s artistic, musical, kind and capable.  When her favorite sweater developed a large hole in the arm, she knew she could fix it.  The hole developed right along the underarm seam, which is often sewn with a chain stitch these days.  For those who might not know what a chain stitch is, it’s a looped way of sewing that means if you cut one of the loops and pull it just right, the whole garment opens up just like a bag of dog food.  (Most feed bags are stitched closed with a chain stitch.)

Rabbit got out her needle and thread and went to work.  Her stitching is beautiful, just like her mother’s.  (Her mother and I used to spend many hours in our youth doing counted cross stitch samplers.  Such were the idylls of growing up in a land before video games…) Rabbit sewed with great concentration for a long time to close the vast hole that had opened up.  She used tiny, even stitches that melted beautifully into the knitting—this hole would never  open again, so small and perfect were those stitches.  When Rabbit gets focused on a task, it gets DONE.   She smiled happily, daydreaming as she worked, lost in “the zone” of satisfying handwork. Finally, she stretched upwards and announced that she was finished.  She showed her mother, who admired her work.  “Aunty Nancy would be so proud,” she said.  Rabbit beamed and slipped the sweater on over her head.   She put one arm in a sleeve then looked momentarily confused.  Something was wrong. She couldn’t get the other arm in the other sleeve.  She wiggled and struggled, growing more desperate and confused.  She looked down. What the hell was going on??? Suddenly, she saw the hole in the sleeve below her, still open… What?  She had closed the entire armhole from armpit to shoulder!  She had completely missed the actual hole, which was lower down on the sleeve.

“THIS is why I could never be a seamstress,” she announced flatly, throwing the sweater on the floor.

For those of us whose “New Year” has gotten off to a wobble, I find this story oddly reassuring. (Especially the part that ensures job security for the likes of me!) How many of us have had a January like this so far?  We think we’re on the right track.  We think we know what the situation calls for.  We have the tools, the talents, the drive—and we enjoy the work immensely until we discover we’ve actually made a total hash of something quite simple.  Now what?

When they called to tell me what had happened, I tried to console my niece by saying, “It’s OK, Rabbit. I’ve done plenty worse.  You know how you avoid mistakes like that?  You have Experience.  You know how you get Experience?  You make a lot of mistakes like that.”

Everything looks different when it’s turned.  It’s not easy to picture things simultaneously as they are in front of you, and as they would be, turned right side out again.  Many’s the time I have put dress sleeves on backwards, twisted the linings of coat sleeves, and even shortened the same sleeve twice.   I swear, sleeves are like savvy cattle who know damn well where to go, know it’s time to go in, but just don’t want to yet so they wind up trashing the barn instead.

Anyone can plow on in a forward direction once they get started.  But Turnings—of sleeves, or socks, hearts, or cattle—these are the things that reveal true Mastery. 

Take socks.  “Sock heels” is my current metaphor for January.   Recently, I was sitting with a fabulous young knitter who whipped up an entire cap in just an evening.  “You should do socks,” I said, “You would love them.”

“I don’t want to have to turn a heel,” she admitted.  “That looks hard.”

“It’s not. I don’t know why people are so scared of that.”  Many people have variations on how to turn a heel.  Here’s how I do it:  After knitting in the round the desired length from the top of the sock down towards the ankle, I divide my total number of stitches by three, then continue knitting only one third of the stitches.  The other two thirds just rest.  We’ll pick them up later.  First, we just knit a tiny, tight square.  That’s all.  Later, we’ll pick up stitches along the edge, add them to the ones that have been resting, and go on.

Turning oxen is kind of similar in that one boy has to stop, or slow down a lot, so that the other guy can walk around him.  Even driving a car around a tight corner at speed, we need to pump the brakes to navigate the tension between centripetal forces and centrifugal impulsion. 

Turning any kind of corner involves Pausing. 

When we turn something inside out to fix it, we first need to pause.  What is it we are fixing? Where do we want to turn?  What needs to be mended and what doesn’t?  And most importantly, what kind of snacks would best sustain us on this journey? It takes a moment to reorient ourselves to a new angle of the familiar.  Pause…. Focus….

It never hurts to take a moment to think about how we are interacting with our environment and how it is interacting with us.  (As I type, my environment is a whopping three degrees of F that’s cold outside.)  How can we join the flow?  Especially when we feel frozen? What are the signs that we are on the right path? Where can we look around us for guidance rather than trying to push things through or force our way forward?  I very much believe in “inspired action”—action that is prompted by those little voices in our heads reminding us to do things like bring an umbrella, stock up on windshield washer fluid, don’t eat that thing you found in the back of the fridge… and so on.

Sometimes, we don’t feel like moving forward at all.  Instead of fighting through, perhaps we need to rest.  So many of us have ambitious goals or nagging obligations that we feel we must accomplish in order to get a new year/month/season off to a fresh start.  But if there is anything I have learned from my work as a seamstress, it’s that turning a new corner requires more thought, more pause, more intention that one might assume.  

This January has a strong sense of retrograde to it.  Some of us feel thwarted, some feel stuck, some feel dissipated in odd ways.  Lately, I feel like my energy is like two inches of water all over the cellar floor.  There would be so much power there if it could be contained and focused but it is going in so many directions that all I am making is a sloppy mess.  If I’m not careful, I might accidentally sew a bunch of armholes closed. Or even worse, leg holes. (This reminds me of the woman who once brought in all her husband’s boxer shorts and asked me to sew the front openings closed.  She wanted to force him to sit down when he peed!)  It’s time to pause, find my inner Stillness, maybe invest in an industrial shop vac.  “Oh, Goody!” says my inner Grundalina, who wants to leave the mess and go back to bed for a winter’s nap.  

Then I remember the Turning of a Sock heel: just do about a third of the work with clarity and focus.  Let what’s on the other two needles rest a bit.  Keep going with what needs to be managed now.  The other things will catch up and be woven in beautifully in Divine Timing.  Not everything needs to be done at once.  This is my Valediction forbidding Perfectionism.

The beauty of learning how to turn things around is that humility makes experts of us.  There is great joy in learning we can always start again, wiser, when we are ready.  Our planet has just turned a great corner in the vast darkness of space.  We are headed back towards the light, the warmth—though it does not feel like it yet!  We are on our way, even with one armhole sewn shut and the other tied behind our back… STILL… “Turning, turning, we’ll turn round right!”

Keep turning, and resting, and Mending, dear ones! Thanks for your Good Work!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Feeding the fire...

Greetings Dear Ones!

Ever realize that you are suddenly wiser than you were before?   Do you look back on past decisions, decisions of mere weeks ago, and question your sanity?  For instance, right now, I am questioning whether making the interior of my home look like a pine-scented woodland salad was a good one.   All my friends were doing it, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. But seriously… A small TREE in the front room?  What was I thinking?  Haven’t the sheep taught me that large, wild, living things belong OUTSIDE? Present self is looking at Past self with eyebrows that look like caterpillars in a boxing match.  And all these fresh pine and cedar garlands draped over doorways and up banisters?  Who is going to take care of all this? How many times can we clog this hoover with dead needles before we give up and take to a Netflix binge on the couch with the rest of the cookies? (I’m just kidding; there are no more cookies.) And the way the juice from the decorative clove-studded citrus fruits has baked itself into the hardwoods—only Jack Russell dung has more staying power.  I’ll be chiseling this stuff until the cows come home.  Oh, wait; they’re home!  They are looking in the window at me, wondering when I am going to come out to play.   I can’t.  There’s too much work to do and someone has trashed my house.   It couldn’t look any worse if I had actually hosted ten people for four days, as was originally planned, but then cancelled due to that Virus-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named.  

Yep. It’s January… named for the Roman god Janus—that keeper of the gates who was pictured with two heads because he was keeping watch on both the past and future.  Present self is pissed.  She has some anger to manage; Past Self had a good party and left her to clean up the mess.   We just hope our Future Self takes us all in her arms and says, “There, there my darlings.  You made it. You survived.  Good Girls, You!  I wouldn’t be who I am today if it hadn’t been for you. Thank you.”

Things are swiftly business as usual in the shop. A lady comes in to have one small snap sewn on her favorite coat and chats for, well, much longer than it takes to sew on a snap.   “So! How was your New Year,” she asks, as if the New Year was a mere night and now we are back to the same old year.  It certainly seems that way—given that the last two years have melded into an interminable purgatory for some.

Well, my “New Years” was all about burning up the pile of brush that has accumulated in the past eighteen months of clearing the land of lost plots.  In Vermont, it is legal to burn without a permit as long as there is snow on the ground, no wind, perhaps a light mist falling from a Northeasterly direction and the pile is soggier than Cheerios after 2.5 seconds in a bowl of milk.  In short, it’s perfectly legal to burn when absolutely nothing is capable of catching fire, including the fire.  It took us five hours to get the thing to stay lit.  An expert had told me to use a leaf blower and four times I lit a reasonably good blaze, only to completely extinguish it with the leaf blower moments later.  It was as if a giant was blowing out birthday candles and I just stood there, getting older and colder.   Even Worse, there was NO cake…

I know I tend to be a bit optimistic and silly at the best of times—my imagination goes on the wildest safaris without even a peck of common sense.  So it is with those who have made a grand plan without knowing the first thing about what they are doing.  Somehow,  I had convinced myself that we would simply toss a match into all that tinder and moments later the thing would go “Ka-Boom!” and there’d be nothing left to do but sing carols and serve mulled beverages.   Prudence was terrified that we might accidentally reignite California from here.  Thankfully, No.   Michael, one of the wonderful young men present, happens to be a post-Doc engineer at MIT and an expert in chemistry.  He taught us a lot about fire.

One of the things about a soggy brush fire in snowy Vermont is that ignition temperatures are hard to achieve.   You have to labor at a brushfire like a new fiddle tune—stick by stick, stump by stump.   Basically, you have to light a small fire, use it to dry out the next bit of wood, then use that to make a slightly larger fire.  It takes pitchforks and shovels and muscles. (“And a total absence of mulled beverages!” notes Prudence approvingly.)  There is a lot of smoke-watching, eye-watering, and steaming of bare necks and branches.   The next time someone tells you they have burned a brush pile, reserve some awe for their audacity, carefulness, and persistence.   Michael labored over the coals for over eighteen hours in freezing rain, in a soot-stained T-shirt,  like he was powering  a steam boat on the Missisippi whose captain wanted to water ski.  It was humbling indeed to see how much work a fire takes. 

I tried to tell the sheep about it when I took a break to do barn chores. “We know all about fires,” they said nonchalantly. 

“Oh, really?” I asked. “What could you possibly know about fires?”

“Each of us has a tiny one inside of us.  That’s what the hay is for, to keep it lit.  Our hay fires in our tummies keep us warm on these nights when it’s fifteen degrees out.  You keep feeding us and we keep putting hay on those fires.”

“Come to think of it, we did use quite a bit of hay to light the bonfire,” I admitted.

“Hay makes good fires,” burped one, “because it is small.  It’s all about surface area.”

They lay around the pen, burping and cudding, like people at a diner who have paid the check but weren’t ready to leave yet.

“It’s good to chat with you again,” I said. “I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you for the cattle recently.  I’m besotted with them.  Everything is so new and fresh for them.  It’s exciting.  It reminds me to be young again and think about things for the first time.”

“Like what a tarp might taste like?” snorted Chip derisively. “I saw the two of them trying to figure that out the other day. Little Gus almost swallowed a big rip of it before you came along and yelled at him.”

“People who think tarps are food are not a good source of wisdom,” sighs Willow.   “Fuel is what keeps the fire alive within.  Tarps don’t do that.”

“They are actually pretty good at snuffing fires,” says Wally.  How he knows this, I have no idea.  He’s still just a lamb.

“This reminds me of New Years and all the changes people want to make,” I say in an effort to be philosophical. “The bonfire represents a huge change but it doesn’t happen quickly at all.  It takes a very long time to transform those piles from the past.  Each branch, each Resentment or Regret that has accumulated, must be separated from the bunch and allowed to dry out, burn, and travel into the navy blur Beyond in a shower of spark.” I meant to say Navy Blue but my lips were cold and in the end we all liked Navy Blur better.  It’s a good name for a Vermont night sky in January.

“We sheep don’t have regrets.  Those are human things.  We live in the Now, whether it’s trying to snuff us or not.  But from our view of the woodpile, we can see that a careful fire is a Good Thing.  It accelerates the decay and transformation that was happening anyway.  A carefully tended fire gets rid of a lot of dead wood that you don’t need.”

“A pile that size can hide some Bad Creatures, like foxes and Fishers and things that go Scratch in the night,” said a nervous someone at the back, “best to take a fearless moral inventory and get rid of it!”

“When you clear it out, the land will be free to grow the best grass ever, which we will use to make the best wool ever!” piped bright-eyed Prim.  She is the type of Teacher’s Pet who is always at the head of the class, with her hand, er hoof, up.

“Everything is always in the process of turning into something else,” grunts Blossom, taking a dump that can only be interpreted as the height of sarcasm.

“But why does it have to take so long?” I want to know.  “Why do the simplest projects always wind up requiring So Much Effort?”

“Because you want to Hurry,” said Willow, with a tinge of sorrow in her eyes.  “Changes take time.  Pushing too hard creates Burn-out instead of blaze.  Having too much responsibility all at once is exhausting.  It’s ok to lose your spark once in a while.  Bonfires, like novels and symphonies and snowsuits, are built of many thousands of little things.  They require work, not hurry. We aren’t much fond of either.  Slow down.  Have some hay. Make yourself warm.   Just keep feeding that fire within.”

I nod, then return to the fire I am tending… making a fuel of wayward vines and old regrets.  There is so much to clear by Spring.

I hope you are warm and cozy and tending your own fire within, wherever you may be.  May it light your eyes with promises and sparks that rise into the Navy blur. 

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

A Fresh Unfolding

Happy New Year Dear Ones!

From my neighbor’s kitty litter box, I can see the whole of the last year at the Land of Lost Plots laid out below me like the map of the Hundred Acres Wood in the House at Pooh Corner.  She and her sons have gone away to visit family and I am in charge of mail retrieval and turd dispersal in her absence.  In with the wanted, out with the shit—it’s good practice for welcoming a New Year.

It’s quite something to view from a new vantage what often feels too familiar to be seen.  I gaze down on what looks somewhat like a miniature medieval village: There are the ruins of the decrepit blueberry cathedral, listing leeward, full of blueberry bushes irregularly pruned by marauding sheep who ignore the “closed to visitors” fencing like tourists at a National Park site.  I close my eyes and remember the taste of those berries, dancing in purple stilettos on my tongue, as I ate them, hot and ripe, with a hazy slice of July dawn.  There are the gnarled old peach trees where in August the baby bulls and I tasted for the first time a sweetness that made our eyes roll back in our heads.  There is the ancient apple tree where Sport, our beloved curmudgeon was laid to rest during one of the endless summer rains. It was as if the sky was crying too. There is the grand circle of Hemlock logs stacked by young men into what looks more like Nordic Art than firewood. There are old stumps, still waiting to be split.  There is the patch of pear trees that yielded five varieties of brown and green and golden fruit, which were shared out with friends and came back to me as intoxicating slivers of pure heaven from a friend’s dehydrator in September.  There is the barn, the path, the mud, the snow… and beneath the snow is the Autumn grass I lay in to watch the stars and listen to the last vibratos of the cricket choir.  Beyond the house, I can see the claw foot tub, now filled with snow, where I often sat deep in hot thoughts, in a soap-bubble world.

I realize, as I gaze down and back from my neighbor’s window, that what I remember most are these round little moments—moments where the full Sweetness of life bore down on me and I had the sense and Grace to feel or taste it fully.  These moments had very little to do with anything linear, with lists, with rushing, or ambitious goals and speeding deadlines (most of which passed me by).  A lot of things I thought I had to do got supplanted by surprises I could never have imagined.  

Right now, I am still celebrating what I am calling “The Twelve Days of Omicron”—twelve rapid tests, eleven cancelled plans, 10 friends a-coughing, 9 super-spreaders….all the way down to One lone Baker Baking... My attempts to create one of those charming fantasy family holidays at what my children call “Our Christmas House,” have been scuppered on a daily basis by those who either get Covid or get scared.  I had the garland up, the tree trimmed, the presents wrapped, and all the traditional ethnic delicacies prepared, only to spend many days home alone, eating whole batches of cookies by myself.  It was marvelous!  I might cancel Christmas every year and do this instead!  I really got “into myself” and, as a result, wound up with so much more of me to love!

New Year’s has come too soon…

“The Party is OVER,” says Prudence.

This is Prudence’s favorite time of year.  She is totally fed up with all the squalor in both my head and parlor.  She can’t wait to declutter and detox.  She has an extensive list of punishments disguised as “Resolutions” designed to fix all that is broken, bad, or lacking in my moral fiber and my bank account.  She is convinced that if I just “try a little harder” this time, this time I will see results.  She is ready with a list of all-and-nothing routines to create New Habits immediately: No more clutter or procrastination or sugar. Ever. Never.  We will save every damn penny and never again succumb to hand-woven antique linens on eBay.

“We’re going to hit the ground running,” she announces shrilly.  I slump.

“But I want to hit the ground resting,” I whimper.  “When do we get that Long Winter’s Nap? I’m worn out from consuming all that sugar, fear, and grief.  I’ll settle for even a medium-sized nap!”

“Rubbish!” she snaps. “We’ve got to do something about all this rubbish. It’s time for the sheep to eat the Christmas tree so we can get on with the new Austerity Measures in a house devoid of dead shrubbery.”

“But what if I want to spend the next year lounging in my new sheep pajamas (thanks Rabbit!) doing that online course ‘Writing to Uncover Your Authentic Self?’”

“Absolutely Not,” she insists crisply. “We’ve already seen enough of your authentic self to know that uncovering more of it won’t do any good. We’ve got to attack that menopausal belly fat, stretch your crinkled up fascia, and do something about that desiccated mass of candy-floss you call hair.  No… we don’t need more of your authentic slacking or fondness for bean burritos.  So get up! You need to learn twelve fiddle tunes a month, sound like an angel on the harp, do high-impact aerobics daily, run a marathon by June, and subsist only on high-energy locally grown vegan foods, all while simultaneously improving the strength of your pelvic floor!”

“But what about slowing down, living simply, listening to the sheep, cuddling the cows, and finding holistic ways to reduce overwhelm and stress??”

“You live in Vermont,” she retorts. “That’s close enough.”

“But what if I want to embrace this totally arbitrary “fresh start” as a chance to go on a transformational Journey to explore peace and confidence; to honor, replenish and share my gifts; to be a better friend or neighbor to my fellow travelers?”   

“Enough of your buts.  You need to get off of your buts.  I wish I could sign you up for a top-selling course on high-impact excellence but you’ve already squandered our discretionary income on artisanal crockery and yarn. As if you needed more yarn!”

I’m tempted to do something rash, like run outside and roll naked in the snow, just to watch Prudence pass out so she will leave me alone.  I want this New Year to unfold in all the magical, wonderful, challenging, inspiring and unexpected ways that every year, every journey, every relationship and every Love unfolds.  A New Year isn’t something one can set a course for in a day.  Only by making constant, micro-adjustments with every single stitch, is it possible to sew a straight seam.  Life takes constant adjusting and recalibrating.  A year is round.  The world is round and so are its people (especially after all the holiday ethnic delicacies).   Too much over-straightening just leads us off course.

So I’m setting a course for Today only.  Where can we go if we are led by Curiosity and Wonder?  What can we mend, if we are thoughtful, kind, and tender? What calls us to do or be or taste or smell or feel Goodness?  What would we most like to experience next?  How do we honor with action and Gratitude, this amazing and mysterious Unfolding called Life, which is ever yet just beginning?

Wishing you every blessing of Health and Harmony in 2022, I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Gifted

“Enough is as good as a Feast.”

Happy Solstice Dear Ones!

As we hurtle through space, with stars above, below, and to the left and right of us, at the longest corner away from our sun, I go to and from the barn each day in a darkness that often feels internal.  What a relief it is to switch on the lights to find a cozy manger scene of impertinent sheep, chattering chickens, and cattle gently lowing. It is my own private Christmas card, albeit without camels or bearded people dressed in flowing robes.  (The shepherdess dresses in flannel pajamas tucked into muck boots with a purple Carhartt jacket thrown over. She’s doing her best to eliminate her beard.)  

The steer are particularly delighted to see me, despite the fact that I am attempting to get them to accept wearing little elf hats on their heads for what I hope will be the cutest photo ever.  They are not having it.  They scrape them off impatiently and demand breakfast instead.  Their brains work in curious ways.  For one, they repeatedly refuse to learn to wear little hats and yet just once I gave them some apple chunks off the edge of the deck and now, every time they are running loose, they head straight for the deck to check for apples.  They run to every window of the house to peer in and see if I am there, trying to catch my eye like I am an elusive waitress who has forgotten to bring them their apples.

The sheep, with their little spindly legs tucked up under them, look like mounds of dirty wool with eyes.  You could make them out of filthy cotton balls and buttons and glue them to the straw. They are so wooly they have ceased to have ears.  I feel tempted to hop the fence and use one as a pillow, albeit a pretty stinky one. (Most Christmas cards are not scratch-and-sniff for very good reason!)

I crawl into the loft and toss a bale of hay down into their manger.  Something about the way they smack their lips in greedy appreciation makes me feel both whole and holy. “Feed My sheep,” I hear in my head.  It’s good work.  I need these corner posts of loft-iness and groundedness and hay-ishness at the dark margins of my days.  It makes the middles seem less chaotic.  The middles are where things tend to go awry.

You might think that the night is so long this time of year because it has something to do with the path of the planet around the sun.  Nonsense.  It’s to give us Crafty People extra time to destroy our homes after working a full day at our regular jobs.

We “Makers” have it extra tough around the holidays.  The un-crafty go into shops, malls, or online, and pick out a bunch of thoughtful presents for their loved ones, have them gift-wrapped, and they are done.  Not us.  We spend these longer nights littering every surface of the living space with little bits of yarn and glue, swathes of fabric, knitting needles we sometimes accidentally sit upon, pins and patterns, salt dough and paint, wires and pine cones, until the place looks like it should be the nasty centerfold of “Rodent Décor.”  Our neglected offspring and pets rely on purloined raw cookie dough to sustain themselves.  Our partners peer wide-eyed from doorways, too cautious to tiptoe into the swirl of debris, lest they be yelled at. Corner cobwebs at the ceiling are coated with powdered sugar and despair.  As the days spin faster than an Ashford traveler’s wheel, we grow more and more crazed, more frantic, more enthralled by our zeal. SO much is expected of us!  THIS is our moment to shine… THIS is when everyone who tastes these cookies will swoon and wonder, “Is that a wooden spoon she has? Or a magic wand? Hmmm…”   This is also the moment that shall vindicate our need to purchase thirty yards of Irish Linen in July… (Everyone on the list is getting hand-embroidered fabulousness, AND some crocheted sea creatures.)  Exhausted, deluded, we MUST crash onward, towards Victory! Until we make THE THING, that thing that will be the Most Beloved Gift EVER—that thing that is way too good to come from a store, that only the extremely Skilled could even attempt to pull off,  but is the secret heart’s desire of  our Beloved.  They would never ask for it by name, but we know… We Know. Even if they have no idea, still, we Know.  The Soon-to-be Cherished Family Heirloom is nearing Parturition.  We just need a little more (yarn/wine/glue/time).  It’s history (and gawd-awful MESS) in the making.  Strung out on pumpkin spiced eggnog and fantasies that we can do it all, we start pulling all-nighters, deluding ourselves into thinking that we can certainly knit a whole shawl or produce a baby quilt in one night. The only people who have more naive optimism are those poor souls one finds at the cutting counter of a certain fabric store chain the day before Halloween, clutching some faux fur and a Very Ambitious costume pattern—the sort of pattern that would take an experienced seamstress several days to make—and admitting publicly that “they haven’t really sewn before but how hard could it be?”

I know there are some tough people out there—people who train for and complete back-to-back triathlons, people who swim with buckets on their backs, people who run six miles and stop each mile to do a feat of fear or strength, like shimmy under barbed wire, or leap burning things.  I say we put these folks up against a Christmas crafter who needs to hand-stamp 100 cards (and calligraphy the envelopes) by midnight, then take off her shoes and knit with her feet until dawn while her hands fashion ethnic delicacies flavored with anise seed and rum.  Anyone who can do all that and simultaneously produce a cheery-smug newsletter full of Ho-Ho-Hos and an endless list of middle-school accomplishments from the child prodigies  she is raising deserves a medal or a trip to the funny farm. (Hey!! wait a minute… I’m on a farm and it’s pretty funny… hmm…)  

At some point, it dawns on us that Rumplestiltskin isn’t coming; we aren’t princesses in a fairy tale who have befriended a bunch of woodland creatures who will save us; and we find ourselves sleep-deprived and sobbing into the cookie batter to which we just accidently added raw garlic.

THEN…

Then we go to the mall. 

Who says crafters aren’t serving Capitalism?  First we buy all the shit we need to make our projects.  Then we realize a pair of homemade socks (representing 40 hours of our life in stripes) is not nearly “enough,” so we panic and buy more. 

The year I learned not to do ANY of that was the Christmas after my divorce.  Working five jobs but still broke and feeling utterly broken, I had not done (or over done) a thing.  I had a few token presents for the little nieces and nephews, something small for each of my own children and that was it.  I was showing up to my parent’s farm, essentially, with just me and my children, or as I put it, “nothing.”

Amid the hoopla of hugs and hellos, no one seemed to notice that I brought so little.  The tree was already packed.  I dangled my toes carefully into the gene pool, rather than doing my usual canon ball, and adjusted to the currents of emotion swirling around me.  There was drama in the kitchen as my parents attempted to cook an evening meal together. My sisters were on hand to keep pots and tempers from boiling over. No need to insert myself in that melee.  I hugged my littlest niece on my lap and sat down.  When my father was boisterously evicted from the kitchen, where he was causing trouble, he called “Hey, Nance!  Come here.  I have a favor to ask you.” I followed him to the cellar laundry room, where my mother has a small desk in the corner with her sewing machine and threads.  He rummaged in the corner and emerged with a mysterious bundle and a guilty smile.

“Can you fix these?” he asked, extending a pile of ragged clothes. “Your mother was going to throw them out, can you believe it?”  Yes, yes I could.  His stained work pants were in tatters.  The hems were down and the material over the knees fraying badly into holes.  She hates stuff like this.

“This coat is a good coat, it just needs a zipper,” he said handing me a light jacket. He had sweaters with holes in them, pants to hem, a sport coat to tailor—seven repairs in all.  “Please,” he said, “this is all I want for Christmas.  I don’t need anything new, I just want to fix my old stuff; there’s life in it yet.”  My father’s sentimentality reveals itself in his absolute refusal to throw anything away.  EVER.  It drives my mother nuts.  She is forever slipping things into large, opaque bags and sneaking them into the trash to eliminate the clutter. 

He held the clothes out to me with a look of boyish hopefulness. “Sure Dad,” I said, “To be honest, I don’t really have anything for you for Christmas anyway.”

“That’s fantastic!” He said, beaming. “Really, truly, this is all I want! I just need all this stuff fixed.”  In the kitchen above, we could still hear the rumblings of dinner preparation.  There were too many people in the kitchen—no need to go there. I sat down in the little chair and pulled out some thread. Might as well begin right away.  He leaned against the washing machine and talked to me as I started mending a sweater.  I don’t know how long he stayed there but it occurred to me that I was getting precious one-on-one time with my father, during dinner prep, with a house full of siblings and grandchildren.  It was a good, old-fashioned, Christmas miracle.

He left and my sister came down, searching for her daughter. “What are you doing here?” she wanted to know, scanning the clutter, the pipes hanging with shirts to be ironed above me.

“I’m fixing some stuff for Dad,” I said.  Her face lit up. “Hey!  Rabbit bought a dress yesterday that has an open seam we didn’t see in the shop. No wonder it was on sale.  While you have the machine out, could you just zip it up? I don’t care what color thread you use—whatever is on there is fine.”

“Sure!” I said. Rabbit appeared moments later, holding the dress and another blouse and a pair of men’s jeans.

“Can you fix these too?” she wanted to know. “My mama doesn’t know about the blouse.  Let’s not tell her,” she said with a conspiratorial wink and guilty smile.  “And these are my daddy’s jeans.  He breaks jeans!” I looked at the jeans.  Being a Texan, her daddy starches his jeans until they can stand up on their own. And yes, they literally “break” when the jeans get so frail and the starch gets so brittle—they crack right next to the pockets.   One side had already been professionally repaired.  “It cost Mama 25 dollars to have the other side done and it doesn’t even look good,” said Rabbit, as I examined the repair carefully. 

“No,” I agreed. “Whoever did this does not know my little trick for getting around rivets!” She smiled and sat down nearby on an overturned bucket. “I sure wish I could sew,” she said wistfully.  “It must be so nice to be able to fix things for people.”

“Well, I’ll be glad to teach you!” I said. “Us clever old ladies need to teach you clever young ladies how to do this stuff.”  She smiled.  With my hands busy and my ears open, I learned all about how she felt about school, what her friends do that bugs her, which boy she had a crush on, and how much she loved hunting deer with her daddy.  There was none of the polite awkwardness that comes from a meddling aunt interrogating a shut-down teen.  She kept me company, chatting and asking questions until dinner was called and we went upstairs.

“Where have you guys been?” everyone wanted to know.  “Fixing things in the basement,” I replied.

“Aunty Nancy fixed my new dress I just got!” announced Rabbit, hopping happily.

After supper, while the clean-up crew swung into action on the dishes in the kitchen, I returned to the quiet of the cellar to work on my father’s ragged clothing.  Tomorrow was Christmas Eve—I would have to work quickly to get it all done. While I was there, my sister-in-law knocked timidly at the door.  She cautiously held out her son’s jacket and a blouse she had that needed a small repair.  “Do you think you could do these things too?” She asked hesitantly. I was thrilled to be asked.

My next customer was a sister.  She had pulled out her prom dress from the 1980’s.  She laughed bombastically, flapped it a few times like a large wing, and chortled, “I want this thing to fit again.  I am going to a corporate event that is being themed ‘80’s prom’ and I want to show up in my actual dress! I’m going to bring my pictures and prove to everyone that I wore it then and it still fits. Only, of course, it doesn’t.  Can you make this fit me again?  It’s the only Christmas Miracle I want.” I looked at it carefully. 

“Of course,” I said finally.  “I can cannibalize the sash into gussets under your arms and no one will know the difference.  We’ll just have to make you a new sash, probably out of ribbon.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that!” she said airily. “I’m just thrilled you can do it.  It’s all I want for Christmas, seriously.  You drew my name out of the pot and it’s all I want.  That and for you to fix some of Nemo’s dog toys.  He humps them into shreds.  It’s disgusting.  But he is very fond of this squirrel.”  She indicated a stuffed squirrel that was nearly the same size as the crazed looking Jack Russell at her feet, who was looking at the squirrel and whining anxiously.

“Well, you’re lucky I don’t actually have anything for you yet.  And this is going to be about ninety dollars worth of repairs in a shop anywhere else so you are getting a pretty good deal.”

She gestured dramatically. “Oh! I KNOW!! You have no idea how much I was hoping you could do this. It’s going to make the corporate event such a scream. All of my younger colleagues are going to die.  It’s going to be hilarious. Thank you so much!”  She pulled up the overturned bucket Rabbit had sat on earlier and proceeded to tell me about the event, her work, how she was feeling about being home, and about all the drama I was missing in the kitchen. I threaded another needle and listened as I worked. 

One by one, they all came with a want or a need—just simple things I had within my power to transform for them.  And while they talked with me, they transformed me.  I realized with great humility that I had never really listened to any of them before.   In my former struggle to be seen and heard, I had forgotten to look and listen.  I had closed myself off from the beauty of these people I was competing with. Appreciating them gave me a chance to appreciate myself.  Instead of inflicting my gifts upon them, in a desperate bargain for love, I waited for them to ask me for what they needed.  What they needed was so much more simple than I had ever thought.  They just wanted little mendings, little tweakings, little fixings that were simple for me, impossible for them.  It was the first time I had ever really given them anything they truly wanted.

Forget the Fabulous. Go Simple. Don’t think you have “nothing” to share. You do. Whatever it is, unique to each of us, we all have The Gift within us already.  Forget all the tinsel and the cheap wrapping paper that shreds into hamster bedding the moment a scissor touches it.  We just want YOU.  You are enough.  Show up.  Be Present.  I don’t mean it in a New-age, nauseating, self-realization kind of way that invites you to gaze at your navel and not help with the dishes.  I mean, your happiness, and everyone else’s depends on recognizing and sharing the gift that is YOU. That sharing is the Miracle we seek.

Ask anyone grieving a loss—be it of a child, parent, spouse, sibling, beloved friend, or pet—what we wouldn’t give to hold our Dear Ones in our arms just one more time? If they could just emerge for a moment from the aching empty ether, would we need them also to bring a bunch of crap they got on sale from the mall? No. But we would want to hear them laugh.  We would want to see them smile. We would want them to really hear us say “I Love You,” one more time.  And We would say “You… just you… you are all I want.”  Without ribbons or mistletoe or any sort of Christmas-ification whatsoever.  You are enough.

I Love you SEW much!!!

Yours aye,

Nancy 

It's that Time of Year...

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. –Henry Van Dyke

 Greetings Dear Ones!

Well, it’s already noon on a Wednesday and I am doing what I do best this time of year (and most times of year as well): Procrastinating.  I am Pro (i.e. “for, in favor of, in support of”) crastinating.  Crastinating comes from the Latin combination of crass, tin, and ate.  Which means instead of doing Worthy Work, I am instead distracted by making crass confections using tin, which I then eat.  (I eat the decorations, not the tin.) (Oh hell, who am I kidding? I’m eating everything that isn’t nailed down…) It’s too soon to decorate (or eat) the bit of slain shrubbery that is relaxing in a bucket of sugar water in the garage, and too late to knit everyone a new pair of socks before midnight on Dec. 25th.  I’m in that luminal space where I cannot find the Christmas cards I stashed away last January, thinking “damn it, now I’ll just have to send these next year…” and I refuse to buy more.  Gone are the days when I would hand stamp them and send artful collages of my kids dressed up as Victorian carolers to all our friends and neighbors.  My current idea of “decorating” the house means making sure the toilet lid is down.  There are messes and projects all over the farm that need doing and fixing and tending but all I want to do is look out the windows at a dull sky trying to snow, and burp.  Come to think of it, the sky does look like it needs a good burp too.  It has a faintly constipated look.

Bitterly, I regret not being a different sort of person—like those joyous (IRRITATING) Pre-crastinators.   They get things done for the giddy sake of Getting Things Done before the rush.  They have their holiday socks all knitted by July. They celebrate Thanksgiving in August.  I envy them their smugness and their bargains.  It’s like how we Larks who rise early in the morning tend to feel about owls who work best at midnight but can’t function before lunch without mainlining coffee for two hours.  We know there is an “us” and a “them.”  And now, with shame, I realize I am one of the “them.”   My horrible inner Elf on a Shelf is watching all the bad things I am doing and all the good things I am not.  He’s going to tell Prudence.  I’m on the Naughty List again.

It’s terribly easy to get resentful and start “shoulding” all over myself.  I should get this done now; I should have done that yesterday; I should have done that weeks ago. Then my inner Nietzsche decides tragically that This is All Futile, God is Dead, and no one really deserves my efforts anyway—that I alone should consume all this cookie dough.   “Resent” comes from that messy mix of Latin by way of French—F. resentir, from L. sentire “to feel”—to feel the need to eat cookies, to feel like one has had too many cookies, to feel like one now hates cookies and all the people who were supposed to get these miserable sugar-bomb “gifts” in the first place.  The prefix re, I presume, means “again.”  Yes, I have definitely felt this way before. Apparently the French have too.

One of the things working against me is Time.  Moments are taking a very long time and weeks are flying by.  Every time I look out the window, the sky is a completely different shade of day.   It goes grey then navy like a senior citizen dressing for Bingo. Deadlines are speeding by in the shop and yet it seems like I will never, in this lifetime, ever get new tires on my car—the current ones have as much traction as boiled eggs.  I’ve had an appointment scheduled for “three weeks hence” for at least six weeks now.   In the shop, the entire “Nutcracker Season,” which used to take weeks for costumes and fittings, was condensed into minor alterations on one tutu for the Marzipan Fairy.  We’re dashing through the snow to ski gear already.

I know for those grieving (and for those suffering the tyranny of the Elf on the Shelf) this time of year can last forever.  Nights can be years, especially just before dawn.  For students studying for exams, nights spent poring over textbooks pass faster than guitarist Nirvana Bista can play 400 chords in the key of D at 1600 beats per minute.  Time makes its twists and turns and the same day, or night, expands or contracts to give those who don’t need it too much and those of us struggling to get six pairs of jeans and four down jackets altered by Friday not nearly enough.

Einstein introduced the idea that “time is relative.” That is that the rate at which we perceive time passing depends upon our frame of reference.  (It also means that if we are spending time with certain relatives, things are going to take way longer…)  I totally believe this.  Doubters need only attend a jam session in an Irish pub to understand that banjo players just learning triplets, bodhran players, and certain enthusiastic audience members with a skinful of Guinness inside of them perceive time in radically different ways from the rest of the musicians.  

Another aspect of this theory of relativity is that the faster we go, the more time is affected.  The result is that all this seasonal rushing some people are doing is actually making time speed up for those of us who are Procrastinating and time slow down for those who are already wondering how many hours it is until Santa arrives.   Time dilation describes “a difference of elapsed time between two events, as measured by observers that are either moving relative to each other, or differently, depending on their proximity to a gravitational mass.”  Put differently, the cookies are not helping. 

So!  In the Holidaze spirit, with the best of intentions, I beg you.  Please! Sit down, put your feet up, and have a warm mug of something soothing and cinnamon-ishy.  You need to Stop Rushing so that those of us paralyzed by procrastination (and cookie dough) can get off our gravitational masses and get something done! You will give those of us who desperately need it, a little more Time.

If this blog seems shorter than usual, it’s working already.  Thank you! Rest some more. You deserve a break.  Enjoy the Hygge. Have a few carrots.  They are way better than cookies—just ask the reindeer, who are due any minute now.

Enjoy the Waiting, Dear Ones. I love you sew much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Fresh Water

“Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.”—C. Fields

Greetings Dear Ones!

Rabbit, Rabbit!  A pinch and a hug for the first of the month! I hope this finds you snug and cozy, wherever you may be.  Here, Dawn is just a thin crack in the grey bowl over the trees but morning logs of preserved sunlight are bursting back into a self-contained inferno in the wood stove, which is cackling merrily, as if it has just heard a good joke or a good fart, not sure which—the dog is doing both.  I’m getting another delivery of hay today, and I have a cup of tea right now—Bliss is running high. I know the first thing on the shop docket is to put not one but two new zippers in a down ski coat but even that cannot diminish the deep serenity of this moment as I pause to be with You.   It’s that time of year when the BTUs of a cup of tea or a small dog on one’s lap can become life sustaining.  

Everything is an hourglass on a farm—the wood going down in the woodpile, the hay mow going down in the barn.  The hot things born on the earth, nourished by the sun, feel prickly, splintery yet slippery, as they pour through our hands into hungry mouths of stoves and cattle.  The cool water under the ground can be summoned with a pull on the pump handle.  It feels like pure magic to pull what is cold and mysterious from the unseen depths beneath our feet.  There is no “gathering” as much as there is flow and containment of that flow.  Both are needed to keep the animals alive.   

Today, I want to share with you the story of the Water:  

Once upon a time, a young, ambitious, silly, middle-aged woman moved to a farm.  There was a dilapidated but cute little barn, which she quickly repaired and filled with cute, thirsty little animals. Unfortunately, the water hydrant was broken so the only way to get water to her animals, was to drag buckets of water from a spigot on the house down to the barn, a distance of about 50 yards.  In the frigid winter temperatures, the water in their buckets froze twice a day and twice a day she had to bash the ice out and replace it with liquid water they lapped or slurped and filled their beaks with gratefully.  (Actually, they filled their beaks with water.)  She read about how women “of a certain age” need to do weight-bearing activity to maintain their bone density so she was never unhappy about all the weight lifting she was doing on a daily basis.  Even when the young steers began sucking up as much as twenty gallons a day, she maintained a rugged optimism about her personal “gym.” This went on for more than a year, in scorching sun, cool moonlight, every day, in every weather.  She always meant to get that pump sorted out but somehow she never did and bolstered her inertia with the idea that the extra work was “good for her.” Something that started out as temporary became Habit. (All habits, whether wretched or wonderful, get their hold when we say to ourselves, “ok, I’m only going to do this ONE more time!”)

It wasn’t until she contemplated leaving the farm for more than a day that she realized she would need to do something about the water situation. A Habit had to change. 

We have no idea how weird we really are until we have to leave instructions for a house-sitter who is going to take the reins of our lives for a mere weekend. That’s when all the unconscious quirks suddenly make themselves visible.  One might find oneself writing to fellow adults statements like “feed the wounded chicken blueberries while you spray her gently with saline from the plastic bottle marked ketchup” or “please inspect all dehydrating scrotums daily for infectious discharge…”  or, in the case of the mother of a toddler, “if [the person you are watching] poops in the potty, she is allowed a yellow treat.”  Such statements give us pause and make us consider that our lives are not as conventional as we think, or perhaps we are going through a little phase that simply should not be explained to outsiders.

She found herself stymied by an inability to convey, in words, her system of watering the animals and decided it was just going to be easier to dig a six- foot hole in the ground and try her hand at replacing the water hydrant in the barn. It’s one thing to ask another person to handle your nuttiness for a weekend; it’s another thing entirely to ask her to give herself a hernia lifting thirty gallons of water downhill on a daily basis.   

Naturally, she did tried to hire a plumber to do the work, but apparently they are all busy for the next three years so Youtube videos, consultations with her beloved housemates and the staff of the local hardware store were the next best bet.  She would have to do this herself (mostly).  Fine.  Bring it.  As Glennon Doyle says, “We can do hard things.” She tried to listen carefully as the sales clerk at Brown and Roberts explained how, underground, she was going to need to patch some pieces of pipe together to create the elbow joint connecting two different sizes of pipe.  The joint needed to be heated, glued, etc… but all she could hear was “the thing with the thing needs to connect to the thing but don’t let stuff get in the thing or you’re, well….”  She must have looked a little panic-stricken over the top of her mask because an interested bystander said, “Don’t look so worried. Soon you’ll be teaching other people how to do this.” 

On a Friday night, after sewing all day, she came home, grabbed a spade and some rage and went to work. (It always makes one stronger, when doing manual labor, to think of vintage silk getting jammed in a sewing machine and chewed into a greasy mess by the underworkings of the bobbin… or irons that spit rust on wedding gowns…. or customers who think they might have paid you when they dropped off their clothing, when they didn’t and you know they didn’t but somehow they make you feel like a robber when they grudgingly pay you again… and there’s always that damn GLITTER for those truly weak moments when you need an extra push!)  

Down she went, grunt by grunt, pants filling with accumulating grit, until she was shoulder deep into the ground, getting in touch with her internal Welsh pit pony, digging until she found the source of the Nile, or the pipe which brought water to the barn, whichever came first.  Inevitably, she got distracted and started kind of hoping to strike gold, but then figured if she didn’t have to haul water all winter, that would be pretty much the same thing.  After two days and one rain storm, in which the hole caved in and had to be entirely re-dug (summoning More Rage), an exhausted, exhultant, now-thoroughly-rageless woman celebrated having running water to the barn.  

She lifted the spigot handle and water flowed as if by magic. There was much rejoicing.  Again and again, checking for leaks, incredulous that IT WORKED, she tried the water.  Then, she attached a hose and tried that. MAGIC.   All the animals were as Astonished as she was. The calves saw the hose come over the top of their wall and spray water into their bucket and panicked. They ran backwards, crapping as they went.  They were utterly traumatized by the idea that it could spontaneously rain directly into their bucket.  They had never seen anything like this. The woman felt like an Empress for a whole day.  It’s quite an intoxicating thing to be able to make it rain on a whim and have everyone around you poop themselves.  

She went away and returned home and the House-sitter survived and so did all the creatures, including “Blueberry Girl” and the dangling dingle brothers.  Things went back to whatever passes for “Normal” (ha!! Yeah…ok…). Yet the magic of the water hasn’t faded for that dear, mad, silly, courageous woman. She goes down on frosty mornings and flips the pump handle up and holds her steamy breath.  There is a moment of silence that always seems to last a fraction too long before there is a hidden burble, a burp, then a gush as the clear stick of water strikes the bottom of the bucket and then morphs into a puddle that rises…  She is amazed and grateful every time.  Things look like dusty chaos up above, but in the dark Silence below, the water is always there, waiting to be summoned.  Her Joy would not be the same at all if she had not carried the water for a year, then dug deep (TWICE!!!), or made a change because she tried to treat someone else better than she treats herself.    

Some of you will think this story is about water.  Of course it isn’t.  (Yes, Dear Katie and Nora, I just deleted “that” paragraph where Prudence is desperate to cram a bunch of morals down your craw.) Draw your own conclusions. And your own water!  The work is worth it.  I know you are doing it. Keep going! 

I love you sew much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

The best tool ever

Greetings Dear Ones! 

A friend of mine who stops by my shop occasionally for a spot of tea and chit-chat,  discovers me hunched over my machine doing what he describes as “vexated growling” but could also be a form of forlorn moo-ing.  It all depends on whether one sees me as predator or prey. 

I attempt simultaneously to apologize and to blame the ski pants jammed in the machine under yet another broken needle.  As he pulls out the chair from the dressing room and settles himself comfortably, he looks at me curiously and asks, “Nancy, what is it you like to do? I’ve heard you grumble about curtains, zippers, pleats and cuffs, denim overalls and dog clothes. You seem to hate modern synthetics, old-fashioned moth holes, and anything to do with glitter.  I’ve heard you complain about custom work as well as mending.  Do you even like your work? Or are you just doing this for the cash?  Would you still do all this if you won a million dollars in the lottery?”   

Instantly, I think of a contrite four-year-old girl who once said to her exhausted grandmother, “Please don’t tell Mummy I was growling!”  Having been caught “growling” I too think that I am in trouble. 

Defiantly, I fix him with a cheeky grin over my cheap plastic “cheater” glasses and say as “gangsta” as I can manage, “Honey, I be doing this for the pure glamour and sex appeal.  Seamstresses like me, we make it Big! We ride around in limos, in white fur coats, with lots of gold chains and bling and minions quaffing Chivas Regal and we be like… Yo! Wwwwhut Up dude…”  

We both laugh uproariously.  He knows me well enough to know if I ever “make it big” I will travel by ox cart and my wool-and-calico-clad minions will drink Kombucha. (Who am I kidding? I’ll never have minions! Onions and bunions maybe…) He doesn’t stay nearly as long as his questions, which haunt me the rest of the day.   

I LOVE all the things I do.  I also… occasionally… hate them.  I adore my customers and I am filled with joy at being able to help them.  So why am intermittently resentful? Does Workaholic me like only the hard work that makes us look impressive? Does Slacker me like only the easy stuff? Which is it? Do I simply need what people in my youth called “an attitude adjustment?”  

Shortly after, another customer arrives and is breathless to tell me that there is a sewing machine for sale in a second-hand shop nearby.  She wants me to pounce on it—close up shop early if I have to—to be sure to get it.  I look around my shop.  It is filled with sewing machines and various tools. I don’t need another one.  She seems crestfallen.  She doesn’t even know what kind it is.  She just keeps insisting it is “old” as if that should be all I need to know.   “I don’t need more tools,” I joke gently, “I just need at least three more of me to use the ones I have!”   She leaves with an air that tells me she does not like to be disobeyed.

I get back to the ski pants and the questions and now a layer of thoughts about tools and which ones are the most valuable to me.  The truth is that I could do ninety percent of all my work with just a simple needle and thread.  Perhaps a pair of good scissors… or just some sharper teeth.  This is not super high-tech stuff.  It’s old-fashioned hand-eye neurology and years of patient repetition you cannot buy, even from a second-hand store.  (It’s First Hand experience!)

These damn ski pants are NOT behaving.  I am growl-mooing again. 

Suddenly, I remember what my BEST TOOL EVER is….

Ready?   

I’ll let you in on a tiny secret I’ve discovered this year. Of all the tools in my little shop—the sergers, the seam rippers, the thimbles and thread--the tool that makes the work turn out the best is Gratitude.   I’m not kidding.  I know that sounds like a Pollyanna-ish thing to say designed to make Prudence feel a little warmth in her knickers but it’s the absolute truth.  Gratitude for work makes me do a way better job. I don’t know how but it makes the machines run better; it makes the work go faster; it takes this “job” and makes it a Vocation.  It reminds me of how much I love my customers—even those who bring me dirty horse blankets to mend, or leave fresh mystery stains in their pants.

Gratitude is a secret weapon I need when I am up against the putting in of a new zipper in an ankle-length down parka or a well-meaning dance mom who doesn’t want me to permanently alter a vintage costume that needs to fit two vastly different-sized girls for the same performance the same weekend. 

Gratitude puts me in touch with the Privilege it is to serve.  Gratitude isn’t a feeling, like happiness or being thankful, though it certainly contains both.  I see Gratitude as the action that results from those feelings.  It is love made manifest.  

Whoever said “the Ordinary is the hiding place for the Holy” was clearly talking about hemming ten pairs of jeans for a young man who has already been wearing the excess length as footwear. (The Ordinary is also the hiding place of the holey!)  The Holy beckons me from inside a bombed out jacket, from the back side of a pair of jeans, from a gooey garment that I have been ironing for ten minutes without realizing its owner left a chocolate bar in the side pocket. 

When I lose sight of the sacred nature of this work, my inner being receives nothing but static.  It’s like a radio between channels.  I swiftly disregulate.  Nothing goes well. I break needles and promises.  It’s time to retune the dial. Sometimes I have to lie down on the floor of my shop and think of things to be grateful for in order to climb back up to the cutting table and face what it takes to chop five yards of imported silk into pieces for blouse.  Sometimes I have to lie there for quite a while.  

Gratitude is what gets me through the Resisting and over to the Doing.  It makes me happy with the simplest things—like bobbins that make it to the end of the seam, customers who pick up their stuff promptly, those who say “Thank you for your good work,”  and the little shop dog who reminds me to take a walk in the middle of the day, whether I need it or not.  

Gratitude.  That’s my best tool ever.  I sometimes forget to use it.  Some of my dearest friends who visit the shop often don’t even know I have it.   I feel sad about this and vow to be more publicly grateful more often, which is convenient, because tomorrow is a whole day supposedly devoted to the practice. (That and figuring out who has to tell Aunt Martha she’s not allowed to sit at the kid’s table…)  

Living from a grateful heart means I feel compelled to write this blog.  When I do not feel grateful, I find it hard to write.  I find it hard to appreciate the petty joys and simple charms of all the things that, when I am in love with them, I cannot wait to share with you.  Life is a feast of delicious absurdities and I love YOU so much I want you to share them with me.   These things, these precious details of the warp and weft of our days, deserve to be seen, shared, cherished—slubs, sneds, and all. Gratitude is what turns wretchedness into Love.

Gratitude also helps me accept that I cannot hold my little cosmos together with sheer effort.  Believe me, I try.  I have about as much success as when I try to manhandle (er… woman-handle) 700 pounds of runaway beef in a wooden yoke.   I have literally stepped in front of those two, thinking I could grab their yoke and just stop them, the way the one might stop a runaway VW beetle that has slipped gear and started downhill.  It’s a poor use of one’s energy and hip bones.

Some of us are in fragile places now.  I get letters from The Weary. I hear you, like myself, moo-growling over your chores in the looming dark. Winter brings ancient fears of sickness, cold, and isolation with it—especially as pandemic numbers spike and social groups and families fracture along lines of politics and religion.  I invite you to join me on the floor.  For best effect, I recommend wearing wool socks on your feet and small dogs on your chest but these are strictly optional.   I will close my eyes and think of you, out there, likewise hanging by a thread.   Gratitude is the weaving of all those threads together--the path of Grace that says we are not the only Makers, Menders, or Sustainers.   We are not alone. Gratitude is recognition that you are here too, Dear Ones, doing your part.  You are not alone either.  

Tomorrow is the day, here in America, when we pause and express our patriotic gratitude for all we have then realize we will need to set our alarms for 4:am if we are going to beat the rest of our fellow citizens to More. Casual consumption is now too disappointing for me.  I would rather gaze at the wonder of a Maple tree in its Fall Glory than anything that is sold in a mall.  Instead, I shall feed the dear sheep and calves and witness the glory of the dawn and Really See It. Someday, I’ll wrap it in words and give it to us to share.

Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you may be! May our hearts be as full as our tummies.  May we share our blessings, from the trivial to the super-sized, and may we always continue the Mending. I am so grateful to you for reading, for commenting, for sharing—and for all the Good Mending you do for this aching world of mysteries and miracles.  I love you sew much! 

Gratefully,

Nancy

Your inner Voice has Garlic Breath

“Garlick maketh a man wynke, drynke, and stynke.”—Thomas Nashe

Greetings, Dear Ones!

Little by little the darkness deepens and the fall chores hasten to get themselves done in the slim, grey selvedges of Time.  Emily Dickinson’s “certain slant of light” illuminates a variety of tasks, igniting temporary bits of tinder (ok, the infamous Dating App has RUINED that word for Prudence… we mean it in its most old-fashioned sense). Such match-bursts are destined to become cozy candles to light our way forward to Spring or accidental sudden bonfires I must put out.  On the “bonfires” list is whatever is currently causing the cellar to flood each time it rains (I have already cleaned the gutter…), windows that whistle in the wind, and certain doors that are yet to open (or shut).  Under the “cheerful candle” list, I finally got the garlic planted this week!  Woo Hoo! 

It is always nice to feel that the garlic futures are secure. There will be much “wynken, dryken, and stynken” among the resident descendents of Roman Gladiators here: We can either pack our wounds with it, brush our teeth with it, or use it, more mundanely, to flavor our daily bread.  In any case, it’s a boon.   It was delightful to have the help of my dear, current lodger, who had never planted garlic before.   I showed him how to seat the little cloves in the rich black soil so that the points grew up and the roots grew down.  His eyes glowed with the charm of churning the earth and tucking away secrets for our future selves to seek.  I was happy to share the work as well as the joy. Fall planting is a pleasure that never dims for me.  I love feeling my fingers in the dirt, numbly separating the tiny cloves, blessing each one, covering it in dirt and thick blankets of partially composted bedding and dung.   From this frosty filth will one day come a pizza to remember.

So it is with the growth of my soul as it faces The Waiting.

I pause to exult in the number of worms I see wending their way through what once was anemic clay.  Now it pulses with writhing capsules of blood and sinew. “Look!” I shriek excitedly, “Look at the worms!  This soil is so rich!  They are feasting on all that poop we’ve been spreading.  How fabulous!!!”

“How is it they don’t eat what we plant, also?” he asks.  I can’t answer.  I don’t know how they tell the difference between what is living and what is dead, or why any worm in its right mind wouldn’t prefer garlic on the shit it eats.  Given the choice between shit with garlic and shit without, I would definitely choose the shit with garlic.  And yet, I’ve never met a worm with garlic breath.  Garlic makes everything taste better… well, everything except pumpkin pie, I guess, which simply cannot be helped.  There is some Miracle that tells worms what is food for them and what is meant to grow into food for us.

The garlic we plant is so small and dry.  I can’t believe it is just “resting” and not dead.  It has the papery skin of the Very Old.  But like most of us right now, it is only “mostly dead” and, as we have learned from The Princess Bride, “mostly dead is also partly Alive.”  Partly alive is all that matters, whether one is Garlic or a frazzled seamstress heading into Winter.

Of course, this is not exactly the garlic I had wanted to plant so my faith in it wavers a little.  The garlic I wanted to plant is still in the wooden bin at the local Farm & Feed store across the river.  I had just loaded a few plump bulbs into my basket when a Voice of Authority behind me announced, “You don’t want that garlic, Hon, that stuff is the organic stuff that’s $27.99 a pound.  You want the cheap stuff in the little bags in the next bin.  I think there’s some left.” She pointed to some dirty bags containing shriveled blisters lurking in the bottom of a small black bucket.  I’ve seen bunions on the elderly that look more appealing.

I don’t know what made this clerk, clothed head-to-toe in mismatched flannel with tri-color hair and a nose ring, look me up and down and instantly assess without questions that I was not a garlic-at-27-dollars-a-pound kind of gal, but Dutifully, billowing with nameless shame as if I had been caught stealing the garlic, I silently put back the wonderful, fist-sized, purple-striped teardrops of Wealth and Promise that was not for me, and collected a few random small white scabs.  How dare I aspire to the Good Garlic?  What was I thinking? She nodded approvingly and motioned me towards the register where she rang up my bargains.  Prudence almost loved her, except for the nose ring and tartan abuse. 

In the car on the way home, as I cursed myself for being so weak, I could hear my mother’s voice from the back of my head announcing, “That clerk would never have treated you that way if you had been wearing lipstick.  People who wear lipstick get treated like they can afford anything.”  

“Mother!” I answer with teenage exasperation, “it’s not like anyone wears lipstick these days!  Especially with masks!”

“Yes,” says Prudence (who despises vanity in general and lipstick in particular), “but at least go in there in proper street shoes, not mucks. People who shop with poop on their feet are bound to be treated as cheap.”

“Maybe she just saw you as one of her,” said my inner angel,

“What, like someone who’s saving the grocery budget for a new tattoo?” interrupted Prudence.

“No,” said the better angel of my nature, ignoring her. “She was clearly being loving and trying to help you.  You will take such good care of your garlic, it won’t matter one bit what you plant.  Chin up, Dear, All shall be well.  It always is.”

“Does this mean we can get a nose ring?” asked my inner teenager. (We all ignored her.)  

The garlic is now in its bed, covered with a thick counterpane of mulch made mostly of hay the sheep have discarded because one of their colleagues has spit it out, stepped on it, napped on it, pooped in it, or simply sniffed it and looked at it sideways.  Sheep, like all fussy creatures, tend to waste a lot. A thick web of rejection rises from the floor of their pen that I peel off in rolls to tuck over the garden.

The work is done and I am satisfied. Mostly… part of me cannot help thinking about the other garlic. The Good Stuff.  I am filled with guilty regret.  I’ve got to let this go.  But pain is here to teach us where we need to Mend.  I decide to root around in the mind-muck again and figure out Why I am so plagued by this recent exchange. What made me hand my sovereignty away so quickly?  Do I not understand my own needs/wants/desires/budget? What makes a shop girl think she can decide what’s best for me? What makes me think homegrown organic garlic could be seen as the height of extravagance? (Well, it IS, isn’t it?) Am I having “first-world-white-woman” problems or do I need to make my way to some bad coffee and a support group in a dimly-lit church basement somewhere?   With all the pesky voices in my head, why didn’t I listen to the one begging me to “just go ahead and buy the damn garlic!”  Who cares what a feed store cashier thinks?

How many of us do this?  I am not alone, right?  I know I’m not because my own customers act like all shop girls, including me, should be in charge. They do it all the time.  They try to ask me how they should look, how their clothes should look and feel.

“You’re a professional,” insists one, as if I am going to follow him around and take his pulse for the rest of the week.

“No,” I reply firmly, “I am here to make sure YOU get what you want, not I.”  

I am their servant. I am here to give them what they desire. (For the record, Servants do get paid.  Paying, or being “professional” has nothing to do with it.)

Lately, I’ve had a string of younger men coming in to ask me about suits they have been buying from eBay or local thrift stores.  I am excited to help them recycle clothing but some of them have no idea how to go about getting the look they desire.   Mainly because they have no idea what look it is they desire. They buy these big 1980’s jackets and baggy bottoms with pleats and cuffs and think they want to turn them into modern little scraps that could be worn to cycle the Tour de France.  

I think about my garlic as I try to guide them.  “Somewhere between what you want and what you can afford is a delicate balance only you can decide.  You need to take into account the basic integrity of the garment. I’ll tell you what the options are.  The truth is almost anything can be done.  It’s up to you to question what is feasible or reasonable before you send me to hack up this lovely museum piece.  I’m not trying to tell you what to do…”

“I want you to tell me what to do,” says one young man, clearly irritated.

“I can’t.  You need to decide for yourself. On pretty much everything… This is a good way to practice, so that someday, some well-meaning twit won’t scare you away from high-quality garlic.”  He looks alarmed. 

I try another tack.

“When I am out walking my oxen, I need a plan.  Every step of the way, I need to decide where I am going so that I will know whether or not we get there. I’m the leader, so I decide.  I can’t have them deciding these things.  What a mess that would be! It’s the same with suits and garlic. Don’t let anyone, even if you are paying them, push you around.  People can be like oxen, especially when they wear plaid. Love yourself enough to stand firm.”

I can tell he thinks I am going mad.  I don’t mind.  Being the boss of everything is not as great as it’s cracked up to be anyway, so I am happy to withdraw.  It’s time to shrink down into the Silence where we can hear the better angels whisper.  They know our hearts, our gifts, our paths--whom we should love and how we are meant to share the unearned blessings that are our birthrights.  Seasons of light and dark regulate our little worlds, urging us both to “prepare” and create necessary spaces for rest and suspension of the relentless forward momentum of “doing” rather than “being.”  

I have been feeling the darkness deeply this year—trying to embrace it, to see my annual lethargy and melancholy as the part of myself that needs to rest and go to seed.  It is time to go inward, be a small “something-that-is-not-yet”—not a pumpkin or a flower, or a vine, or even a tiny garlic shoot— held by a rich, mysterious darkness.  It’s time to listen better to those grace-filled inner voices—especially the quiet ones with garlic breath.

I love you all sew much! Thanks for your Good Work. May our Mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy