An April Fool

“I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed
monster. A most scurvy monster!” Trinculo, Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Greetings Dear Ones,

Happy April Fool’s Day!  Having been a Fool in January, in February, and straight through all the Madness of March, it only makes sense to close out the first quarter of the year and begin the next in a state of utter Fool-ishness.  The Fool, in tarot, is the most powerful card.  It signals Faith in the Journey and a reliance on Trust.  The Fool, in Shakespeare, is the wisest of characters.  It is an act of powerful innocence to begin again, begin anew.  And so here I am. Showing up once more, with no explanation, no apology, just a willingness to start again to live (and write) as a sheer crime of passion, nothing else, nothing less.  With the curiosity of a Fool, I will do it as fully as I can, for as long as I can, without assumptions, expectations, or insistences about what the outcome might be.   Having tried this for five years now, it’s damn hard to do.  The mud is deep.  Wish me luck.

As I type, two of my fingers will not stop bleeding. The cuticles have been savaged by the ripping edges of teeth from six frantic mouths trying to gobble corn chips from my gloveless hands. I have spent the morning in the pen with the sheep.  One of them is not doing well.  I separate her from the rest of the flock and set her up in her own pen, adjacent to theirs, where she can eat at leisure and not be bashed about by the greedy ones.  She does not seem to be “ill,” but ewes, like some housewives I have known, hide this really well until they are about to die.  I can feel the ridge of her backbone too prominently through her wool.  She is putting every calorie she gets into the two bowling balls filled with lambs that hang from her sides.  The hay this year is of poor quality and though she has been eating enthusiastically, she is not getting enough calories for what might be triplets and herself.  While I’ve been supplementing everyone with grain, she is still losing ground. 

Instead of bleating, or exhibiting loneliness, she seems relieved to have her own apartment. She puts her head in my lap for scratches and cuddles.  She sniffs politely at the $17-dollar-a-bale alfalfa I have bought just for her.  She nibbles daintily, like a girl who wanted pasta but ordered a salad to save her date money. (Back in the day, when salads actually cost less than law degrees from Harvard.) Calmly, she lets me drench her mouth with minerals and electrolytes.  Then we sit together in that gorgeous Contentment that hovers in a barn during a steady morning drizzle—the residents munching in time to the beat of raindrops on a tin roof.  From the doorway, the sepia forest is blurred. Snow piles mark the edges. We are living in a vintage photograph of long ago: A Vermont Homestead, a forgotten Christmas card that now doubles as a grocery list in a kitchen somewhere, behind an empty soup can filled with pens.  A blanket of mist and the smell of hay covers us in coziness.  The giant Great Pyrenees snores lightly on her bed in the corner by the feed room. 

The dog has been up most of the night barking courageously at the coyotes who have the nerve to sing to her from the orchard on the other side of the barn wall.  Again and again, she lunges and snarls, sending peals of thunder rolling from the depths of her bowels out through the bellows of an open throat.  Her teeth flash like lightening.  In the shadows of skeletal peach trees, the Wild Things sing of fear and hunger, of Lack and wanting, of sneaking and thieving, and she answers resoundingly, unflinchingly, with Death.  There is no fear when you know you hold Death within your own jaws.  I, who have spent the wide-eyed night listening to the song of my own internal coyotes, wonder ‘why I am not like that dog?’  Is Life for the Confident and well-equipped? Or the Brave and Stupid?  Only a Fool would try to find out.

Sitting in the sheep fold, a weary ewe’s head in my lap, ever so slowly I dissolve.  I melt like snow into deep ruts of mud.  I am that snow, that mud, this ewe. Water trickles towards the vernal pools and streams on the hillside below, coming from the roof, the sky, the snow, my eyes.  On the water rushes, eventually to the sea, turning ever so many wheels and woolen mills on its way.

The Christmas Card becomes a fifth-grade science diagram about the cycles of water around the earth—rain to river to ocean to rain.  We huddle under a roof in the middle of the page. The trees slurp up the water with their toes as it oozes beneath them.  The sap has been running for weeks now.  Up and down it goes, like a stubborn milkshake through wooden straws.  The tips of the branches are budding red. A pink mist in the glen signals the tiny swelling bellies of leaves about to be born.  Earth Science is everywhere, including the tree frog screaming his Tinder profile out to potential mates.

The wind picks up and Winter growls deep in its throat for a moment, signaling it is not to be messed with yet.  Spring Equinox or no, it’s not safe to plant the peas for at least another fortnight, perhaps at the next new moon. It’s exciting to think about the garden and all the work that has to be done.  We all want our muscles to stretch and the grass to green.  For now, the world is all the colors of brown. I caress the little brown head in my lap.

Work will wait. We are still tired.  We are hungry.  We are swollen with possibilities that are not yet ready to arrive.  It is a struggle to carry them.  I am still looking outside of myself for the food I need to keep going—for encouragement, for anything that says “keep going, Fool, this is valuable and Good.”  I am surprised and dismayed to be here again, at the bottom of this all-too-familiar rut.

“Spring is not a time of beginnings—it is an Ending, the ending of the gestation that has been silently occurring for a long deep winter.  It must be born soon or kill us,” whispers Blossom. “In the cycles of Creativity, Transitions are imperative. One cannot remain pregnant forever.”

“What is it you are giving Life to?” Miss Prim asks me through the gate between us.

I look at her quizzically, startled.

“You look heavy,” she says, “like someone who is carrying a thing that wants to live outside her.”

“I’m the thing that wants to live,” I say.  “My heaviness comes from emptiness. I can’t wait to have time to do the things that make me feel lighter, like write and play music.  I also need to get in shape. I’ve had too many projects, so much work, too much time with too many people…not to mention way too many cookies. Such things weigh on me. I don’t even like myself anymore.”

“Cookies???” Every head in the barn snaps towards my direction.

Prim laughs. She knows I have no cookies. (My pockets are damp from her checking.)

“No,” she says, disagreeing sweetly. “Your emptiness comes from Fullness. Giving is not what is depleting you.  It’s the NOT-giving that hurts you and makes you heavy.”

She’s got me there.  All the creative projects, the mending, the sewing, the knitting, the quilting, the tailoring—none of it fills the Void of not creating the thing one must make of one’s heart—the song, the poem, the tune, the novel, the building, the dress, the dream garden or clothesline or cheery slip-cover… These energies come as thoughts, the thoughts become words, when the words do NOT become deeds, the resulting guilt of Gifts-un-given leads to nights of wild coyotes in the brain.  

“It’s the stuck energy that makes you ponderous when you refuse to ponder it,” says Prim, wisely. “So get Pondering!”

“Actually, I ponder a LOT,” I insist lamely. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I could be a professional Ponderer. I could ponder for prizes.  As long as I don’t actually have to DO anything about it!”

We laugh. What gets done without muscles?

“You know, when you eat your toast before you come down here to feed us, your chores get done better,” says Wally.  “The water buckets get scrubbed, not just refilled. You linger longer. When you are hungry, you race back to the house. Selfishly, we like it better when you take care of yourself first.”

“I thought it was terrible that I started doing that.  All my life I always fed my animals before myself. That’s how it should be,” I say, “that’s what a Good Farmer does.”

“Well, a Good Farmer doesn’t take such good care of us as you do when you aren’t rushing.  Remember, we don’t want to talk to you until we have eaten either. It’s all just yelling and bawling until the grub goes down.”  

“Are there other ways you could be taking care of yourself that would make you better at other things too?” asks Prim, hopefully.

I stare at my feet, thinking of suggestions or insinuations others have made, some of which have really hurt my feelings.  

“By the way, do you know how much we hate your horrid little dog?” interrupts Wally. “He’s awful.  NO ONE likes him.  He’s adorable and horrible. How come you only see the adorable?”

We can all hear him up in the house, shrill yaps edged with temper.

“No, I see the horrible, too.  I do,” I admit, giggling. “I just Don’t Care.  I love him with all my heart.”

“Well, he’s a pest! He demands to be served. He bosses you night and day with his little ‘dinner dance’ that starts any time after 3 in the afternoon and continues until you relent and feed him. He’s AWFUL.  What does he do but pester you and leave hair everywhere?”

“And fulfill my longing to be loveable and loved…” I add.  There is nothing anyone can say about this dog that is not simultaneously totally True and totally of no consequence whatsoever to my love of him. I am devoted to him with no conditions.

“Maybe you could love yourself that way,” says Blossom, the clear-eyed metaphor lying in my lap, smacking her lips for the last of the corn chips.

“Yeah!” pipes up Chip with a wink, “Think about how easy that would be! You don’t shed nearly as much as he does and you’ve never been known to lift your leg and piss on the furniture. If you can love him so unconditionally, surely you could love yourself, or prom girls rolled in Glitter just the same way!”

“Prom girls rolled in Glitter are just as hard on carpets as any Jack Russell,” snaps Prudence, “Worse, maybe.”

“More importantly,” says Prim, rolling her eyes at Chip, “If you felt the same way about that Thing that wants to live outside of you, then think how happy you would be.  Even if it came out totally awful and everybody hated it, you wouldn’t even care. It would still make you happy.  You would still feed it and pamper it.  You could keep it on a leash around certain people and apologize if it bit anyone by accident, but you would still want it to be Free. To be Here. To be the Thing you Love that once was your heart.”

What a wonderful, magical, Magnificently FOOL-ish thing to try.

So! The blood has dried on my fingers.  It’s time to get back to sewing and, of course, Mending! (And writing like my life depends on it, because it does.)

A squeeze and a ‘squunch’ for the first of the Month.  Rabbit, rabbit and all that. May April showers bring you flowers.  Blessings, Dear Ones, on your own Mending, your own dogs, demons, and dreams.  What part of your heart is calling from within, begging to be Completed, begging to be Born? Let’s feed them all together.

Your Fool,

Nancy

Feeding Love...

Greetings Dear Ones!

For more than a week now, I’ve been scrambling to get the barn clean, the house clean(ish), the various larders stacked for critters and sitters.  In the shop, I’ve been working frantically to get the racks cleared of all items needed by imminent deadlines. Others will have to wait. “I’m going away for a few days,” I explain to customers, “and when I get back, I’ll be right here, sewing, but I won’t really be completely functional for a few days more.”

I don’t tell them the whole truth, letting them assume I am going on some sort of eccentric “vacation.” Little do they suspect I am trembling creature with frayed wings who knows she is about to go through a crushing metamorphosis, utterly dissolving, never emerging as the quite the same being on the other side. I have no idea who I will be five days from now but I know she will be vastly Improved!  I’m heading off to PDB music camp in Groton, Massachusetts.  Scottish Music:  It’s colorless, odorless, tasteless, invisible—but it is the most powerful drug I know.  You can drink a large glass of water while 140 exhausted people play Adam Sutherland’s “Road to Errogie” in ascending keys all through the night and feel completely drunk for five days straight.

This is the week, each February since 2007(?), where I stop playing “Seamstress in a Shop” and get to play another favorite game: “Head Cook and spud-scrubber to an unruly tribe of fiddlers.”  Music and food go on round the clock. I indulge all my fantasies of Kitchen and Community.  As a dear friend says, I get to be “the pot” that holds all the ingredients together—the One who knows on which day we are supposed to eat the carrots and where we keep the band-aids.  Being The Pot is a job I take extremely seriously—with a large side helping of Panic.  I enter with lists longer than a roll of toilet paper and 450 pounds of potatoes, hoping that’s enough tatties to satisfy 140 people nine times.  (There are nine official meals, not counting midnight chili and second breakfasts.)  Then, pretty much NOTHING ever goes exactly as planned and I emerge five days later dazed, with burned arms, wondering what to do with three quarts of cooked oatmeal that wasn’t eaten. I’m also walking on air, radiantly exhausted, triumphant and in Love—madly in love with every person who helped in the kitchen or made life better for someone else simply by playing a snappy jig in E minor while we tried to figure out how to light the stove again.  And because I never do anything alone there—we have a team, a tribe, of the most amazing humans ever to chop, scour, slice, sauce, and sauté who come to play with me. I love them like a pot boiling over!

We abandon the standards recipes and every meal becomes a version of Stone Soup, with the villagers contributing ideas and spices.  One guy says we need to add garlic to the mac n’ cheese and guess, what? It’s incredible. Everything is better with garlic! (Except maybe fruit salad…) I’ll never forget the year we discovered the magic of smoked paprika, or the year we decided to have all the onions chopped on Friday—a tradition that continues.

This camp is one of my February love stories. The best love stories of all often start off as pure accidents. Some random impulse seems like a great idea at the time and twenty years later, you look back and realize the path forked there, in that moment, and life was never the same again.   It started off as a sleepover weekend in my former home for some advanced fiddle students and their teacher.  And well… so many years and mashed potatoes later, It’s a THING.  It’s a Love that outgrew that space, and then another space, and now it is in a Big Space, becoming a Big Thing. It turns out that Love grows pretty big when it’s fed.

I look back through the coils of Time and marvel at that tension that exists in every creative endeavor—between  envisioning clearly what it is we wish to create and allowing Magic to surprise us of its own accord.  This camp is mostly born of Magic, of Happy Happenings and Joy-scream Connections —and a big willingness to chop onions, “chop” tunes, and serve each other the craziest, rarest sort of Beauty.

One of the things I love best about this camp is that it has never been about increasing the financial prosperity of the organizers. Any “profit” is redistributed so that more than a third of the attendees have access to generous scholarships and subsidies.  I think the whole purpose of organizing as a society is so that we can make room for the Disorganized.  They are some of our BEST people!  The young, the passionate, the gifted, the talented—these are not often people with a lot of financial stability.  In the wider society, the financially stable often have contempt for those less well off.  Not here. Some members need help with dorm fees and food costs and get it because their community Values them and their contributions to the music, the scene, the “vibe.” It would not be the same without their energy, their ability, and their forward trajectories that ensure the survival of this culture decades from now, after most of the financially viable have gone to take a nap in the dirt.

And so, I get a LOT of kitchen help! All the scholarship folks work—washing dishes, prepping food, cleaning messes, and deciding how much corn goes into corn chowder.  “Should we roast it first? Let’s try it.”  Every year I witness a new round of Initiation and Transition.  It’s a blessing to welcome the Fresh Eyes and “discovery” of people coming to the camp for the first time and to see those who have been immersed in this Love for years bobbing to the surface and emerging as new leaders and tradition bearers.  I celebrate it all. 

When I say I “love” something or someone, what I notice in my body is a vast sensation of Gratitude, like I just got fed warm, creamy of mushroom soup that took ten people to make from scratch. I am Full and grateful to be here.  Grateful for the music.  Grateful you showed up too, to be part of the sharing. Kitchens are the heart of any home.  In the PDB kitchen, some feet are running to get the potatoes we forgot to serve (how could we forget them? They are everywhere!), some are tapping to the melody they are playing, some are dancing, some are running in circles trying to remember where the smoked Paprika got put … These feet, these moving feet, they are the heartbeat –pumping mashed potatoes, music and magic out to the wider world, one ripple at a time.  The work is harder than haying season on a farm but I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I feel so humbly privileged to be an Eldress in this tribe.  They don’t always see me at my best but I can show up as I am and feel accepted.  I wish everyone had a place like that!  

I notice how I have grown, as a result of feeding this Love. When I examine my motives for giving up my personal time and energy, the anatomy of Awakening goes something like this:

Unconscious me: “Hmm… This [hard job] just needs to be done. Who’s going to do it? What? Me?? Oh God… Why the hell would they put a nut like me in charge?”

Ego me: “I can achieve Great Things here! Watch this! I will do a great job so that everyone knows I have done a great job and they can talk about me and tell me and others what a great job I have done.  Whahoo! Me! Me! Pick ME! Psst…Let’s not mention the raw eggs, the burned lasagna, or the soup I managed to set fire to, ok? Let’s pretend everything is Perfect.”

Evolving me: “Where have I felt fully Alive and Connected today? What can I offer in service to the Music, the Muse, the People & Purpose here?  I don’t care what it takes or what I look like in the end… We all have our jobs to do. We can’t all master reels in the key of F.  Someone needs to make a decent vegan tomato bisque as well. There is room for everyone.  That’s what community is about.”

In creeps the notion of Ubuntu, the Nguni Bantu word that loosely translates as “I am because we are.”   Desmond Tutu describes it as a state in which one’s “humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in others… I am human because I belong, I participate, I share.”  That a Scottish fiddle camp evokes these South African values, the deeply Golden principles of goodness—of hospitality, compassion, generosity, and friendliness just goes to show that people united in Love and Purpose don’t need labels, creeds, borders or definitions.  They just need to Live, if only for a weekend, in shared Respect for All that Is, while Co-creating. 

One of the biggest things I’ve noticed about Love is how it changes us. It asks of us Life’s most interesting questions:  Who or what are we devoted to? How are we willing to suspend our personal comforts and trade them for the richness of our Spirits? What are we expecting from the sacrifices we make? Who are we willing to become?  Are we willing to let a love grow so big that it is Unmanageable, requiring larger Vision, more Inclusion, outgrowing us so that we can surrender to a mystery bigger, finer, and more powerful than anything we could ever imagine?

One thing I know for sure, Dear Ones… Love is something you Feed.

 With sew much love (and potatoes),

Yours aye,

Nancy

Cow Eyes

“I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought, I’d rather dance with the cows until you come home.” –Groucho Marx

Greetings Dear Ones,

In keeping with my February “Love Stories” theme, I thought I would share with you two of the biggest (and ever getting bigger) loves of my life.

Get up early and come with me to the barn… Gus and Otie are out, no matter what the weather, waiting at the corner of the paddock fence, gazing intently at the house, waiting for us to appear.  With frost on their whiskers, snow on their eyelashes, or drizzling moonlight or rain on their necks, they wait.  With stoic indifference, knees locked, they stand, unshivering.  Their horns have a pearly shine in the starlight; their heads are wreathed in steam from their nostrils; their night eyes like liquid glitter.  Suddenly, their bodies tense, necks rise. Their gaze intensifies.  Dark longing pours like smoke from their black eyes and coils its tendrils around us, pulling us closer.  No one can make “cow eyes” at a potential lover like a Jersey steer awaiting his breakfast.  It’s us! We are on the way. Huge, Hungry Rejoicing radiates around them, unlocking them, breaking them into movement. The wait is over!

Pause…

Doesn’t it feel good to be greeted with so much wordless glee? Their Gladness permeates the thickest Carhartt jacket.  When in your life does the very sight of you and all you represent attract so much attention, so much undiluted adoration?   

In a festival of happy urgency and clumsiness, they hop, clomp and plod their way around the back of the barn so that when you and I enter, they are already hanging over their half door, waiting to greet us, as if they had been there all along.  Otie has to eat first, because he is a bit of a bully.  He’s like that exuberant kid you meet at the beach who wants to play with you but can’t help stepping all over your sand castle and getting sand in your hair.   Let’s put his feed tub on the ground and pour the meal into it and while he is taking his first gulps, put two strong things around his neck—the first is your arms. Big hug.  Inhale.  Doesn’t he smell lovely?  His fur is so soft against your cheek.  I usually kiss him too, but you don’t have to if you are feeling shy.  The second is a big black collar made of reinforced two inch nylon webbing.  He needs to be tied up while he eats or he will steal all of Gus’s food and humble Gus with stand by and let him. Silly Gus. He’s a lover, not a fighter.

Next we feed Gus.  He knows that as soon as Otie is collared, it’s safe for him to venture in to his side of the stall to receive his rations.  Meekly, he saunters in and smiles at his empty tub.  Tell him to back up and he will.   He takes two steps back and waits while you throw his food into the tub, then rushes to begin lapping it up. He gets a tiny bit more food because he is skinnier and not as greedy as Otie.  He does not need to be tied up to eat, since he never steals.  He stays on his own side, working his own pile of hay with his jaws after finishing his grain.  He pulls vast mouthfuls in with his tongue and grinds it happily.  The swallows look like tennis balls gliding up and down the interior of his neck.  Now it’s safe for you to go into the pen and hug them both.  Gus will ignore you, mostly, though he will give evidence of his pleasure if you scratch just the right spots.  He loves to have his chest, underbelly and bum scratched—all the places he cannot reach himself. He shows his delight by arching, expanding, leaning in, or delicately extending his tail.

Otie is desperate for attention.  He will pause from eating and glare over to see what Gus is getting that he is not. He keeps track in order to make sure you give him equal measure.  Scratch him along his spine and he will turn and wrap his muscled neck around you like a hug.  Find a “spot” he likes and he will lick you steadily, in a mutual grooming act.  He will even hold out a hind leg so that you can reach his under belly more easily.  His tongue sounds and feels like 60 grit sandpaper.   If we leave too soon, he will stop eating and hang over the door and make a forlorn sound.  It’s a short, gutteral “Mmm..” —he doesn’t put the “ooo” in the “Moo”—just to register his concern. He knows how much love he should get with his breakfast and he does not like to be cut short.

As we get the wheel barrow, he will rush anxiously to the limits of his tether to make sure that we are not going too far.   He is relieved when we return with the wheelbarrow and pitchfork.  It’s time to muck the pen, while they are otherwise distracted with their food.  He turns back to his hay with renewed attention. We can move all around them, fluffing the clean bedding and removing the frozen cow pies that clatter like blocks of wood as they land in the wheelbarrow.   When the stall is clean and their water is fresh and full, it’s time to dump the manure out by the apple tree and put everything away.  I like a tidy barn.  Everything has a place.  The baling twine goes over that hook on the side of the ladder to the loft, the forks hang on the pegs by the water pump.  Next, we rake up the aisle and clear away any loose hay.  Otie observes the proceedings with satisfaction.  He likes to know what is going on.  Predictable routine soothes all animals.

Are you having fun yet?  This is what it is like to have two two-year-old steers in winter.  They cannot understand why we do not take them out and work them.  They love to work.  But the ice on the driveway is treacherous.  Their cloven feet cannot manage it.   We will have to wait for Spring, for mud, to drag the tires around. Please, come back then! 

Then, you can lead one and I will lead the other.  I’ll take Otie, since he is a bit “pushy” and apt to drag you off towards the nearest green grass. Gus is the Opposite of pushy. Gus quits at the first sign of trouble.  He will just lock his legs and nothing will move him.  When he was a baby, he used to throw himself on the ground in a “Jersey Flop” when he did not want to do something.  It was his version of a very limp tantrum.   Gus, whom I sometimes call “Gussie Finknottle,” after a P.G. Wodehouse character, is of elegant breeding.  He comes from a fancy farm, known for its show animals, in middle VT.  His fur is finer than Otie’s, and his front legs splay out in what a Highland dancer would call proper “turn-out,” though it is not desired conformation in a bovine, as his toes wear unevenly.  It’s a good thing he will never really have to work for a living.  He’s tall and Delicate, with dainty, high society bone structure, and a proclivity to diarrhea.   By contrast, Otie is more working class. He hails from a local dairy.  He’s stocky, strong, stout.  His bowels churn out cannon balls. Everything about him is rugged.  They are both intelligent—Gus in a dreamy, absent minded way, Otie in a very focused, determined sort of way.  I’m pretty sure that Otie could figure out a Rubix Cube if he had a way of manipulating it properly with his hooves.  

In the Spring, they might have outgrown their yoke and need a new one.  Working Cattle go through as many as seven or eight different sizes before they finish growing.  We’ll see… I can’t wait for the warm mornings to come again when we can yoke them at sunrise and get in a workout before the rest of the day takes off and I have to report to the tailoring shop to yoke myself to the sewing machine and wrestle gowns and trousers uphill until supper time.  

You and I, we’ll tie each lad to the hitching post, their noses the same width apart as when they are in the yoke, and give them a good grooming before we hitch them up. Grab a stiff brush and go for it! They love this part the most. Rub the fur vigorously in all directions then smooth it down with softer strokes, following the growth lines.  They love being pampered.  Just look at those silly expressions of pure bliss on their faces when we clean their ears out with recycled baby wipes, cocking their heads first to one side then the other to lean into the pleasure.  (I’m sure my boys have the cleanest ears in all the land!)  Then they stand with patient interest as we carefully sand the rough spots of their horns and coat them in a homemade mixture of Vaseline, beeswax, and citronella to keep the horn flies away.  Horn flies will bite off flakes of the horns and weaken and disfigure them.  We go through one primping routine after another. Like teenagers, they cannot get enough.  Let’s groom them until they relax enough to burp up a wad of cud and chew it. 

We never load the yoke on their necks when they are anything but willing and relaxed.  I want every interaction with us humans to involve Repose or Relief.  So far, the only trauma these two have ever faced is the day they found out the electric fence means business. (And they taught that to themselves in a matter of two zaps each.)  There is enough pain in this world already—the universal pain that we are each working at lifting up—to think of ever causing more.

Now for the best part of any day, ever… There is a soft animal in each of us, hidden in the core of our innermost self.  This animal has not always been treated kindly and longs to be at peace in its herd.  I invite you to place your animal body between these two giants and feel them press into you from both sides until you are sandwiched tightly between warmth, muscle and fur.  Isn’t that Comforting?? Feel all of you Breathe.  You are safe. You Belong. Can you feel the sun, tracing your face with honeyed fingers?  Can you feel the pulse of their gentle cudding vibrate from their slowly moving jaws all the way through each heartbeat, each breath, each sinew transmitting micro-movements? And beneath that, can you feel yourself enfolded in a greater soft Stillness?  There is nowhere to go.  There is nothing to do.  Just BE in this moment , in this “hug” they are giving you, as one of “them.” Be here in the center of your untouched Beauty.   Just stand there in the Light, pressed between two steers and feel the Love.  Remember Love?

We are each guided into our depths by our inner Longings.  Beneath the flurries, flies and Noise of Life, lies this unaffected Presence of the Infinite and universal heartbeat.   Even when we feel gutted by the toil of our burdens, the filthiness of our chores, we are not just Held, but Lifted.  Love shows is the truth underneath it all.

In some places, cows are considered sacred and worshipped. In Hinduism, the cow is venerated as a sacred being, believed to represent divine and natural beneficence.  I totally understand.

In Vermont, young bullocks are merely a byproduct of the dairy industry.  In order for a cow to give milk, she must have a calf every year.  It costs the farmers an average of $25 per calf to have them loaded on trucks and hauled away to feed lots where they will be fed until slaughter.  Most are only given moments with their mothers. Some receive her first milk, the vital colostrum that bolsters their survival rate, and that’s it.  When I called around to find out where I could get two calves to raise as working steers, I was told to show up and put one in the back of my car and take it home for free.  I’d SAVED that farmer money.

Standing in the sun, dozing at the hitching post, being spoiled like moo-vie stars, these boys have no idea that they should not be here, that only a quirk of chance, of Fate, of curiosity, impulse, and Luck grants them this precious life and an adoring Servant providing them all the hay they can munch at her own expense. 

Is the Miracle any different for the rest of us?

I have learned as much about Loving from these two beloved steers as I ever have in any relationship. Life comes with a tremendous amount of work, misunderstanding, hardship, and betrayal of our spirits. Some days I am definitely Moo-dy;  I like cows and maybe, three other people at most… I don’t handle people as well as I do animals and the human I have the most contact with is my own dear self, who can be a total Jersey Flop at times. Standing between these dozing, chewing bulls pulls me back to Love—to my infinite connection with everything, and everyone, especially the small, soft, gentle animal in me.  Though we are strangers to one another, we are kindred spirits. There is no difference in our hearts.  We are all present in the name of being Alive.  In the quiet peace of the grassy orchard, we come together to dwell in the Divine Gift of Being, learning to heal what was accidentally scarred or broken.  We come to Give, to Learn, to Receive, to know all the itchy spots of our Beloved…

…and to Mend.

With Love as Big as A Cow,

Yours aye,

Moo

Winterberries

Happy February Dear Ones!

It’s about 12 F degrees as I make my way to the barn this morning.  The air on my cheek feels like a 60 grit sandpaper kiss from one of the steers.  It’s a silent, black and blue and white world, save for three pops of red: the barn itself, my nose, and the winterberries, glistening beneath icicles on their branches.  The Winterberry bush, half way between house and barn, is large and ancient. The weight of a recent snow storm has torn off a limb, exposing the pith of the trunk where it ripped. Healing will come with the spring. For now, it trembles in the semi-darkness, offering hot bursts of color that cannot be frozen, dimmed, or shamed.

I feel like this bush—torn by weights that fall upon me (such as people who want their snow gear mended by Friday), half dying, half bursting with ideas and possibilities of a bright red new life just waiting to land upon soft, open ground.  But the ground is frozen and so am I. February, often called ‘the longest little month of the year,’ is that time of not yet living, not yet dying.  Hope is on Ice.

Yearly, I remind myself to be gentle. “Do not make any major decisions on February,” I say aloud, as on I plod, trudging the little circles of light between house and barn, barn and house, home and shop, shop and home.  It seems like it is forever time to wake up, only it’s also always time for bed.  

This is the time when Love Stories sustain us. I’m not talking about those old fashioned versions of “Boy meets Girl; Girl gets chocolate.”  (“Which inevitably lead to ‘Boy disappears and Girl is left sobbing and eating an entire trifle with her bare hands,” says Prudence tartly.)  I’m talking about getting in touch with that Enormous Source within and around us that helps us build and tread the bridges between worlds—between the interior self and outer self, the self and others, others and our community, our communities and the nation, with as much Grace as possible.  I’m on a Kindness safari.

“Know any good Love Stories?” I ask the sheep.

“EVERY story is a love story,” says Blossom.

“I am trying to make my life a Love Story,” I confess, “only I am not doing the best job of it. I have a few crust-omers I don’t feel particularly loving towards.

“Are people in your shop asking you to love them? I thought they were just asking you to fix their pants,” says Prim.

“If every customer is a story, then every one is looking for love,” says Angel Wally.

“Of course they are asking for Love. Humans are asking for EVERYTHING,” says Willoughby, with a touch of eye-rolling.

“Well, why can’t you just Love them?” asks Prim. “Loving is easy.”

“Because…” I sigh heavily, “Some people need a tremendous amount—such as [that pest] from [that state] who keeps texting me at all hours (except during business hours) to see if her shirt is ready already.  Some are easy to love—such as [that adorable person] who speaks softly and is in no rush, who needs a seat on the bench in the hall and a peppermint before he can make it back to his car.”

“I LOVE peppermints!” says Prim. “Let’s all have some right now.   Let’s taste some of that love.”

I confess I have no peppermints, point them towards the Christmas tree they have not yet finished and go on.

“Some people create a deficit in me immediately that makes me mutter to myself and savagely stab my fingers with needles, accidentally, as I sew and have silent dress rehearsals with them in my head about what they can do with their dirty mending, if they really want to know…  It bothers me that I know I give better service to crabby people and more affection to kind people. The kind people get more kindness from me, but slow service because I know they can tolerate a wait without hating me, and the demanding ones get swift service so that I can get rid of them quickly.  This strikes me as wimpy and unsatisfying on so many levels. It’s leading me to live an Inauthentic Life, against which I rebel.

“Being Nice to Nice people and Mean to Mean people is really the way it should be,” announces Blossom. “What’s your problem?”

“It’s not as easy as that,” I say. “There are too many layers. Inside I am nice to the Nice, but outwardly, they are not getting the fastest work. They are paying too high a price for my affection. And the mean people are not getting any nicer—they just get moe spoiled by having everything just how they want it as soon as they want it. I think the Nice people should have that…”

Waterlily stares at me, asbsently munching for a while.

“What makes wanting what you want when you want it ‘mean’”she wants to know. “We ALL want what we want when we want it. We ALL bash each other like mad when you put the feed in the bucket. Is that Mean?”

I laugh. It helps me to think of them as greedy farm animals just trying to get into the feed room so they can eat all the grain.  It’s just their nature to want free buttons for their thrift-store finds, and to expect me to sew them on while they wait, and then charge $2 to a credit card because they have no cash.  These people aren’t unkind or mean, they are just pushy, abrupt, abrasive, utterly lacking in charm, like two young bulls who know it’s supper time.

“It sounds like you are hungry,” says Angel Wally. “But also Fed Up. Get rid of the thing you are carrying so that you can fill up on something more nourishing. If the love you are giving does not serve you, you will not last long as a seamstress serving the public. You will burn out too fast.”

“Aren’t you the one who says the people most in need of love are the ones behaving in the most unloveable ways?” asks Prim.

They are right. What do I need to let go of so that I can enjoy something Else? We all sit in silence, cudding for a while.

“I think the thing I need to get rid of is the sense of insult that is implied when people pester me—as if I don’t want to or am unable to take care of them the way they want unless they worry at me. It makes me sense their lack of trust in me. I want to feel trustworthy. Nice people make me feel valued, trusted. I like that…” I say slowly, feeling the sting come out along with my words.

“You need to eat up a whole lot of Beauty,” says Angel Wally. “Feast your eyes, your ears, your thoughts, on the things that make you Happy, not sad. Work hard and fast for everybody. Do things in order. Don’t play favorites. Your true Heart’s Desire sprouts from a sense of yourself that is sturdy enough to have preferences independent of external factors.”

He’s given me a lot to chew, as I pass the Winterberries again...

So!  The task I set for myself this month is to reconnect to my ability to Love: to be that tiny red berry in a temporarily frozen world.  (I want to give the “nice” customers good service too!)  My plan is to keep an eye out for Beauty, for opportunities to observe others loving each other, to stock the Love Larder, so that I have plenty to share.  When we feed our hearts with caring for Goodness, we reawaken ourselves to love and joy. When a man tells me he wants all the collars reversed on his threadbare shirts by Monday so that he can move to Montana on Tuesday, I will not scream silently “Are you KIDDING ME? How long have you known you were moving to Montana, you [person whose parents never married]???” I will be too full--of the glow of a moonlight on snow, of a person holding a door for a friend at the post office, of a friend’s music, of a mother getting her son’s boxer shorts hemmed so that her son won’t be ridiculed at ice-hockey—to do anything but burp out a little sunshine. I won’t have to suppress the urge to say naughty words, or listen to Prudence’s cutting remarks.

I want to fight the amnesia of Spirit that can overtake me on bleak, midwinter days. Along with mending your pants, I am also mending my Soul. Righteousness and victimhood tell us a petulant Something about our “worth” but they do not lead us to the true, rich peace that comes from recognizing we are already truly “enough.”  They do not soften us or teach us to receive the bounty of this amazing Life.  

I want to remember that Life is an ever-changing current, a river sweeping us past a Beauty Buffet on the shores.  I am no more undamaged, or unlovable than my fellow button-hunters hunkering in our canoes.   I want to lean into Goodness—for purely selfish reasons—because everything seems to work better when I do.  Keeping others “happy” means I must also keep my own tank full.  

Those of us who are ever Mending, have not always had the best instruction on how to Receive, how to lean in towards Goodness, in our lives, in those around us, in our world.  It’s there. We learn to receive by Noticing—the light in the sky, a tulip in the grocery store, a man taking his wife’s arm, a person sharing a look or smile, the heart beneath our ribs, the silent breath that lifts and expands our chest.  

There is a dance to dance between the Light and Sorrow. There is a difference between merely living and being Alive. Loving isn’t as much about Changing as it is about Choosing.

It is your own life that you must come to Love.  

Keep up the Good Work, me Darlings! I love you SEW much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Getting Something Done

“You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate.” (source unknown)

Greetings Dear Ones!

How are you doing with that Baby New Year of yours?  Is it smiling, giggling, burping and cooing like an angel or is it just one exploding nappy full of poop after another? Has it hit the tantrums, teething, we-need-endless-amounts-of-whisky-on-the-gums (your gums, not theirs) stage?  Are you ready, as I was following the births of both of my human children, to take this baby back to that very nice midwife who handed it to you and say “Could you please take this for a few weeks and credit my account?  I’ll be back for it, I promise.  It’s just that I don’t have the foggiest idea what I am doing right now; I can’t handle it and I am in desperate need of a big fat nap!”  If history is anything to go by, you will be forced to take that baby home with you and simply muddle through until you both reach that blessed middle ground where neither of you needs to wear diapers and the fruit of your loins is occasionally gracious enough to teach you how to use those mystery functions on your cell phone.  (Usually by age 3…)

Well, my Baby New Year is off to a GREAT start.  I’m getting positively LOADS done. I’ve done a bunch of laundry, reorganized the fridge (i.e. eaten all the leftovers), learned some new tunes on the harp, done three minutes of AB workouts, thoroughly cleaned the wood stove and spread the ashes on the garden, de-Christmas-ed one room of the house (simply by piling the decorations in another room), and started to de-clutter the cellar. I’ve planned out where the spring lambing pens will be built and decided which flowers would look best in that awkward spot behind the house. (Sunflowers!) I’ve ironed all the napkins and cleaned up at least one bug cemetery/spider crime scene from the bathroom windowsill. I’ve “liked” several hundred things on social media venues and hyper-focused for several hours on removing that weird gunk that gets stuck between the shower door and the tile.  I’ve even spent an entire afternoon attempting to build a bull-proof wooden platform for the water tub in Gus & Otie’s pen, depriving them of the joy of flooding their stall and wasting their bedding on a daily basis.

Yep, life is getting nothin’ but warmer, cleaner, drier, Better around here!

Want to know the secret to my phenomenal productivity? I’ll tell you. (I’m that kind of gal…) The way to get a lot done is:  You Are Supposed To Be Doing Something Else.

Set yourself a Noble Ambition—something that will actually make the world a better place, such as writing a best-selling novel (the proceeds of which will be donated to helping the homeless), curing Cancer (or running a marathon that funds such research), promoting Peace in the Middle East (or anywhere at all), or removing every last sheep turd from your vehicle… then spend four hours knitting a sock instead.

It’s amazing what you can get done when you are supposed to be doing something else. 

Got ten pairs of pants in ten different colors, textures, and fabrics to hem by tomorrow morning?  Need to get the shoulders up two inches on a Mother-of-the-bride gown that is totally encrusted with beads? Wouldn’t  NOW the perfect time to get out the tiny Hoover attachments and dust behind the thread rack and oil all the machines?   This is the secret of how I “work” myself into a frazzle and still have nothing done by the end of the day.  Honestly, if I get any less done, I’m soon going to require a proper vacation!

I did so much “nothing” yesterday that I can barely walk upright today.  I found out that I could balance a piece of plywood on a ball and download an app on my phone that enabled me to simulate “hang gliding” over a jungle.  I had to use my core muscles to swerve to avoid hitting trees and birds and other objects.  I spent three minutes terrorizing what the Germans call der Kummerspeck—literally, my “sorrow bacon”:  that excess pudge we get around our tummies from comfort eating. All while NOT putting a new zipper in an anorak for a man who wants to go skiing some time before 2035.  

As I try to get myself organized for the New Year, New Me keeps discovering that the Old Me is up to her old tricks.  (I simply had no idea how many cobwebs I had in my home until I realized it was Wednesday again and I needed to write a Blog.) Whatever “Crastinating” is, I seem to be extremely PRO.  “Rast-in-ate” sounds a bit like my friend from Belfast telling me to “Rest and Eat.”  These are always Good Ideas.  But when you have done enough of these, there are plenty of other excuses NOT to climb up that hill in front of you just so you can shine your light for all to see…

“WHY do you do this to yourself??” Shrieks Prudence. “I thought this was going to be the year you finally got your shit together, and not leave it all over the back seat of the car.”

 Unfortunately, Old Me is flaking out on all of New Me’s Good Intentions. 

Naturally, We are handling this like a compassionate Adult—approaching with Curiosity, not Judgment. We slipped Prudence some laudanum, clobbered her over the head with her Bible, and gagged her with her own pantyhose.  And…After extensive Kindly Mindful Adult Introspection, it turns out that there’s a jolly good reason I am not doing What I am Supposed To Be Doing:

 It’s Hard.

What I Am Supposed To Be Doing is really HARD.

 It’s unbelievably stressful to run a business, decide how much to charge (what is your precious time worth?), do Good Work, show up on time, get things done efficiently, pay all the bills, remember appointments and deadlines, and eloquently and authentically express yourself artistically, spiritually, and emotionally with Love and yarn and Kindness for All.  It’s especially hard to rock these woolen, hermit granny fashions when der Kummerspeck leaves me only two options—breathe normally or get the zipper up.

 I don’t know about you, Dear Ones, but when I find myself getting in my own way, over-doing the under-doing, Old Nancy has a variety of Go-to options. Carefully and compassionately, let us examine each one:

 The number one favorite, of course, is to blame someone else.  This must be “Someone’s” fault. Someone is that character always lurking in the shadows at the Land of Lost Plots.  As in “Someone left the key turned and drained the battery…Someone spilled the [thing that got spilled]…Someone didn’t shut the [thing that should have been shut] and now all the [cows, chickens, corduroy clothes] are missing…Someone really should clean all the poop out of this car…” “Someone” is clearly leading a life of thoughtless, petty crime and I am the undisputed Victim.

The Second Option develops from number one, but expands into its own entity, given enough churning.  I start having random thoughts about ALL the people (everywhere) and all the things out to get me.  I have never seen their literature published anywhere (they are too clever) but I am convinced that there is an enormous and ubiquitous Society Dedicated to the Thwarting of Nancy Bell.  They have offices in every county, every city, every nation around the globe.  Alerts go out, the moment I leave home, signaling a carefully choreographed network of members to drive like imbeciles or establish endless phone trees when all you want to do is talk to a bloody Customer Service Representative. (An unbloodied one will do!)  Lights go red. Generators go out. Clocks lose time. The whole country seems to be run like Southwest Airlines.

The Next Option is to develop a series of Delusions.  For instance, I am pretty sure that if I just lie down and binge watch Season 5 of “The Crown,” I will suddenly, Miraculously, be filled with so much energy that I will leap to my feet and put a whole new lining in that jacket that has been hanging dejectedly on the “to do” rack since November. (“Actually,”chokes Prudence, muffled by the pantyhose, “October!”)  Somehow, I believe this Pause will be so effective and gather so much momentum within me, that I will explode with energy and the increased efficiency will more than compensate for the preliminary Slacking.  I’ll get ten things done in the time it took to do None.

One of the most dangerous Delusions is that procrastinating is really a form of Self-care.  I NEED to avoid doing What I Am Supposed To Be Doing because I am already doing “too much.” My inner victim wants you all to know that you have No Idea how hard I am always working. To get One thing done, I have probably had to do thirty—like simultaneously groom the dog, doodle on the grocery list, spend time trying to decide which of the daily photos of the darling bullocks is actually the cutest and therefore destined for Instagram, (They all are!) all while watching two guys called Joe and Larry do amazing Latin duets on harp and banjo on YouTube.

 Wise me knows that in order to make the changes I want to make, I need to do LESS, not more.  I need only to live One Day and do ONE Thing.  Just One. And it needs to be The Thing I Am Supposed to Do: That Really HARD thing I don’t want to start but which I know is the true work of my soul—found only in the union of the love of my heart and the work of my hands.  Deep down, I know that if I do not do this Hard Thing, something incalculable will be sacrificed.  I am here to do this thing.  I know it. If I don’t, no amount of filling Time will fill the Void.

What is your One Thing, Dear One? How can I help remind you that we love you dearly and we need Your Gift?

Me? I’m going to go hem some more pants.  That is, um… if the oven is really clean.

 Let’s keep mending!  I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Baby New Year

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

Greetings Dear Ones!

Most of you who put up Christmas trees probably have them down already and all your holiday decorations safely stowed away in neatly labeled boxes until next year.  Hopefully, you found some nearby sheep or goats with whom to share any live trees.  That is a wonderful mid-winter treat for them.  Around here, farmers advertise that they take tree donations to feed to their flocks.  Just make sure they are devoid of tinsel. (The trees that is, not the farmers.)

Here at the Land of Lost Plots, I’m in no rush. It’s still Christmas.  (Sometimes Yuletide decorations last straight through to March in Nancyland.  Only the Christmas cookies never linger…)

“But it IS still Christmas!” insists Prudence, who is a stickler for such things.  “There are TWELVE days of Christmas.  Christmas isn’t officially over until the feast of the Epiphany on January 6th.”

“The Epiphany…”says little Prim, the sharpest sheep in the flock, “Whose idea was that?”  She wants her tree now.

I’m still playing Christmas Carols on the harp—mostly because they are easy melodies and that’s pretty much all I can manage with two hands at this point.  I play them all year. My ears are so full of the lyrics, they have been leaking into my speech.  “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentle men,” I say to the oxen as I turn out the lights at the barn. “And don’t be TOO merry!!” I add, “I’m sick of cleaning poop out of that water tub.”  I turn and trudge up the hill to a house nestled in the sliver between glittering frost and glittering stars. 

The weather has been nutty.  A few weeks ago, we got about six to ten inches of white concrete poured over the property.  It fell as a very pretty “snush” (snow + slush) and then hardened.  Since then, we’ve had more snow, high winds, heavy rain, thunder, thaw and a flash freeze followed by rain and fog.  One day, the temperature fluctuated more than forty degrees in twenty four hours.  Winter is in menopause! I am grateful for the addition of cleats to my mucks, although yesterday they grabbed so hard, I walked right out of my boots.  I was carrying a bale of hay in front of me and being followed by nine sheep so I didn’t notice immediately. Funny how ice “burns” the feet.

Back inside the warm house, my harp playing is full of so many “typos” that visiting real musicians who overhear me can’t help saying “What was that chord you just played? That crunchy one…”

“I have no idea,” I say impatiently.  My chords range anywhere from pleasantly chewy to “crunchy” to the painful ear-stabbing equivalent of walking on ice with no boots.

“Seriously, Mum, it was so bad it’s actually amazing. Try to find it again.  Show me which strings you hit…” 

“Oh, shut up!” I say with cheerful aplomb.

My favorite, of course, is “Away in a Manger.” I think about mangers all year round.  I shop for them all the time on online venues for used farm equipment.  I made the ones I have out of old wooden pallets.  I keep wondering if my critters will waste less hay if I put it in a big outdoor manger with a small roof over it.  Or is it best to continue spreading hay on the ground in new locations every day? Such thoughts occupy my mind more than I would like to admit.  I look at hay as if it is shredded ten dollar bills, which it basically is.

Mangers, as we know, are ancient things.  The ones I have are pretty dirty and would make a lousy bed.  Basically, they are wooden plates that have never been washed, only licked clean.  I cannot imagine putting a newborn baby in one.   I decided to ask the sheep about this on Christmas Eve, when Tradition says all the animals can talk.

“Oh, that’s just another one of your stories,” they say, chattering like mad. “You know we can talk any time!  All you have to do is be ready to sit in a corner and listen. Humans are such relentless creators of Stories; you sometimes forget which ones are actually true.”

“Ain’t THAT the truth!” I say, plopping down on the nearest hay bale.                                    

“Any chance you have any spare cookies in your pockets?” asks Prim.

“No,” I admit, hastily brushing the crumbs off my cheeks.

“One of the reasons you don’t hear us animals talking much is because we are such good listeners.  We listen, like we talk, with our entire bodies,” says Wally. 

“We’re very quiet and when we know we are not actually being Heard, that can make us feel afraid. It means chances are good that we are being Misunderstood.  And that’s usually when Bad Things happen,” says Prim.

“What is Fear, anyway, but just a form of extreme listening?” says Blossom in the somewhat enlarged tones of the congenitally Bossy.  She has taken over as lead ewe since Willow’s demise last April.

It feels deeply Good and sacred to sit amongst the sheep, just Listening.  The shy ones relax.  I’m not there to trim their feet, or shear them, or give them worming medicine.  Alas, I’m not there to feed them treats either… I’m just there to BE.

 “Tell me about this manger business,” I say.  “What would you think if one night you found a baby in one?”

“Why would anyone put a baby in a manger?” asks Prim. “Why not a Christmas tree?”

“Well, that’s not really how The Story goes,” I say. “In fact, I’m not even sure what the heck a Christmas tree has to do with babies or mangers at all.”

“Except that they are delicious,” says Willoughby, smacking his lips.

“Are babies something good to eat?” asks Otie, one of the yearling steers, leaning over his gate to eavesdrop.

The sheep ignore him. Cattle are not on their rather short list of priorities.

“Hey, Otie,” I say.  “I’ve always meant to ask you.  Would you say you ‘moo’ or ‘low’?  In some of the carols it says ‘the cattle are lowing.’  They never say ‘the cattle are moo-ing…’ Which is it?”

“I definitely go Low,” says Otie swelling his chest and trying to look extra macho. “Gus, on the other hand, er…hoof, Gus goes High.  His are squeaky moos.”

“You know how it is--when they go Low… we go Bah!” says Chip interrupting with disdain. “The Humbug is implied.”

“You aren’t the only ones saying Bah-Humbug,” I say. “One of my tailoring customers came in grumbling that his wife had lost her mind. He said ‘”we have chopped down a living tree and put it in the house. Now she wants to put a FAKE tree out on the deck!  So we have a fake tree outside and a real tree inside.  I’m tellin’ you. She’s NUTS!”’

“It sounds like he was not into the holiday spirit,” observes Molly.

“No,” says Prim, “but at least they can eat that yummy tree in the house.”

“Don’t be silly,” says Wally, “Humans don’t eat trees! They just eat cookies.”  

I gaze around my humble living crèche—this manger scene I visit daily.   I know the angels are here.  I can hear them in the wind, I can see them coated in snow or wool or fur.  We have a shepherd (er, shepherdess) (ME).  We have a drummer person (also me). We have at least three bearded wise guys playing fiddle up in the house.  The scene looks a lot like a Euro-centric Christmas card, especially when I wear my bathrobe to the barn. 

We’re just missing a baby.

“Hey, isn’t the New Year supposed to be a baby?” asks Prim.  “Isn’t it usually portrayed as some naked thing in a diaper with a top hat on?”

“Hats? Are hats something we can eat?” wonders Otie.

“Yes,” I admit slowly, not to hats being fodder, but to New Years being babies.

“Funny that a New Year arrives like a tiny baby,” says Blossom, “and yet everyone acts like it’s a full-grown soccer coach, here to prep them for the World Cup. They all jump off the couch, renounce booze, and rush to the gym and do push-ups until they are ready to toss all their Christmas cookies.  They make all sorts of reasons to punish themselves. Babies are sweet and soft and vulnerable. They don’t make you do plank drills!”

“They do, when that “baby” is twenty-two and you still haven’t lost your post-partum flab,” I say dryly.

“Besides, we NEED punishments,” interjects Prudence testily. “These are my two favorite seasons—New Year’s and Lent. I say, unleash the grievances!  Let the atonement Begin!”

“That sounds awful,” say the sheep.

“When we have babies, we just lie down and let them climb on our backs to help them stay warm.  We sniff them until we know them in the dark.  We nuzzle, nourish, and nurture them.  We protect them from bad things and bawl loudly if anything happens to them.  We don’t try to improve ourselves; we try to improve them.”

“Maybe that’s what I should do with my own baby New Year,” I say thoughtfully. “Maybe I will just hold it, carefully in my heart and see what it wants to be.  Maybe I’ll just follow the joys and try to witness the development of things in their natural course.

“Rubbish!” says Prudence, beginning to panic. “You need to write a book, expand your business, pay off your debts, clean up the mess in your car, and you definitely need to do some sit-ups!”

“What if you just followed the seasons the way one follows a toddler, instead of rushing ahead with an impossible agenda that will just leave you weeping and searching for more cookies?” says Wally kindly.

“How many seasons are there to follow?” asks Prim.

“Hundreds:  There’s the upcoming  tax season, and ant season, and mouse season.  These are the Nibbling Seasons that nibble away things we have stored.  Then there are the planting seasons, the weeding out seasons, the harvesting seasons.  There’s prom season, bikini season, back-to-school season.  Some seasons aren’t even seasons; for example, it’s open season for zippers all year long.” I explain. “There are ever so many seasons on a farm, in a life, or a tailoring shop.”

“What season is it now?” wonders Gus.

“It’s Baby New Year season,” announces Prim.  “Time for tenderness and Baby steps. It’s the Holding Time—hold on to your Dreams, your faith, your courage.  Have Gentle snuggles with your feelings and fears. Hold the seed catalogue but do not plant anything.  Just wait. Rest.  Enjoy long night naps.  They will be getting shorter day by day.”

Her words soothe me.  She’s right.

As the little New Year gets under way, I’m trying to be a better listener.  I can hear the animals.  Usually, I can hear the stories clothes tell too.  Though, I admit, I got confused yesterday when I was confronted with a blue shirt smeared with some sort of white paste.  “What happened here?” I asked the gentleman who was wearing it beneath a sports jacket he wanted altered.

“This?” he asked, pointing to his stomach. “Oh, I made homemade ravioli for my ex-wife on Christmas Eve.”

“That was TEN days ago,” Prudence reminds me with a roll of her eyes.

We do our best not to judge him.

“I want to have more compassion,” I tell her after he leaves. “I want to hold a bigger Grace Space for the people who confuse or frustrate me.  I want to love more, judge less.  I especially want to gossip less.”

“But how will we know whom and what to forgive, if we don’t know all the details of their crimes?” asks Prudence, with no innocence what-so-ever.  

“We’ll manage,” I promise.

The past two years have been tougher than I ever could have imagined.  We now know how strong we are, what we can endure.  Let’s see how soft we can be, how merciful and tender, how curious and open.  Let’s embrace our powerful, Fool-ish Innocence and take baby steps in New directions and follow after Joy.

Let’s see how we can keep each other Mending.  Thank you for your Good Work, Dear Ones! May 2023 bring you heaps and heaps of every Good Thing!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Ragged

Greetings Dear Ones,

Well, here it is, right in the middle of the holiday rush and I decided I would just Quit Everything for a while.  No hustling for presents.  No tree trimming.  No parties.  I have not been sewing, spinning, knitting, baking, reading, writing, or playing music of any kind.  On a good day, I may lie around watching old sit-coms from the 80’s (that I never got to see then because I wasn’t allowed to watch TV; I had to “play outside.”)   The phone is ringing off the hook and I just lie here by the crackling stove, sipping tea and watching people with rather unfortunate hair and clothing choices make a slap-stick muddle of their lives for 45 minutes at a time, before everything gets resolved with a few one-liners and that sparkling good will of another era.

My shop is clogged with work and I am getting testy emails from people “just checking” in to see if they should come in and pick up yet.

They shouldn’t.

I haven’t done their work today and I doubt I’ll get to it tomorrow.  I’d rather lie here. My body has some major decisions to make about whether we are ever going to wear jeans and walk vertically again.  

Naturally, my inner Capitalist is going out of her freakin’ mind. “Everyone says Covid is now just a mild flu.  You’re over-dramatizing this. What kind of Slacker are you? You’ve GOT to power through!” she shrieks.  “You probably aren’t contagious. Get up and plug in the iron. Fix something…Make something. DO something!” She is running in circles, shaking fistfuls of bills at me. I ignore her.

“You manage to power through for the animals,” she says accusingly.

“Yes, but I MUST.  And I always will. That’s what having animals means.  They always come first.”

“Why not people?”

“People are not going to die if they don’t get some pants hemmed.”

“You’re not going to die either!” she storms.

“Yes, but after five days of aches, chills, and fever it sure feels like it…” I mumble, turning over to cough until I see stars. 

Doing chores with a fever is not the most pleasant thing to do but at least the weather is still mild and I don’t have buckets of ice to haul and smash.  Twice a day, I feed the animals and go back to bed with a little dog who is only too delighted to keep me company in the over-heated covers.  I drag half a bale of hay out to the sheep in the field and sit on an old tree stump to catch my breath.

“You’re sick, aren’t you?” asks little Miss Prim.

“Yes,” I say. “I haven’t been this sick in many years.”

“Well, you need to hide that.  We sheep never look sick until we are just about to die.  It keeps the predators at bay. You need to pretend you are fine.”

“You sound like some of my customers.”

“This is a world pretty short on Mercy,” says another sheep. “Limping just makes you a target. Keep your suffering out of sight.”

“That seems to be what a lot of people do,” I admit.  “How many of us are actually walking around with invisible Handle with Care labels on them? So many of us are suffering like sheep afraid of getting bitten.”

“It’s a Thing,” says Wally, chewing. 

Walking back to the house makes me dizzy because there is a ringing in my ears.  Out of curiosity, I match the pitch I hear as best I can and hum it into the guitar tuner app on my phone.  My head is ringing at a faint D#.

“I hope you feel better soon,” says Everyone.  Some of these people say so with their own selfish agendas at heart; others genuinely wish me well.  Honestly, I am in no hurry.  It’s been five years since I have taken any kind of break.  I’ve earned this and no one is going to deprive me of it.  If I can’t get out of it, I’m going to get into it. Defiantly, rebelliously, I don’t give a hoot who sees me limp, or lie on the dog’s bed in front of the stove.  I am not a sheep.  I’m a crabby middle-aged woman who hasn’t slept through the night in over a week.  Frankly, that’s way more dangerous than any coyote! 

I listen to every sound in the house until all I can hear, beneath the D#, is Stillness.  I had not realized how hungry I was for this Silence, for this peace. In the Stillness… when I am Very Still…I find myself. Still.  It feels good to lie still. I don’t want to be Tough.  I don’t want to “power through.” I’m exhausted by the thought of being anyone’s pretend hero.  I just want to lie here and listen to something I am supposed to learn about Healing, about Resting, about Receiving the miracle of health I take for granted every day. Suddenly,  I am flooded with Gratitude.  I have unhooked from the relentless forward momentum of my normal life just to Be. This illness is actually a blessing.   

When the fever finally breaks and I can begin doing little things, I start my most important project:  embroidering a heart-shaped pillow for a customer.  He has asked me to make a plush toy for his child that can contain a much older plush toy inside of it.   It’s the child’s favorite toy but it is worn to shreds.  In Velveteen Rabbit terms, this thing has been loved so much it is Real to the point of disintegrating into wadded up thread crumbs stuck together with kid sweat and drool.  The idea is that the little toy will live inside the “heart” I build to put inside the much larger replica of this toy.  I have no pattern, so I am just winging it from pictures.  Love has damaged this little bunny so much he has no recognizable face.  

The little Velveteen bunny lies next to the fabric that will become its new home looking exactly how I feel.  I try to handle him as gently as possible.  Gradually, the heart and the larger new toy take shape.  The proportions are not exactly right because the hollow torso must accommodate this “heart” that is oversized and filled with ragged, damaged, but pure and true Love.  I leave the chest empty and stuff the arms, the legs, the feet, hands, head, ears… I sew on eyes and embroider a nose.  Then I pack the little bunny away into the heart and seal up the chest cavity with Velcro.  The new guy looks both hopeful and vaguely surprised—the hand-sewn mouth is a little crooked, as if this chap is a little shy but up for a good joke.  I hope he will be loved, both for who he is and what he contains. 

I have put a Good Face on something that is hiding something ragged within.  The sheep would be proud of me.  

I think about how hard this time of year can be on some of us Menders.  The Darkness is always a challenge—so is the unrelenting weight of fear and fatigue we are still coping with after two years of a global pandemic and economic and political upheaval.  We are all more tired than we think.  Most of us are carrying hearts full of ragged little loves we cannot bear to part with yet cannot survive our continued grasping.  We tell ourselves we cannot rest, we cannot wait, we must carry on.  But these hearts can be so heavy… And we can only build our newer, bigger, stronger, more hopeful selves if we take it gently, one stitch at a time.  Time is all we have and all we need.  It is the only Healer. 

I feel so blessed that I got to lie still and be authentically Ragged for a week. I had the luxury of being able to make space for myself.  Prudence and the inner Capitalist realized, for once, that continuing to whip me was futile.  I had the luxury of not giving a damn.

I’m hugely grateful to my sweet customers who mostly understood and were content to wait graciously.  All in all, it was a splendid isolation.  A perfect Advent of silent Waiting in the dark.  

Dear ones, I hope you don’t need a virus to allow you to realize the beauty of resting when you are tired or praying when you feel hopeless.  Your work is important, yes, but even more important is that Spirit that informs all you do.  If your spirits are at low ebb, please remember how very much you are needed, wanted, and loved.  Those who love you can build a safe place for you in our hearts where you do not have to pretend to be invincible.  Rest your little ragged self with care and patience.  Let old resentments and rush jobs pass you by in the holiday hurry-up.  Who cares how many days it is until the presents are due? Embrace Presence.  Giving yourself the gift of Time will do magic and mending you cannot imagine.  

For if you can love and make space for all that is ragged in yourself and others, is that not the greatest gift of all?   

Wishing you every blessing of Health & Peace,

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S. I am actually On the Mend and feeling better!

Second Helpings

Greetings Dear Ones!

Forgive me; a thousand little “dust-ractions” (like dusting!) kept me from being able to put out a blog last week.   As I raced around, basically just sprinkling more dust everywhere, I thought to myself that those celebrating Thanksgiving  traditions are probably rushing too—to make, to bake, to clean, create… as we try to make our nests more welcoming and cozy for those who might come visit.  Perhaps you created a dish you could bring to share with others.  Perhaps you brought your most generous, authentic, shined-up, ain’t-gonna-discuss-politics, leave-your-swords-at-the-door, do-the-dishes kind of Self, which is a pretty awesome gift to share.  But before the Grace, we grumble a little… We rush.  We shove stuff under beds, we wear ourselves out with lists and reminders, and we think Dark Thoughts about whether the stuffing should be “vegan” or not.

It was absolutely wonderful to take a moment to pause… to sit by a wood stove, with scones in the oven and musical instruments piled about the place like cordwood, kids and friends and Music  all still asleep, as Dawn put pumpkin stains on the mist rising from the distant river.  I survey this (still somewhat dusty) corner of the world with increasing contentment and pleasure.  I am Happy.  Truly Happy.   The work is worth it.  The Harvest is rich. What a Gift it is to be able to Share…

I receive all this Abundance gratefully.  Receiving is the Gift we return to the Giver.  I was reminded of this several times last week, in my shop, as I worked hard and late to get things done for customers who decided they didn’t need their items after-all and didn’t come get them.  Other customers, whom I had assessed (wrongly) as “low-maintenance” began pestering me for their things instead.  So I did a lot for the Ungrateful and disappointed those who would have been very grateful indeed.   ALL these customers shared a confused sense of what “in a hurry” means.  (“Do you need these in a hurry, ma’am?” “Oh no, Tomorrow is just fine!” )  For the past fortnight, I have been asking everyone, “Do you need this for Thanksgiving?” and creating two piles—those due before November 23, and those who could wait.  Then everybody changed their minds.  It’s enough to make me want to eat every last scrap of stuffing.

ONE customer, bless her heart, told me she “hoped” her items would be done but was ok if they were not.  I put them in the “Get-‘er-done” pile and got them done.  The joy on her face was better than a slice of Mom’s apple pie.  She had four things to try on and jumped up and down, hugging me after each one.  Her gratitude made me feel like I was getting paid twice.

We talked a lot about Gratitude over Thanksgiving, as you do...  One of the best things about having a house full of people aged 22-36 is being able to marinate in their idealism, enthusiasm, and the phosphorescence of Change.  They aren’t where they used to be and they aren’t where they’re gonna be and they are wildly excited about pretty much everything.  They are discovering who they are, who they want to be, as well as cool new jigs in D minor.  Some of what they light upon they will soon outgrow; some they will love for the rest of their days.  I cherish my time with them almost as much as garlic-roasted brussel sprouts.

One dear soul in particular was my morning buddy—up at 7(ish) each day to help do chores, then sit with warm hands cupped around coffee and ideas—Essential  Vitamins of ruthless self-examination.  Jokingly, we called it our morning “Therapy.” On the last morning, there were six bleary-eyed people snuggled together in “the cozy room” for morning “Therapy.”  “We played music until 5:am last night, but we don’t want to miss Therapy!” they said through face-cracking yawns. 

After all the Gratitude talk, the thing that fascinated me the most was that these do-ers, these dreamers, these amazing achievers still want More. They want to be “Better”: Better people, better at music, better at relationships, better at business, better at being Better… What does that even mean? I wonder.  In a modern landscape that preaches “self-acceptance” (“You DO mean Selfishness,” sniffs Prudence, noting how the place is strewn with rubbish and no one seems to be picking up after themselves) and Gratitude for What IS—how does one have the naiveté and bravery to want “More”? How does honest self-assessment avoid getting tangled up in withering self-Judgment?  I want to learn.

I decide, rather smugly, that these young people have yet to Fail.  Their relationships are shiny; their jobs are fresh; their travels are still taking them to places they have never been before.  None of them are married yet. They are still on an upward trajectory of successes, opportunities, possessions, or relationships they “must” attain (and probably will).  Sure, they have experienced devastating losses and are wise beyond their years but they have not yet truly Failed.  Achievement has made them daring. They are cloaked in Invincibility, surging towards new ways to test their courage, strength and valor.  “Failure will teach them a thing or two,” says Prudence confidently, rubbing her lumbago.

Failure can be horrifying. Catastrophic.  Attempting to measure up, to show how Good I am or how many virtues I have and realizing I don’t actually have what it takes threatens my very sense of self.  After all, I was MADE this way, wasn’t I? Isn’t it Good Enough? It’s not???? Now what? Oh dear God… I need MORE???  How dare I ask for Second Helpings!

Despair.

Yep, Failure is going to break them, I join Prudence in thinking.

“Then it’s going to save them,” whispers a Better Angel.

They have no idea what an immense relief it can be to Fail.  Failing at things has been my salvation.  (“And you’ve gone at it like it was mashed potatoes with rosemary gravy,” says Prudence tartly.) Relinquishing the mantle of Perfectionism has been the key to my success.  Exhausting, Relentless, fear-driven perfectionism was destroying me.  But I could not know that when I was in my twenties.  

Our morning chats turn from Failure to Talent--Talent and Success being close cousins.  “How do you feel about being called ‘Talented’?” I ask a very talented young man.  

“I HATE it,” he says bluntly. “People tell me that all the time, as if they cannot do what I do.  The truth is that they don’t work at something the way I do.  They don’t want to get Better, they just want to be Great.  We all want to be great.  But we can’t get there if we don’t at least want to be better.

He goes on to explain his strategy as a weight-lifter.  His goal IS to fail—to get his muscles to the edge of their capacity, where shuddering fatigue forces them to tear a little, then heal, in order to get stronger.  Muscles don’t grow unless their fibres FAIL.

“Everything is a muscle,” he says. “Everything.  Even so-called “talent.” If you are born as talented as you will ever be, why bother?  There’s no fun there. The fun is in getting more. You can have all you are willing to work for.”

This news actually stings a little.  He’s right, of course.  But how dare he know already the things I am only now discovering? All my little-old-lady life, I have looked forward to being the Eldress with the Answers. My generation spent its youth being told by those who had invented polyester and linoleum, that we, with our “big hair,” shoulder pads, and parachute pants, were insipid and would amount to “Nothing” if we didn’t shape up. I have eagerly awaited venerable old age so that I could amount to something and dole out wisdom like cranberry sauce to add tang to the meat and potatoes of Life. Nope! With a snap, I realize I have missed it again. These young people are MY teachers.  At best, I am the limping, straggling, fellow-traveler they have to help over the sharp rocks and teach about Instagram.

They DON’T fail. (And they haven’t embraced anything as ridiculous as “Big hair” though skinny jeans severing their butt cheeks is a close second). Failure as an end in itself doesn’t exist for them.  Somehow, they got the memo (I didn’t) that Happiness lies not in the avoidance of failure, but in the embrace of it.  Failure is not an attack on who I am or “What God Made” but an invitation to use my Will to see what is on the other side.  Can I flex? Can I grow? All my life, I have been attached to Success in the form of desired outcomes, not Growth.   Failure has a completely different meaning for these young people I love.  They see their current abilities as emerging from the challenges they pose to themselves.   Like weightlifters, they seek the evidence that they have reached their current limit and get excited.  There is no “fail.”

I love this.  When I burn soup, sew the wrong patches on a pair of jeans, mishandle a social situation, or flunk dung-removal from a vehicle, I am just pushing the limits of my present abilities, and therefore (let’s hope!) improving them in the long run.  Failure IS a relief! Not because getting crushed gives me permission to quit, but because it allows me a moment to rest before trying again.  I know where my growing edge is now.  Wah-hoo!

 “When you leave here, and go back to your normal life, what are you looking forward to doing? What is your happiest thought?” I ask one.

“Getting back to Practicing,” says a musician who plays more in one evening than I do in a month of Sundays but still doesn’t call that “practicing.”

I sent them all homeward with “Bannocks and Blessings”—parcels of leftovers and haste-ye-back hugs in the shape of over-cooked cookies.  

One of my favorite things about a Thanksgiving Feast is the idea of “Second Helpings.” (“Of course you do,” says Prudence, eyeing my waistline.)  I love the word Helpings.  Many little helps.  I love to think of food as a “helping,” rather than a naughty or guilty indulgence. I love that feasting, on music, on fellowship, and thoughts can nourish us for weeks.  I’m grateful to have a little slice of Humble Pie as I think of these magnificent beings shining their brussel-sprout-fueled lights in the world, out there, Practicing to find their weaknesses and make of them Strength.  They are going to change the world!

I’d like a Second Helping of THAT, please!

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Beginning Beginnings

“The Music begins before you even hear a single note.” –Pete Clark

Greetings Dear Ones!

The sky canvas outside my shop windows is awash with deepening colors. The cycle of Endings and Beginnings happens swiftly these days.  The pace quickens with the wind.  “Yes, I can wait for you,” I tell a client who is running late at closing time, “but my animals are waiting for me, so if you are going to be more than a half hour, we will have to reschedule.” Breathlessly, she arrives twenty minutes later but it is already dark then.  We do the fitting as quickly as we can.  She needs to get home to feed her family and I do too—my animal family—the “fam-inals.” Together, we rush to the parking lot.  I get to my car and realize to my chagrin that I have agreed to drop some pants for a customer on my way home, delaying me further. (“Um, perhaps you need to rephrase that,” says Prudence, ever the Editor-In-Charge.)   This customer is one of my favorites but also one of the fussiest—literally bringing in a tape measure to check my work.  It’s a good thing he has never inspected my car. He’d die! I hang his trousers, neatly hemmed and bagged, from the hook behind my seat.  They hang, swaying slightly, directly above a foot well that is full of junk mail, damp hay, and a leather boot full of ram piss.  It’s an inauspicious ending to another beginning, but there you go.  Past Nancy has a lot to answer for!

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that into every vehicle must fall some poo.  That is, if one is a farmer (or the current owner of a toddler). If one is very lucky, poo is all that will happen. Sheep turds are dry little pellets that sweep easily. Urine is a much bigger problem, as anyone who once drank five cups of tea and attempted to cross the George Washington Bridge during Rush Hour (which, with total hypocrisy, translates to Stand-utterly-still-for-three-hours) with only an empty yoghurt container for company can tell you.

It’s tupping season for the sheep.  That means borrowing a tup, or ram, from a friend and bringing him home in one’s Ford Explorer.  For the uninitiated, it goes something like this:

1.       Make ready the back of your vehicle.  You are going to need a tarp, some hay, and some towels.  Start by emptying some of the crap you carry around that needs to be “Sorted Out One Day.” Put the tools in the tool shed, put the empty lunch containers in the sink, and put six inches of junk mail into the woodstove, or better yet, just leave it on the floor for now, along with your favorite pair of leather boots.

2.       Put the back seats down. Realize that there is a gap between the back of your seat (the driver’s seat) and the top of the back seat because you are so short, you have to have the driver’s seat pulled forward as much as possible.  Decide to fill in that gap with several layers of heavy-duty cardboard.   Then put down the tarp, the towels (to absorb urine) and the hay.  Hay itself is not very absorbent.  Not having old towels between the tarp and the hay means the tarp is more likely to direct all the urine into the nearest cupholder, or worse, on to the carpet, making the car smell of sheep for the next ten years.

3.       Drive to friend’s farm in a clean (ish) sweet-smelling vehicle redolent of summer hay and Hope.

4.       Install yearling ram in vehicle.  Tie his halter to the back of your driver’s seat so that he is not free to run around the vehicle, or worse, join you in the front seat and decide to drive. (He’s too young to get a license.)  Make sure child safety locks are on the windows.  You DON’T want a repeat of that time you loaded six animals into the car and one stepped on the automatic window button, let his window down, and jumped out while you were driving down the road.

5.       Play some romantic music for the new guy, to get him in the mood—some robust Shetland Fiddle tunes perhaps, since he is a Shetland ram.

6.       Drive approximately ten miles with your new companion, unaware that he is steadfastly rearranging the cardboard so that he can slip his body down behind your seat and hang himself from your headrest.

7.       Pull over and loosen the rope so that his neck angle is less extreme.  Ensure he can breathe. Decide to leave him wedged between the seats because he is calm and relatively happy there and his horns are wedged in such a way that he cannot possibly get into more trouble. Forget your favorite boots are beneath him. Drive another 30 miles.

8.       Suspect him of drinking too much tea before he left his former residence. The windows are fogging up and you want to gag.  Your good boots have become his yoghurt container.

9.       Arrive home, unload, introduce him to his new harem. 

10.   *THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP* (We cannot stress this enough)  CLEAN THE CAR!!!  Clean every bit of it.  Pull out the tarp. Recycle the cardboard. Compost the hay. Don’t just look at your boots and their contents and scream. Don’t think “I don’t have time for this; it’s dark and I need to make sure the pen for the ram is secure first…” then just wander off and have supper. Finish What You Start!! (We BEG of you!)

Ok. So we all know I did not do step ten.   Go ahead. Judge me.  No one regrets it more than I. “You know you can never sell this car now, right?  You’ll have to drive it off a cliff and let it burn in a fiery crash,” a concerned citizen informs me. “It’s the only way to get rid of the smell.”

Instead, I got involved in the charm of watching the animals greet each other through the fence.  The little ram is a sweet and super friendly little guy. He spent the summer as a pet at a girls’ camp in New Hampshire.  As a yearling, he’s never been used for breeding and (so far) has only the purest of intentions for his new friends.  He is shy, vulnerable, curious—like an innocent middle-schooler hanging out with Fast Girls from the Tough High School who think he’s kinda cute and want to offer him purloined gin and cigarettes. 

The weather has been so unseasonably warm that the ewes have not been coming into heat yet. Sheep libido is stimulated by the seasonal drop in temperature (Christmas carols and Hallmark movies are strictly optional).  The plan is to have this guy in a little pen adjacent to theirs, where they can touch noses through the fence but nothing else (like the courtship “bundling” ritual in colonial America) for about seventeen days.  It’s also known as “teasing,” (for obvious reason).  The theory is that all the females will synchronize their cycles and then conceive within 48 hours of each other when we set the tup free.  With any luck, this compacts the lambing season—with all the lambs arriving close together and not dropping randomly for seventeen days (the length of the ovine oestrus cycle) next Spring, (during Prom Season!), which is chaotic enough.  

Meanwhile, the darkness comes sooner and more fiercely each evening.  The steers have lobbied to have suppertime moved to 4:pm.  The dog is in agreement.  So am I, actually.  It is a time of hunkering and munching and turning our collars to the wind. The contented animals have no holly-daze looming, no shopping lists, no resolutions to fulfill before the stroke of midnight December 31st. They dwell in doorways and Moments, as ever, beginning new beginnings they don’t even realize are beginning.

There is so much wisdom in their innocence and almost none in my scheming.  We know damn well that Prom Season and Lambing season are going to bring their share of stories, opportunities, and regrets, no matter what I try to encourage or avoid. (Glitter!!!)  Life is going to happen.  And it will be Joyous, Tragic, and Messy. So Be It.  It’s worth the work of beginning.

Beginnings take a lot of preparation before they can begin.  Before Advent, the season of Waiting, can begin, the preparations for the preparations must be done. I need to close out the old projects, clear the decks, and prepare for the next things I will create.   I’m not ready, but I’m getting ready to be ready. Perhaps one of these days, I’ll even throw out my dear boots and clean that car.

Keep beginning, Dear Ones! 

I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Brighter

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Greetings Dear Ones!

I cannot believe it is already the second day of November.  This year is slipping by like leftover fiddle chili through chickens.  Our nation is now staggering sideways in a sugar coma left from Halloween towards midterm elections in less than a week’s time.  (The Fright continues sans milk duds.) The sky already has that dull, November gloom to it, as though we dwell inside a dirty pearl.  Days shorten, darkness lengthens.  Owls and howls and late-night prowls are more prevalent as What is Hungry edges closer.  This morning, I was ten feet from a coyote when I went outside to empty the ash from the wood stove.   

Hard frosts are more common now.  I go out to do the morning chores and the yearlings are standing in the corner of the field that is closest to the house, awaiting my arrival and blowing great wafts of vapor through their nostrils. It looks like smoke pouring from their internal hay burners.   If I am late, I can hear the impatient mooing from inside the house.  As I heave into view, singing our Good Morning song, their backs and ears stiffen with intense interest, their eyes open wide; they visibly brighten.  Their whole bodies seem to smile.  I slip under the fence and get enveloped in warm breath, hugs and cuddles.  We are SO happy to see each other!   After a few moments, I duck the zap of electric wire and go in the front of the barn while they dance around to the back gate and enter via their own entrance.  They know nothing of elections.  They live under the most benevolent of dictatorships.  The sheep too are happy to see me—though ninety percent of their brightening comes from seeing the feed scoop and the hay.  Still, it does my spirit so much good to have this daily welcome, to be seen as “Something Pleasant Approaches…” I would take this kind of Sweetness over a cauldron of candy any day. 

I only worked on a few Halloween costumes this year and they were all for adults.  One woman loves to dress up as the same Disney villain every year but in different outfits.  She had ordered this costume online and none of the proportions worked for her so I had a lot of work to do.  She is very petite, so we had to chop off a huge portion of this year’s skirt, the loss of which was in danger of ruining the total effect but then she had the brilliant idea of bunching it all together like a bustle behind her.  It solved the problem perfectly.    When she came for the final fitting, she looked in the mirror as excitedly as if she was seven years old and had been told she could keep her whole pillowcase full of sweets.

“Halloween is my THING” she said breathlessly. “I just Love Halloween.  I love dressing up for the kids who come trick-or-treating.  I love going out dressed like this to hear my favorite band play at all the senior centers.  I think people enjoy it. I don’t care if no one else is in costumes or not.  I just love it.  My husband refuses to come.  He just stays home.  He doesn’t want to get dressed up.  But he loves that I love it.  He is fully supportive, as long as he doesn’t have to be included.” 

My niece wanted help with her costume too.  She had a brilliant design but did not quite know how to attach a spandex body suit to a woven coverall that was cut down the middle.  (She was going as one who was partially transformed.)  We settled on the idea that the bodysuit would not be cut down the middle but remain intact underneath half the coverall.  To settle the stretch issue, I decided to sew the coverall to her jumpsuit while she was in it. She lay on my cutting table, looking like a gorgeous cadaver, as I carefully hand-stitched her into the costume.  It was nerve wracking “surgery” trying not to nick her with my needle as I attempted to pick up a tiny bit of spandex with each stitch and anchor it to the woven material above.  The seam went right down her mid-line, which made things awkward in a few places!

“Can you imagine if I offered this service to other customers?” I asked as I stitched over her bum cheeks. 

“Never!” hissed Prudence.

Rabbit and I couldn’t stop giggling.  The end result was spectacular.  She looked incredible.  Half of her was totally gorgeous and exotic and sensual and the other half was sternly in uniform.   She captured a “transition” perfectly.

I love that Halloween brings out latent creativity in people who wish to transform themselves for a night.  My favorite costumes are the ones that take thought and are not bought from a store.  The best costume ever was not one that I made personally but only heard about.  A young friend of my daughter’s is an excellent seamstress and dating an engineer.   She sewed dance clothing for them that contained strands of lights and he programmed the lights to get brighter and brighter when they got closer together and to dim as they drifted apart.   They attended a party where their proximity to each other was evident by whether or not they were glowing brightly.  

This isn’t just a charming costume idea, it’s a perfect metaphor.  Who doesn’t want to transform into this?  I believe we DO light up around those we love, and grow dim in the face of separation or loss, whether we are bullocks awaiting breakfast or me, finding out I really have eaten all the milk duds already.

I have been thinking about what lights us up a lot lately.  I think about the man, relieved to sit home on the couch while his life-long partner dresses as a villain to party without him.  This is a beautiful thing.  In his case, proximity might dim them both.  Having the space to let each other dance their own dance, the way they choose, is enlightened indeed.   She knows her way home.  Bewigged and bejeweled, trailing a flume of excess fabric, she travels her compass trail to the Elk’s Club, the Senior Center, and back without faltering. They are the modern, gender-reversed version of John Donne’s poem “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”  There is Joy. 

The northern hemisphere continues to darken daily, as our planet runs to the outer reaches of its orbit and certain media sources reach the limits of insanity.  It’s easy to feel depleted, to feel ourselves grow dim along with the days, especially with our politics in chaos and the prices of food and fuel rising.  We all have disappointments and worries about the future.  Anger and resentment look flashy but they are not the Light.  They provide sparks but no heat.   Friendly eyes, when they meet, are like candles touching new wicks, igniting warm smiles. Have you witnessed old friends bumping into each other at the post office? It’s high wattage.  Lighting up takes energy but the right smile, the right tune, the right phone call from the right person can light us up for days. 

Messages of Kindness and Light seem weak, trite, unsatisfying …I get it. Garrison Keillor says “Hope is a cup of chamomile tea; resentment is a double bourbon.”  I’d love to go to my local polling station, shake a bucket of grain and have everyone brighten instantly. But people are NOT sheep.  This is going to be tricky.  We’re going to have to do this, one smile at a time—a smile that says “hey there, neighbor, I’m secretly your friend!  This community/county/country/planet is our shared home. I might not agree with your opinions or choices but I want you to have them.  You might not get what you want, but your voice and vote matter. My candidate might lose but I won’t lose my dignity or integrity.  The only pronouns that matter to me are We and Us. There is no ‘them.’”  

What lights you up, Dear One? How can we use our skills to light each other up? My animals light me up. Work lights me up.  Music and seeing other people lit up lights me up.  I love to hear about partnerships that cause the partners to light up.  North of the equator here, it’s another fifty days until the Winter Solstice. What is your plan for refusing to go dim?

As ever, thanks for your Good Work!  Thanks for subscribing, for sharing, and for taking the time to comment.

With Sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Part of the Plan

“What we plan for ourselves isn’t always what Life has planned for us.”

Greetings Dear Ones!

October seems to have left without me; I have been hanging on one-handedly like one dangling from the last rail of the caboose on a speeding train.   Dare I admit I may have taken on “too much”?  No… I would never admit such a thing.  But it has been a scramble to do all the usual things AND cook for four days at a wonderful fiddle camp, AND have house guests for a week, AND have concurrent major deadlines on multiple projects, one of which included sewing 187 cloth pennants for the aforementioned fiddle camp.  My regular customers seem to be taking it all in stride—unless they happen to be the one (or three) I forgot to tell I would not be available for a week. (oops!)  I can tell that one of my recurrent life lessons is about to hit me with a pop quiz, the main question of which is always: “Are You In Balance?”  I pass or fail depending on the crash.  The next question is “Can you embrace a New Plan?”

I admit I do NOT feel in balance.  Things seem hasty, rushed, devoid of Breath.  I eat without tasting, sleep without dreaming, and arrive at places hardly knowing if there was traffic on the road or not. I get wet but I do not feel the rain.  Autumn in the North East does this to a lot of us.  It’s a hectic time.  The closer one lives to the Roots, the more one must gather before winter clamps its jaws.  For weeks now, I’ve been gathering hay, wood, and stones.  You would think I am building homes for all three of the little pigs.   

Thanks to Hurricane Ian, my beloved sister and her family, instead of taking a dream Carribean vacation, decided to forgo hot sun, trashy novels, and fancy beverages with tiny umbrellas in them to come to Vermont for a week to help with Fall chores. (These people really know how to choose a party!) Instead of lounging around getting sand in their bum cracks, they moved a huge wood pile, put six tons of hay in the loft, and helped dig an irrigation ditch out the back side of the house to convince water that wanted to live in the cellar that it would be happier running down the hill outside.   They cleared a new pasture for the sheep and fenced it!! We worked hard and laughed a lot, two of my favorite things to do.  A wise person once said, “A good vacation makes you grateful to get back to your normal life.” For them, this certainly qualified!

There were a few glitches (of course there were) that required me to say “Ok, NEW PLAN!” Every time something went askew, we took to announcing “Ok, this must be part of the Plan…” like when my niece Rabbit fell through a rotten board on the hay trailer and skinned her shins from ankle to thigh, or when I fell off the top of the hay truck and felt my brain, like a speeding ball of jello, collide with the inside of my skull.  Or when the hay delivery truck couldn’t manage the hill and had to be towed the last two miles.  And the sheep got into the chicken feed and needed to be dosed for bloat because I had decided to remove all the hardware from the coop door but had gotten distracted before I could fix and replace it. (When I did replace it, I put it on so thoroughly it is now impossible to open the door!)

New Plans… New Plans…  The Land of Lost Plots is now the Land of New Plans.

I like the idea that there isn’t a “Fail,” merely a New Plan.  

I get asked a lot, “Can you sew something without a pattern?” The answer is a carefully worded... “no…”  Everything needs some sort of pattern.  If you give me your beloved skirt and ask me to copy it for you,  that skirt then becomes the pattern:  I’ll trace it, measure things, put a bunch of marks on paper, maybe scream at it a few times because I neglect to mark things like “left” and “right”  and nap of fabric.  (Fabric “nap” is that small rest the exhausted seamstress needs has when she cannot remember which “direction” the fabric is supposed to run.) Having a pattern vs. not having a pattern is like having a map and a declared destination rather than simply going out for “a wander.” (Very few people drop off a bunch of fabric and invite me to wander around in it, creating what gives me joy.  Not that I want that, mind you! Don’t get any ideas!)  Without marks on paper, I can take a yard or two of fabric, pin it all over your body, make darts, make seams, and custom make a garment for you but you still have to tell me---are we making a vest? An 18th century mantua ? A Victorian smoking jacket? Or something in case the circus comes to town and needs an extra clown… (cue a 1980’s silk blouse with linebacker shoulder-pads and enlarged bow tie at throat).

Custom items rarely turn out with the perfection of one of Plato’s Forms but they still have to participate, at some minimal level, in the idea of that form, the way one loosely follows a recipe and decides to add extra garlic, or leave out the meat, or, in the case of my father, substitute sawdust for shredded cheese.  (Just kidding, it was vintage parmesan.)  

So!  As reluctantly as I admit this… I am fairly dedicated to plans.  Planning is important to me, if only to know what it is I am NOT currently doing.  It significantly aids my continually simmering Guilt Process to know I am vehemently, perhaps even gleefully, astray. 

Now, can you imagine setting off to cook for ninety fiddle campers and their valiant teachers with no plan???  Nada. Nunca. Nyet.   As usual, I left it to the last minute to print out the menu and shopping list and all the notes I have gleaned from previous cooking-at-camp experiences—but instead of contented purring and burping from the printer, there was silence.   The computer refused to produce the files.

“Are you KIDDING ME???” I said in a sentence that was at least one very naughty word longer. I tried restarting everything—a reboot that took ten minutes I passed by pulling out some of my hair, which was actually a good thing, since it reminded me to find my kitchen hat.

Meanwhile, from the computer…   Still nothing.

After two futile hours begging the gods for a different fate, I had to go on with my life. Utterly refusing to believe There Was No Plan, I shouted up at the ceiling, “OK! THIS must be the new plan.”  I’d read a book on “Surrender” once upon a time and decided it was the only available superpower at the moment, so I took it.   With a pit in my stomach that signified my bowels were turning to liquid, I hopped in the car and set off for Boston.  I picked up my son. “What’s the plan?” he asked after stashing his stuff in the car.

“There isn’t one,” I admitted.

“WHAT???”

“Yep.  The new plan is that there is no plan.  I couldn’t get the [another naughty word] computer to print.  So we have NO plan. That’s the plan.”

“Oh my God…”

“Yep.”

“So what are you going to cook?”

“What do you want to eat?”

We made a list of comforting foods we thought most people might like. 

We went to Costco, where torrential rains hosed the parking lot.   Great.  Loading a trailer load of food in the rain. Must be part of the new plan. 

Oh? What’s that you say?  I don’t have my Costco card and need to stand in line for a new one?  This New Plan is really amazing.  It’s a gym membership, and psychological stress test requiring aqua-lungs and flippers all in one convenient bundle.    

Over and over, I got to flex my flabby Surrender muscles and embrace A New Plan.  All week, every time something went wrong, I just continued to shout “Wahoo! THIS must be part of the plan!” as if plans are treasure maps we discover, rather than create. When we cooked all the potatoes three hours too early and they turned to rocks, when the girl chopping peppers cut her hand,  when the porridge turned to cement, when I flew out the back door gripping a smokey pot of (literally) flaming soup, when I had to run back to the store for everything we needed, every… single… blessed… meal….  only to discover now we have way too many leftovers... These were all just part of The Plan I couldn’t see. And thank Heavens too—it was a mercy I couldn’t see what was in front of me or I might have been tempted to put my head in the giant oven (that incidentally was broken “on.” We were warned never to turn it off, lest we not be able to turn it on again. Yep! You guessed it… Someone turned it off. )

As I told the forty pounds of unused carrots I discovered on the last day, “I’m sorry little orange ones…I guess you just were not part of the plan” (though they will have to be soon!). 

So many New Plans.  So many choices to sing or scream. So many opportunities to adapt or perish.  I discovered that “Plans” represent our best hopes of making things better than they are.  In actuality, it is humor, resilience, and a new friend willing to chop thirty pounds of onions without gritching about it that really gets us through the tough times.  Humor is that gap between “what Is” and “What should be” and it is Here, in that gap, outside the reach of the best-laid plans of mice or men, that we find ourselves and our community of fellow Menders.  Here is where we find the work we know how to do, where Love and Laughter and some clever patchwork are the best substitutes for Other Plans. 

Finally, I am home again.  I’m not sure what to do next.  Anybody got a plan???  

With sew Much love and gratitude for all your Good Work,

Yours aye,

Nancy