A Lone Star

O wad some Power the giftie gie us/ Tae see oursels as ithers see us!/ It would frae mony a blunder free us,/ An’ foolish notion:/ What airs and dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,/ An’ ev’n devotion! —Robert Burns

Greetings Dear Ones!

Winter has had us in its teeth, here in Vermont, but only the way a toddler who’d rather eat candy than broccoli does.  The frosty bites are half-hearted and given to unwelcome melt-downs.  Last week was the first particularly cold snap that made me put on some proper gloves.  When I smashed the ice out of the water buckets in the barn, I thought we were on to something… Jack Frost chased us merrily through all the chores and left icicles on those with whiskers (including me!).  But now the clouds can’t decide whether to rain or snow.  The gloves are off.  Winter isn’t putting up a fight.

Still, the setting sun at eventide makes everything glitter like salt on the rim of a Marguerita glass and the rosiness of dawn against the frozen dazzle of dew is enough to take away my breath more suddenly than a sharp slice of lime.  It’s intoxicating to be outside.

When it’s clear, the night sky over the barn looks like a dark shop floor during prom season—glitter and sparkle everywhere—and the morning frost on the window panes is prettier than any lace.  The way the snow sparkles in the porch light makes me want to lie down in it, make a pair of snow angel wings, and fly like a moth to the moon or the nearest streetlight miles away.  I’m pretty sure this isn’t snow at all; it’s actually crumbs of star sparkle and pixie dust. 

“I see you!” I say to the stars above.

“We see you too!” they glimmer back at me.

“You’re TINY,” I say.

“No, YOU are!” they reply.     

I can’t stop thinking about the stars.  Inside, after chores, I cook my supper in a blackened chunk of yet more stars. It turns out the iron is originally made from fusion of elements in ancient suns.  The iron found here on earth (and in my skillet) came here millions of years ago in the form of meteorites after stellar explosions from a supernova.  Even our blood is filled with this magic. The iron atoms in hemoglobin, give or take an ion or two, are cousins to the iron atoms in a cast iron frying pan.  My skillet and I are celestial kin!

“That explains your fondness for each other,” comments Prudence dryly. “And speaking of stars,” she continues smugly, “you just got one.”

I beam. “Really?”

“I mean a one-star review on Google. Shame on you. That’s terrible.”

“What?” I ask, bewildered. “How can one star be bad? It’s still a star, isn’t it? Aren’t all stars Good?”

“No. Only five star reviews are good,” insists Prudence brusquely. “You must have done something bad. Only bad people get one star.”

“Really?” I ask, sweating just a little, wondering which one of my many crumbles, fumbles, or flops got discovered and reported. (Note: If you forgot to wear long underwear and you can’t afford to turn up the thermostat, just contemplate your recent misdemeanors. Shame is as good as two hot bars on an electric heater.)

I do my Best, honestly, I do—to remove the pins from the breast cups before I let the gowns out of the shop. “Did someone’s boobs get punctured?  Did I only hem one leg of a pair of pants?  Did I sew the fly closed? Did I put the zipper in backwards? Did I twist the inner lining of the coat sleeve so that a human hand cannot possibly traverse the length of it from shoulder to cuff? For the love of all that is holy, please tell me what I did to this poor soul before my internal thermostat requires me to wear a hair shirt and a bikini for the rest of the day!”

“It says here ‘have tried numerous times to enquire if she would replace jacket zipper and can’t get any answer or leave a voicemail as her voicemail is full’….” says Prudence reading aloud.

“What??? Thank Goodness, I didn’t set fire to her undergarments with a steam iron. I just had a voicemail box that was full? Really? I don’t remember that. When did I commit this heinous crime?”

“Probably in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, when you went south to visit your folks for three days,” says a kind, understanding voice from the back of my head. “That’s the only time your voicemail has been full.  And it was only for a day or so.” This is a nice voice.  I like this voice.   She goes on to soothe, “I really wouldn’t worry about it.  You never actually did any work for this woman.  She was just impatient and wanted to take her frustration out on you.  You did nothing wrong.”

“Don’t let her off that easily,” says Prudence, adamantly stamping her foot and pointing at me. “What kind of person in the service industry isn’t available to her clients 24/7? That’s what it takes to get a good reputation in the modern world. Anybody can say anything about you at any time.”

“A sane person,” says the sweet voice, interrupting. “Sane people need healthy boundaries. They are NOT available all the time. Besides, this woman wasn’t technically a client. She just wanted to be.  People who are angry with you tend to be people who want something they think you have that you should give them.”

“Why couldn’t she be as nice as the rest of my dear customers?”  My inner middle-schooler is heartbroken at getting a bad grade on a pop quiz she didn’t even know she was taking.

“Chin up, Darling,” says the kind voice.  “You don’t have to be perfect.  You just have to do your best. And, for the most part, in your slap-dash way, you do.”

“She says she called multiple times.  There is no record of that on either phone line.  She wanted to know if I could replace a zipper.  It’s on the bloody website! I do everything that has to do with clothing mending and alterations! She can also make an appointment for herself on the website.  Anyone can! There is absolutely NO need to chat to her via telephone in order to accommodate her needs and wishes.  Other people book themselves appointments all the time and it seems to work just fine for them. Most of them even comment about how easy it is.  People can also reach me by text, email, ox cart and pony express,” I fume, wanting to defend myself against this sting.

“You’ve already wasted too much energy on this,” says the Kind Voice.  “There’s nothing to control, nothing to fix, nothing to mend.  She’s not a good fit for your business model. Thank her. Bless her. Let it go.”

But I can’t.

I bring it up to people younger than myself who are more savvy about the online world and the business of ratings and visa versa. Each one inhales sharply and confirms “oof, that’s rough. She’s definitely trying to hurt you.”

“Why would someone deliberately leave a rating designed to lower a person’s overall average in the business community?” I want to know. “Aren’t we supposed to support small business owners?”

“Not small businesses that let their voicemail overflow during the holidays,” says Prudence.

“Online people can be pretty rude about things,” says an understanding friend. “Anonymity makes them bold.  They drop courtesy. They drop the old fashioned norms of civility and curiosity and make their demands loudly to a world they think cannot hear them. Some Americans are behaving like expectant toddlers, leaving others to step in as their exhausted parents. Communication becomes perfunctory and primitive.”

I nod.  As a person who spends more than a reasonable amount of time trolling online market places for used farm equipment, I’m used to seeing notifications such as “done [sic] even ask is this available. If it’s still up, it’s available. People who ask that will be deleted immediately.”   Since I don’t want to be deleted immediately, I don’t ask.  I just smile fondly and move on while Prudence corrects their grammar and spelling. (She can’t help herself.) I mentally send a shooting star of blessings to a harried person in a big hurry, just trying to sell some of his outdated shit as a side hustle, who doesn’t want to get bugged with petty details.  Communication is the messiest part of our human interactions sometimes.

I feel their pain. Some people know how to navigate a system and some just don’t.  Some have a lot of questions. They need a lot of reassurance. They think they are the only ones who wear a winter coat in January in New England.

Honestly, I have no idea how most of my customers manage to book themselves an appointment online, actually READ the confirmation email they receive (which details precisely which doorway to enter and which stairway to climb in order to find my enchanted workshop cleverly disguised as an enormous, abandoned nineteenth century mill building that doubles as a frat house for artists) and show up on the correct day ON TIME. (Bless them!) These people are wondrous to me. They are angels.  They do everything right.  (Someday, I wish to live amongst them and study their ways.)  They make it look easy.   More than ninety percent of my clients manage this, which delights and amazes me.

A few call from the parking lot lost, rattled, confused.  They’ve tried every door.  They’ve wandered the ground floor and accidentally purchased some granola or artisanal chocolate from kindly vendors there.  They successfully booked an appointment but never read the follow-up email.  They explain later, after I have rescued them, that they never read emails, as if this solves everything.  We laugh. I have a lot of heart for these people who jump from fire to frying pan (my starry kin!) and dash through life a little scorched but basically ok.  I love these people.  They are patient and jolly, accustomed to the difficulties they create for themselves.

And then there is this lone star lady who got mad because she couldn’t talk to a real person when she wanted to.  I feel for her too.  I also prefer to talk to real people rather than recordings.  I DON’T want to shuffle around in cyberspace not knowing if my needs are reasonable (“They aren’t,” says Prudence) or if they can be met (“Doubtful” says P).  It IS infuriating to want help and be unable to ask for it in the way you are accustomed to asking for it.  In the modern jungle of “phone trees” we need to climb “to speak to a representative,” we all want a little old fashioned customer service and a warm voice at the end of the line. I forgive her.

I’ve gotten over my hurt.  I’m grateful that I have a sweeter voice in my head these days, telling me to keep doing Good Work. “Do the best you can. All you can do is all you can do,” she says while Prudence rolls her eyes and says “I can’t believe you haven’t had more bad reviews. Nothing but five stars for four years? You are damn lucky! There’s no way you deserve that.”

I feel damn lucky! I do work I love (mostly) for people I adore (mostly) and I get to live and share with those I love the life I’ve always dreamed of on a sweet homestead full of rocks and stars, trees and weeds and gardens, and beloved animals—all of whom who converse with me in their own ways.  I get to use my hands and heart in all I do.  One doesn’t get luckier than that.  It’s as if you really can wish upon a star (or five) and have it come true!

Even when we cannot see them, stars are all around us and within us. Don’t let anything dim your sparkle for long, Dear One. Hug your skillet, reheat those neeps and taters and remember your celestial roots. Remember the starlight in us all--whether One or Five, we are family. I love the way you shine! This year is projected to bring its share of Star-Spangled challenges so keep Mending! The tiny corners of this miraculous world need your Light.

“Here’s freedom to him who would read;/ Here’s freedom to him who would write;/ None ever feared that the truth should be heard,/But them that the truth would indict.” (Robert Burns)

With Sew Much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy

Progress & Pauses

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” Mark Twain

Greetings Dear Ones!

I woke up with a familiar little toothache in my hand this morning.  I lay and listened to the drumming of rain on the tin roof above me and the whispered complaints of the hand as it stroked the head of the tiny dog snoring next to me.

“We did too much knitting last night,” says the hand. “Two complete hats and three rows of the lace edge on a shawl was utterly gluttonous. When will this end? That’s all we seem to do every night now…except for when you are plunging us into extremely hot water and vinegar baths to dye the wool we are about to knit. In every sense of the word, we are CHAPPED!” (I have damp wool hanging from a variety of garden implements propped on chairs in front of the wood stove.  The house smells decadently of wet sheep and Easter eggs.)

“I’m sorry,” I tell my hand.  “This is just what we do in Winter, unless you feel like taking the loppers to the blueberry bushes. That needs to be done too.”  The hand aches harder just thinking about it.

“I just wish your mind could work without me working also,” says the tired hand. “There’s nothing left of me to play the fiddle, or scribble in Catholic cursive in your journals.”

“I need you,” I tell my hand, “to do everything I love.  You carry the hay and water to my beloved animals; you caress the cheeks of those I adore; you feed me, dress me, help me make a living… I cannot DO or LOVE or BE without you and that amazing little thumb of yours.  And, best of all, you help me KNIT and create all the wild things I imagine, in colors and textures I obsess over like an addict.”

I lie there and think of all the things I must do today.  It frightens me that there is a part of my physical being that considers mutiny.  Being Middle Aged is like being in charge of a platoon of renegades: One must ignore a lot of bitching in the ranks to get anything done at all and who knows when a leg or a back or a shoulder might beg off duty without leave.  Repetitive stress on fine motor muscles IS an occupational hazard for the Creative types.  Self care, though an irritating nuisance, is not optional.

“I’ll do my best to take care of you today,” I promise my hand.  Then I remember I have twelve buttons at the shop to sew on a Naval Pea coat for a new customer.  (I’m not going to mention that!)

Knitting by the fire in winter is a guilty pleasure I am trying to make less guilty by telling myself that I am going to sell some of these objects I create.  The sheep need to pay their way, or at least a damn good bit of their staggering hay bills.  I’ve got enough animals now that I cannot possibly process all the wool myself so this year, I brought it all to a little woolen mill in upstate New York that specializes in small-batch production and had it spun into yarn.  Half that yarn is now in Minnesota being turned into socks by another woman and her husband who have a cottage industry making socks on antique knitting machines.  They are going to make us two hundred pairs of “Old Fashioned” socks. 

The rest of the yarn is now my playground.  It’s that secret “other lover” I am seeing on the side of my regularly scheduled sober life of duties and obligations and makes me feel Alive and Daring in deep, dead Winter.  I am thinking of it all the time, sneaking to Ravelry (a knittning site) on my phone, mooning over snoods, scarves, and Shetland lace patterns when I should be paying attention to meal prep or vacuuming. I am churning out hats and shawls like I need to slip-cover Vermont by Tuesday.  Most fun of all, I am experimenting with dyeing—something I have never done before.  The base color of all my animals blended together is a dirty Oatmeal…the grayish kind that has been left to harden in a pot for too long and has a tinge of brown skin on the edges.  It’s soulful, nourishing, and pretty blah. 

The good news is that it is taking to deep, rich, fabulous colors like a pre-schooler who just got into the finger paints.  The bad news is that I dye much the same way I cook—without precise attention to time, temperature, or measurements (not to mention getting slop everywhere around the kitchen).  So!  Can I reproduce any of these colors ever again?  Who knows? 

“It means every skein is its own little one-of-a-kind miracle!” gushes my inner Good-Fairy-Kindergarten-art-teacher.

“It means you are a hasty slacker,” says Prudence. “This is why Science didn’t want you.”

“The heck with Science,” I tell Prudence, “THIS is art.  It’s alchemy. It’s Magic.”

Sitting by a fire, surrounded by steaming hanks of dripping yarn, thumbed paws on needles clicking rhythmically, I have never been more contented in my life.  This is Bliss! Knitting is when I do my best spiritual work: Alone, I can meditate, ponder, plan, or pray for hours.  In the company of others, I can listen deeply without interrupting.  Comfortable as my bum is, I find it hard to sit on it for any length of time without busy hands.  As a person who suffers appallingly from ADHD, knitting is the original “fidget spinner.”  (Why we give children fidget spinners instead of teaching them to knit blows my mind.  “Let them knit!” I say.  Let them turn that need for soothing, peace-rendering repetitive motion into a woolen Beauty that warms both a heart and a body part and through the triumph of creating something of true Worth can rescue their often poor self esteem!) 

“Idle hands are the Devil’s playground,” says Prudence approvingly, “but motion for its own sake seems wasteful.”

“Unless it’s Dancing,” I point out.

“Dancing! Tut!” Prudence straightens her petticoats and huffs. Dancing alarms her to her core.

For sure, the Devil has no playground near me and a set of number 5 circular needles—though I don’t know who else to blame for the now permanently splotchy purple kitchen countertops. He’s definitely nearby… probably in the Details.

It feels great to be a little further down the pipeline of this dream I’ve been dreaming for a long time—of creating art and garments from my own fiber animals.  It’s taken the kind of hard work and patience that makes intarsia knitting look like child’s play.  At the start of a New Year, it’s nice to continue on with Old dreams—to revel in the rewards that only come as a result of dedication and faithfulness—and to have the gift of fresh inspirations.  (BEANIES!! Yay! I need to make at least twenty of these!) The road turns as we travel, giving us fresh vistas on our way.  Same beloved book…new chapters. This is exciting!

It’s also good to rest, to picnic and to pace ourselves, to listen to the chitter-chatter of our bones and bodies telling us what is possible.  Harmony is required—in ALL things, even dreams coming true.  My inner Progressive tries to tell my hands to hurry “anything worth doing is worth over-doing” but they disagree. So I listen and Conserve. I’ve learned.

All this knitting has been accompanied by the kind of Contemplation that reveals Happiness and Happen-ness are close cousins. The Conservative and the Progressive can be good friends for the health and wealth of the whole being, whether sweater, person, or country.  Yes, we must work for progress—diligently, cheerfully, hopefully—stitch by stitch, one stitch at a time.  Also, we must wait—somewhere in the middle of our “Pipeline” of Promises—contentedly observing the gradual unfurling that can only happen in Right Timing. We cannot rush; we cannot force.  We must conserve resources and trust that they will be replenished adequately with proper stewardship.  

Winter is that reminder.  It is a time of sleepy solitude and secret fresh starts that will lead to Great Things by Spring—if we budget accordingly. (And take a damn nap!!)

I wish you deep, sweet rest for your weariness Dear One—whether it is a weariness brought on by enthusiasm or grief.  Keep Mending.  Keep doing your amazing work but with extra care and gentleness for your precious body, especially your hands.  You hold the new world in them.

I love you Sew Much.

Yours aye,

Nancy

Snip as you go...

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” –Jane Austen

Greetings Dear Ones!

Congratulations!!! On December 31st at precisely 12 o’clock midnight, we were all safely delivered of a Baby New Year! Is it a Boy? A Girl? Who knows what its “pronouns” are bound to be? (I’m hoping for “We, Ours, Us”!)  According to the Chinese, it’s going to be a Dragon.  This is Good and Magical and Dangerous news.  I’ve known a dragon or two personally and they are very nice until the moment they pass gas and sneeze at the same time and accidentally burn down your entire village.   Then they skip off to Boston leaving you with young cattle to train and they never once say “Oops” or “Sorry.”   

While most of us are now contemplating how we are ever going to get back to our pre-pregnancy shapes, the new baby has already crawled away from us like that speeding tortoise my son adopted in his teens (To be clear, the son was in his teens, not the tortoise)—who sprinted into the forest never to be seen again.  (Yes, it’s true, a tortoise once outran me.)

It’s already day Three  FOUR!  Soon it will be November again, I just know it.

I knew this baby was coming, I swear.   I’ve been experiencing the puffy ankles and pains of labor for weeks now.  Why I feel caught unawares with the Nursery still in disarray, is my own fault.  I was just starting to clean the nursery, search for the “new baby clothes” (i.e. running pants and gym shoes), pre-cook some healthy meal choices for those nights when I am “too busy to cook” and yet not too busy to sit on a couch watching cartoons and eating deep fried spuds out of a sack, when suddenly it seemed like WAY more fun to invite seventeen people over for tunes…. You know…a lullabye for the Baby New Year. Four hours of jigs and reels later, I no longer wanted to clean anything.   My daughter assures me that this is a good thing.  “It’s not a good idea to clean on New Year’s Day and accidentally divert  the ‘abundance’ headed our way,” she says.

“What abundance?” asks Prudence crisply, “the abundance of crumbs on the floor? The abundance of dishes in the sink? Muddy Footprints in the hall?”

Our beloved Hermit of Hermit Hollow wasn’t hearing of it.  He stayed and swept and wiped and washed all the Abundance away.  Other helpers helped.  I was left with a sparklingly empty house full of memories of a first golden afternoon filled with Harmony and Gladness and six quarts of vegan soup no one had wanted to eat.   I’m grateful.  With a new baby on my hands, I certainly can use the help and the extra sleep and now I won’t have to cook again until next Thursday.

So… here it is day [three or four] and Prudence is wondering how I am going to go mad this year at attempting to be perfect.  “Are you going to crash diet? Exercise? Clean out your closets? Clean the cellar?” she asks hopefully.

“I’m going to give up smoking,” I tell her.

“What?!  But you’ve never smoked a day in your life!”

“That’s why I picked it. I’m reasonably assured of success.  In fifty-six years, I have never once kept a New Year’s Resolution past Burn’s Night.  So…this year I’m choosing a WIN.  Besides, you never can tell when I might suddenly light up and start.  I’ve already tried most of all the other bad habits and they are very hard to quit. It’s much easier to quit something I have no intention of starting.”

“You’re ridiculous. Be serious. What are you going to do to improve yourself?” she wants to know.

“I’m going to sleep more.  I think it’s high time for that ‘Long Winter’s Nap’ of which the poet speaks. When I wake up, I’m going to tell everyone I know that it’s ok to not be perfect.”

“Way to ruin the game,” huffs Prudence.  “You can’t just QUIT like that.  Besides, it’s not really Ok to not be ok.  Think about it.  Do any of us truly deserve to be loved for the WHOLE of who we are?  Heaven forbid!  Is that really a fair expectation?  It’s far better if we all do our best to brush our teeth, eat more broccoli, pull up our socks, and disguise our rot as best we can.  Loving people is not about accepting them just as they are.  It’s about helping them become the best version of themselves. Ask any parent.”

“That’s a very classical, Platonic ideal of love,” I say, “where Love is the classroom in which we learn skills.  Frankly, I’m a little fed up with that. I’m done with the magical thinking of the Romantics too.  I just want to recline here by the wood stove, pretending to read a book, and cuddle this delicate baby New Year.  I want to BE with this newborn sense of possibility, of pause, of hope, of prayer, of peace.  Somehow, in this child’s hand—on a breath or bud or leaf or wing--will be borne my own Contentment.   There has been enough rushing about, enough weighing and measuring and comparing and costing.   I’m exhausted. THIS, right now, is the miracle I have been waiting for.”

“This sounds exceptionally lazy to me,” she tuts. “Maybe you are coming down with something. Maybe you need vitamins.”

I snap.

“This moment is part of this day, which is part of this year.  These are the moments that years are made of.  Years are not as long as you think. The last one slipped by like greasy spinach in a diaper.  I’m not going to let that happen to this one.”

“Surely you can think of ONE way you can improve your lot or make a contribution to society!” she nags. (I really can’t stand Prudence at this time of year.)

“Really, Pruddy…I’m fine! I’m a perfectly lovely person unless I’m tired, hungry, hot, cold, thirsty, anxious, looking for my car keys, or having to deal with people who act like People.” 

Despite my resistance and rebellion, the harsh inner voice requiring me to improve myself keeps working at me as I head back to work in my shop.  There are twenty little things I need to make.  Piece work is fairly mindless, which can be maddening, but I am grateful for it.  I call it “peace work” when it requires very little thought.  I make ten things and then make the next ten.  I tend to make things in batches of ten before moving on to the next steps, running them along under the sewing machine needles consecutively without pausing to snip the threads in between.  The “take up” (the thread required to go on one pass of the needle) is so long on my vintage machine that the needle will unthread itself if you don’t leave a long “tail” every time you cut the thread, which means that any time you start sewing something, you start by leaving a long thread at the beginning of your work.  To avoid this and conserve wasted thread, I just run things through without cutting the threads in between.  Afterwards, I do all the trimming.   Or not.  Sometimes I keep going, step after step, never trimming anything until the bitter end, when the thing starts to look like a mop-top from the 70’s who needs its bangs cut.

I do the same when I am knitting.  I leave tails all over the place to be woven in later.  It’s always a bit of a disappointment (like mile 11 on a half-marathon) to realize you have all these pesky details to get through before you are truly at the finish line.  There’s nothing like “finishing” a garment only to realize you aren’t finished at all.

 As I stand at the cutting table, snipping and searching for thread ends, it occurs to me that this “step” is going to take a while.  Little things have a way of building up when we defer them.  Had I snipped or woven as I went, this big “step” would have been diluted into something immeasurable, “no time at all,” whereas now it takes a significant moment.  Little things really do add up over the course of a day, a year, a moment.  

“I’m going to do the little things Right Away,” I announce to Prudence.  “This is going to be my growth area for the 2024. I think if I stay on top of the little things, I’ll accomplish the Big Things sooner.  I won’t need to do as much catching up later.  I’m going to stay on top of things.”

Prudence brightens considerably.  There is plenty to fault me on for later, when I have forgotten this resolution, when I get snagged by one of my forgotten threads.  But I’m going to show her!  This year, I’m really going to do it.  I’m going to the ONE SMALL CHANGE that affects all the little things.  I’m going to clip as I go—release what needs releasing—return what needs returning—and be present for all the tiny magic.   A life is not made of years; it’s made of moments. 

Prudence bites the bit hard and gallops into the future: “This is going to be great. Clean as you go! Put the feed scoop back in the grain bin instead of accidentally taking to the house with you each morning.  Tuck the cut baling twine on a hook, instead of stuffing it in your pocket when you feed sheep. Return your recycling weekly, instead of needing a trailer and half a day’s voyage to the dump to get dispose of it.  Pay those insidious highway tolls before they accrue extra fees equal to a car payment. Think of the time and twine and money you’ll save…”

I let her ramble.   I’m glad she’s happy.  She likes fussing.  I like knowing that no matter what, I am HOME— in my skin, in my heart, in my loves, in this magical place where I can act my worst and still be loved the most.  I’m not perfect and I’m just fine with that.  Lots of energetic people out there are rushing to the gyms, the workshops, the malls, the mountains to strengthen, tone, slim, or slither.  I’m contented and superbly grateful to sit quietly, holding the baby new year in my heart, wishing us all the peace, prosperity, hilarity, and humility we can handle.

Happy New Year Dear One!  May you have moments that take your breath away, moments that make you melt, moments where you enjoy a particularly good swing at a dance or belt out a chorus to your favorite song, where you inhale the dawn, the stars, the scent of mud after a thaw, the drowsy smell of low tide by the shore… May you snip all the little threads that might snag and steal your time and share the bonus moments with those you love (and even a few you don’t love).  May you be free to enjoy things sooner than ever.  And may we support each other, always, in Mending!  Thank you for reading, sharing, subscribing, and most of all—for doing your splendid, Magnificent Work!

I love you SEW MUCH!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Merry Ex-Mas!

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.” –Milton, Paradise Lost

Season’s Greetings Dear Ones!

The Solstice is TOMORROW!! Woo hoo!  Those of us in the Northern hemisphere munching vitamin D3 tablets and clinging to OTT lamps will begin our return to sanity tomorrow. “Tomorrow…Tomorrow…I love you, Tomorrow…you’re only a day away…” chortles my inner orphan Annie.  We’ve reached the outer limit of our orbit and begin the swing back tomorrow!

In my woodstove, staves of wood are bursting into flames reminiscent of the sunlight that once fed them. The logs are laid down in a series, like forks in courses for a good dinner. Fire ingredients need to be selected carefully and added in the right order. Two parallel logs of kiln dried oak go first as the foundation on the grate.  I fill the gap between with kindling and scrunched up newspaper.  Today’s paper dates from June of 2020 and the headlines are all about Covid lockdowns and toilet paper shortages.  Across the oak and the wrinkles in Time goes a little hemlock, which burns hot and fast but is too sappy to use much of. (We don’t want to create a lot of creosote in the chimney!) Above that, goes a big ax-hewn slab of Maple from a downed tree on the farm, aged and dry but with some serious weight to it. These inches of hardwood, accumulated over years, will keep us warm until noon.  

And now, with the flick of a single match, the air then paper, then wood ignite. I orbit the glow like a planet, warming my hands, with the little Jack Russell as a private moon circling my ankles. (He’s attempting to lead me off course, over to the shelf where his treats are stored.)  I stare into the fire, Learning.

A big fire starts with a little spark that gets taken up by increasingly larger and more significant pieces.  A huge piece of wood cannot reach ignition temperature without a lot of smaller combustion around it. Putting the right piece of wood on at the right time will cause it to ignite.  Putting the wrong piece will cause the whole thing to extinguish.  “I’m pretty sure Epictetus or one of the Stoics said the same thing about a piece of charcoal,” says Prudence, hasty to reassure me that I have not noticed anything new.

“Fires, like any kind of relationship, need AIR,” I tell her, wanting her to orbit elsewhere, perhaps over by the pizzelle station I have created at the other end of the kitchen.  I have set up the iron and have been cranking out anywhere from 50 to 100 a day to distribute to friends, neighbors, colleagues, and helpers in the community. “You’re distributing quite a few to your bum, tum, and thighs too,” notes Prudence disdainfully.

“Hush!” I snap at her. “How will I be able to muster enough shame on January first to make some truly Stoic resolutions if I don’t run amok first? This is an important step towards my future glory.”

Though, secretly, I was horrified to learn yesterday from my father that one recipe batch makes approximately FIFTY pizzelles. “REALLY?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure I never get 50.  That seems like an awful lot. Are you sure?”

“I counted them,” he said.  At 85, he’s still upholding the family traditions passed down from his grandparents but he’s gotten all “America’s Test Kitchen-y” about it.  He weighs things; he counts things; he measures precisely.  He’s using a postal scale instead of a chipped tea cup or his bare hands to determine how much flour to add.  He even uses a premeasured portion scoop, rather than two spoons, to apply the exact amount batter dead center in the twin bullseyes of the double iron.

I have been making these things every year for more than thirty years and had no idea that our family recipe was supposed to produce FIFTY pizzelles.  This explains a lot.

“Don’t you eat the first two because the iron isn’t hot enough yet, then the second two because you need to make sure you haven’t forgotten any ingredients, then another two because you have adjusted the salt, then another two just to be sure, then another two because these ones turned out a little too dark because you got distracted, and then another two because you are now in the business of mindlessly consuming whatever comes off the press? That’s Tradition too, you know!”  I am deeply committed to Family Traditions, though not necessarily Traditional Families.  I like ANY kind of family.

With the woodstove at one end and the pizzelle iron at the other, my kitchen is warm and redolent with the smell of a big family Christmas.  My “family” arrives Saturday.  I can’t wait.  I’ve had the table set for so long that now I need to wash the dust off the dishes.  My children are coming and so is their dad and his partner (whom I adore!) and our beloved Hermit from Hermit Hollow and perhaps a few other guests yet to be determined.

People think I am crazy to invite a former spouse. To quote Scottish comedian Billy Connelly, they think he’d be about “as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.” But I’m extremely glad to celebrate “Ex-Mas.”    To me, it represents the triumph of a different kind of Commitment than the traditional “unto death doth us part” we signed up for originally.  Now, instead of Death, we just wait for the Christmas pudding to settle before we say our tender farewells. In the ten years since we have separated, we have done an incredible amount of work to honor, respect, cherish, and admire each other in ways we did not when we were cosigning a single tax return.  Despite the eviscerating heartbreak of divorce, our friendship, our dedication to our children and our own individual integrity has not just survived but thrived.  We might not have worked much at the marriage but we’ve made up for that in creating a Good divorce.

It was not easy.  Death of a marriage is like any other death.   The loss of ideas, of dreams, of beliefs and assumptions is indescribably painful and must be accompanied by the requisite guilt, grief, and processing needed to endure, survive, and Mend. Loss cleans and changes us…sometimes for the Better.

When the court told me that we would alternate having our children for the holidays, I nodded politely but my inner pizzelle maker said “NO. This will NOT be.  I shall have Christmas…EVERY year. I SHALL.”

And, with the exception of our first Christmas apart, I have.

Through my own pure selfishness and greed, I have done whatever it takes to cajole, to heal, to mend, to entice, and delight my family into being the family I always dreamed of having for the holidays.  And, like any Good Old Fashioned Christmas Miracle, it’s worked!  I learned that Time does not heal; healing heals.  We all know that motto that “hurt people hurt people.”  Well, the reverse is true too: Healed people heal people.  Free people free people.  Lit candles light other candles (and sometimes the draperies if you are not careful). 

If your goal is Unconditional Love of yourself and others, then you need to remove the conditions you place on your love.  [You can however (and MUST) put conditions, better known as boundaries, on their behavior! It goes without saying that YOU get to decide how much swinging from the chandelier and singing of sea shanties at four in the morning should be tolerated, even if you’re the one doing it. Every pool needs a lifeguard.  Especially if pirates are nearby.] The problem with anyone who has problems is that [he/she] probably has not experienced enough Unconditional Love at a crucial point in [his/her] life. 

Throwing endless amounts of Unconditional Love at people has its consequences—especially if one does it from a calm, grounded, well-boundaried place—the way one delights in setting a beloved herd of sheep loose in a pasture with strong fences.  For those tempted to murder a current or former spouse, let me tell you—the best way to kill someone is with Kindness:  The person you once hated ceases to “be” and you get to become the person of your dreams instead of expecting someone else to do that for you. Other bonuses include no bodies to hide, no blood stains to scrub, and significantly less jail time.  (We Menders must avoid jail at all costs because they don’t allow you to knit in jail.)

And so it is.  When certain customers come into my shop and tell me they are dreading Christmas without their daughter or son-in-law, having fractured time with children or grandchildren as a result of the trauma of divorce, I tell them my story.  I tell them how my son returned from Scotland and that first Christmas without me and told me anxiously “Granddad hates you now.”  I looked him in the eye and said “Oh, Yeah??? Well, next time you see that grumpy old granddad, you just hug him and tell him his hate goes unrequited. I will love him always and ever.  Give him a great big squeeze and tell him that’s from me.” My son looked astonished, then relieved.

“Nothing shocks people who hate you more than refusing to hate them back,” I said, winking. He smiled broadly and returned my wink. He understood.  True Power is not in reacting eye for eye, grievance for grievance, hate for hate. It’s deciding that their hatred simply holds no power over you.

During one of the first Christmases together after the divorce, his father asked me, “I get it.  You don’t want to be Piglet and Pooh any more.  So, who are you now? Kanga? Owl? Ha! I’ll bet you think you are Christopher Robin.”

“No, my Dear, I’m not any of the characters in the Hundred Acre Woods,” I said quietly.  Then, in a proud and happy voice, I announced, “I am The Narrator!”  

The stories we tell about who we love and what is happening to us (or for us) matter immensely.  Ultimately, the original Christmas Story is a story of salvation that starts with an unconventional family adapting to tough circumstances, of seeking mercy in at a time of need, and of the rebirth of Hope in a dark time (with friendly sheep and oxen nearby!)

The story I am living now is a story of infinite love and forgiveness, of tolerance and patience.  It’s a story where we laugh, we learn, we weep, we try again to Mend. Divorce is not the end of a family.  It is the end of a contract.  New covenants can be made and better, cleaner, wiser promises kept.  

I tell those in the gut-wrenching aches of recent separations and betrayals that they get to decide what kind of family they want going forward.  Nothing is “over”; it all continues according to the parameters we set. Most hearts are like a storm-torn bough of hardy Vermont Maple—you need to know you can’t ignite them with a single spark.  You must crumple up all of Yesterday’s obsolete words, and make all the splinters in your soul into kindling. You pile up all the little stuff and breathe gently on it to fan the sparks.  Do the tiny things first. Little things will ignite bigger things. No act of kindness is too small.  In cases like mine, it won’t be the all-or-nothing grand gesture but the relentless accumulation of tiny acts of generosity and “good will towards man” over time that creates “A Wonderful Life.”

From our home to yours, I wish you all the love and light and cookies you can handle. On this, the longest night of the year, I hope you dream BIG of all the Love you can bring into this world. Keep Mending. Thank you for your Wonderful Work.  Thank you, for reading, sharing, subscribing.

I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

N. Jingle Bell (who grows a little more Silver with each passing year)

Tiny lights

“A candle loses nothing when it lights another candle.” —Thomas Jefferson

Season’s Greetings, Dear Ones!

A time of great Darkness is upon us… and I don’t just mean politically, emotionally, spiritually…  I mean quite literally.  Here in the Northern hemisphere, as we lean outward towards the farthest reaches of our earthly orbit, like screaming kids about to wet their pants on a tea-cup ride at the county fair, we feel the struggle between the forces of gravity (of the grave) and the outward pull of centrifugal forces making us cling every harder to whatever center we can grasp.  It’s a good ride that leaves us just a little dizzy, just a little scared, and grateful for strong kegel muscles.  The night sky descends like stage curtains of crushed velvet filled with glitter earlier and earlier each day as we hurry to do our seasonal chores, decorating, cleaning, and whatever it is we do to Prepare for whatever it is we celebrate.  Personally, I usually resent these seasonal exercises, especially if they involve shopping or cleaning.  I prefer to think of this time as a good time to hunker by a fire, hide from wolves, sleep a lot, wake occasionally to snuffle towards my pantry to snack on winter stores. It’s inner chipmunk time.  Feral women and chipmunks have no need of tinsel or glitter.

But this year, for some reason, I’m really into the spirit of Preparing.  Some folk do this by bringing in shrubbery and garlands, colored lights and ornaments.  Our beloved Hermit of Hermit Hollow and I prepare by going into the cellar and jacking up the floor joists below my kitchen.  We add a twenty-five foot beam and two lally columns.  You know, in case the Christmas crowd wants to dance without crashing into the potato bin ten feet below.  Or in case I eat so many Christmas cookies I can’t plod across the floor without all the dishes in the big hutch shuddering and clinking as I pass. (It was happening already…)  Seven hours later, the kitchen floor is now level and stable.  The future clinking of glasses will be hand-held and intentional, not the result of sagging floor joists.  And I can eat as many damn cookies as I please.  Yee-haw!

“Honestly!” huffs an exasperated Prudence.  “Stop thinking about the cookies! A little fasting and praying wouldn’t go amiss, followed by some gruel and repentance.”

I ignore her.  I am busy unpacking the Christmas china I have not used in ten years. I’m going for it!  This Christmas cottage is going to look like the set of a Hallmark movie if I have to vacuum pine needles until March.  I string up garland and lights wherever I can.   I overdose on hygge and the scent of pine.  And Candles!  Can’t have too many candles!  I light them every evening.  

As I apply a spark to each waxen stick, I think about how it is a time of lighting candles everywhere, in many faiths.   My Jewish friends are lighting Menorahs.  The Catholics are lighting Advent wreaths.  It’s a time of tiny flames and big wishes all around the world.   This is a comfort to me as I strike each match.  There is a cozy connection to each other as we individually yet collectively face the dark.  It’s a deep comfort to believe that all around a globe suffering its share of pain and tyranny, a good many of us are focusing on Mending, Miracles and Preparedness. 

Frankly, I think preparedness IS a miracle.  Having what we need, having enough to share, these are incredible blessings. (Think back to the weeks in 2020 when we thought we couldn’t buy toilet paper!)  I wander into the velvet night, down to the barn to feed the manger scene there, and ponder the stars sparkling above the lighted doorway.  Those stars are suns.  Vast, unattainable solar systems.  And yet, there is barely any light.  Up close, a candle lights more than a sun.  A candle in a car during a blizzard gives enough warmth to ward off death.  Proximity matters more than size.

In my shop, with its wall of seven foot high “e-North-mous windows”, the gloom comes just before four in the afternoon.  By five, my canine office manager and I are driving home in pitch blackness.  (He’s been urging me to go home since three thirty.) Without the light from my tiny sewing machine bulb, I would not be able to make a straight seam.  The darker it gets, the more the tiniest of light illuminates a huge area. I sit hunched in the yellow circle it provides, pondering the shadows.

The advancing holidays invite us to examine our core beliefs—

Who am I?  Am I naughty or Nice? (“Definitely Naughty!” insists Prudence.)

Who are Others? Are they deserving of our love, food, time, taxes, or homespun knitwear for which we will have to pull at least two all-nighters?  Whom do we love? Do we love them as ourselves? How can we expand our tolerance? Hint: If you are part of a religion telling you whom to hate, get out of it.  You are involved in a political movement, not salvation. 

Thirdly, what does the future bring? What awaits us round the next bend—a monster or a miracle? December has a lot in common with Life. The more negative our core beliefs, the less we will enjoy Life in general and December in particular.   Harmful core beliefs lead to low self-esteem, low other-esteem, depression, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, or the need to eat cookies until the dishes rattle.  For some, December returns us to a childlike anticipation that someday soon, Something Wonderful is coming for us.  Meanwhile, we need to “chop wood, carry water” (in my case, quite literally!), and do all kinds of boring stuff to maintain homeostasis and homeo-cheque-book but with renewed hope and optimism undaunted by the current bleakness.

The other thing about December is that every day is Numbered.  Literally.  Everywhere we look there are cute calendars with sleighs and elves and candy-cane-encrusted versions of memento mori.   They seem to say “You might as well have a piece of chocolate, you slacker.  Another day is gone forever… and YOU have not yet secured enough bargains, sent enough greeting cards, or remembered to tip your postal delivery person. You only have  x  # of days to shape up.”

“Now that I know I am not going to live forever, I can relax!” announces my friend with terminal cancer.  “I don’t have to do any of that shit anymore!”  She sounds enormously relieved and cheery.  She is looking forward to a series of visits with her dear ones, that is all.  The rest of us, under the illusions that the holidaze matters, continue creating our own tiny tornadoes of activities as core beliefs influence thoughts, thoughts influence feelings, feelings influence behaviors…   The more the pressure mounts, the more we are wired to ignore any information what-so-ever that comes into conflict with our core beliefs. I go through great lengths to hire a set of inner lawyers who affirm that I CAN knit an entire afgan in one night if I want to. They tell all the people trying to convince me otherwise that their facts are simply “wrong.”   My inner lawyer, who is fed by cookies, has decided that I also have plenty of time to make some new curtains for the dining room.

“Where, exactly, did you go to law school?” I mutter as I struggle to cut seven yards of cotton in a straight line.   “Here’s a new fact for you:  I’d rather put zippers in down ski jackets all day long than attempt to make curtains for myself. You can tell Prudence I’m chalking this up as penance!”

“I just tell you what you want to hear,” is his blithe, lip-smacking reply.

The cloth squirms under the scissors, the iron belches steam that wilts the fabric, anything cut on the bias tries to turn into a semi-circle.  I’m left with uneven rags in out-of-date Buffalo check that I drape from some cast iron hooks driven into the molding above the window.

“These look awful,” admits Prudence, surveying them critically.

“Rustic… Nice… They look plenty straight enough to me,” says the crooked inner lawyer.  “And they aren’t big enough to block out any light.”

“What kind of slap-dashery creates a curtain that doesn’t even cover the window?” Prudence wants to know.  “Facts CANNOT be manufactured by faulty core beliefs!” she shrieks at the lawyer.  She’s decided that, because they are red, they can stay up until Valetine’s day—the “curtains” that is, not the core beliefs.  It’s the rag bag for both as soon as possible.

Indeed.  

I abandon the curtain chaos to get started on a million other projects.  I start to clean the house Nancy-style—you know, by filling the washing machine with laundry but not starting it, and deciding to clean out the entire fridge while the abandoned vacuum cleaner is still running in the other room.  Christmas cards are everywhere, just waiting for me to find the list of addresses and a decent pen… I’ll save the afgan, and perhaps another homespun shawl for the last minute.  There’s plenty of Time, right?  The inner lawyer doesn’t answer.  He’s just spotted Party Girl heading for the Christmas Sherry.   Prudence is rushing off to call Santa Claus.

__________________________________________

The Light is precious these days, Dear Ones. We don’t need much of it to keep ourselves bright and cheery in our chipmunk coves. Thanks for Being a light, wherever you are Mending.  Thanks for spreading sparks of Joy.  When life is as dark as it is now—spirits at low ebb, fingers and hearts numb with the coldness that pervades—we  don’t need to be great big stars, just little candles, tiny and warm, for those who are right next to us, Waiting.  Proximity is everything.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Connected

“The meaning of life is just to be alive.  It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.” Alan Watts

Greetings Dear and Darling Ones!

There is so much to be thankful for… Rather than panicking about how my house is a mess and there is not much in the larder except all the dirty potatoes I have been digging out of the ground and the number of impending guests expecting a Thanksgiving meal in twenty four hours’ time is fluctuating between thirteen and seventeen and all those potatoes need to be scrubbed but not as much as the inside of the shower does only I need to put up a sign telling the city folks that the septic system can’t actually handle nine showers a day and those who feel comfortable doing so should definitely pee outside as often as possible…. But I can’t start on all that until a young customer gets three pairs of his grandfather’s hunting pants altered to fit him… So! As an Artful Procrastinator, I’ve decided to plop down next to a warm dog in front of a cozy fire and dilly-dally-scribble a bit about how GRATEFUL I am! (Especially for warm dogs and cozy fires)

I’m especially grateful for my dear Crust-omers—those who help me earn my daily crusts as a seamstress.  They are an endless treasure trove of inspiration and delight.  I am continually fascinated by their stories, talents, abilities, and the gifts they share with our community.  I wonder how anyone but a lucky seamstress would come across so many wonderful souls? It’s been an incredible blessing for someone who is new to the area and needing “connections.”  Always, no matter what crisis occurs, a customer will turn up in the shop who is especially skilled in that very thing!  Airline pilots who do farrier work on the side, educators, carpenters, electricians, blacksmiths, lady-entreprenuers with good accounting advice—I meet and need them all.  It’s as if the angels are sending me Helpers all the time. Through our service to one another, we become the answers to each other’s prayers.

Last week, it was a young arborist who needed a suit altered in a hurry for a friend’s wedding.  An arborist was JUST the thing I was wondering how to find! Not far from the barn, right over the new path to the meadow, was a deadly “widow-maker” where a giant cherry bough had snapped and gotten hung up in the crotch of a dead Ash tree nearby.  The bough was suspended, waiting to fall, maim or murder anyone who might pass under it, including Gus or Otie, the Jersey steer-oids who might bumble around beneath it.  It had to come down but it was about forty feet in the air and there was no way to reach it with a ladder and felling the dead tree out from under it was also potentially lethal.  I needed a Climber!

He came out last Sunday and made short work of the issue.  He was up his ropes, in his harness and pulley system with a practiced grace that had me spellbound. As he was getting his ropes organized, I asked “Aren’t you afraid to go up there?”

“Absolutely,” came the confident reply. Then he grinned impishly. “I hate heights!”

“This is a remarkable choice of work for someone who hates heights,” I said.

“Precisely,” he admitted. “I like to challenge myself. Being a tiny bit scared helps keep me extra safe.  I take nothing for granted.”

His matter-of-factness blew my mind. Within minutes, he was swinging his way higher and higher, smoothly and professionally, with a fascinating economy of movement bordering on reverence, he was above the broken bough, cutting it free. It swung loose, crashing into and splintering the dead tree holding it up, then fell and smashed one of the only sections of fence I have standing on the whole farm.

“Sorry about the fence!” he shouted from the treetop.

“No worries!” I called back, laughing unexpectedly, suddenly giddy that he was safe.  Everyone was safe. I could exhale. That limb was down.  We all will live to build another fence one day. 

Afterwards, we spend as much time in the kitchen sipping tea and coffee and telling stories as we had outside.  (He was a sociable Climber!)  His knowledge of trees and botany and Nature is vast and infused with a deep and poignant spiritual resonance.  When he talks about how to take care of all the ailing trees on my property (which have been choked with vines and neglect for many years) he uses words that convey the emotions of the trees.  “Those cherry trees are not happy,” he says. It’s true.  There is something about all the cherry trees in particular that looks listless and forlorn.  They were the first to lose their leaves and stand shivering at the edge of the meadow. He tells me about all the arboreal survival tactics they are employing and the infections they are fighting.  He can identify all the scars and stories each trunk reveals.  He can see that the damage started about forty years ago or more, probably by someone’s attempt to create a pasture around them that disturbed the delicate balance of forest mulch and fungi around their roots, which have since been clogged with grass.  Who knew that grass can compete with trees in ways that make the trees struggle? When he talks about how bacteria in the soil send signals to the tree and vise versa, his eyes light up like sparks on a brush pile. “Energetically, biochemically, it’s all connected.  It kinda blows your mind, doesn’t it?”  

“Sometimes living is just a matter of surviving,” he says. “Your cherry trees have been surviving.  Somewhere in there is a slow death but it might take another twenty years for them to succumb.  It just depends on what the load is that each one carries.”

“That’s just like US, isn’t it?” I say.

He nods thoughtfully, with a sorrow that is way too old for one who has just turned thirty.

“Yep… We think life is going to turn out a certain way and then somehow it doesn’t. Certain messages fail to translate from our roots. We get confused. We get infected with something non-lethal but non-life-promoting.  And then it becomes a matter of survival because we don’t realize we are carrying a nameless grief for The Thing That Wasn’t and all the time, The Wind is blowing and causing us to shift our balance.”

“WOW,” I say. “That pretty much sums up being a Seamstress, being a farmer, being a parent, being in any kind of relationship at all!  It’s like that Instagram post that says ‘I used to think adulthood was one crisis after another. I was wrong. Multiple crises. Concurrently. All at once. All the time. Forever.’ They are all interconnected and related.”

He smiles ruefully and stares at the fire in the woodstove. We sit in shared silence for a few moments.

“Thanks for talking about this,” he says. “I think about these things but it’s hard to find people who share these ideas.  I look around at the world today and shake my head. It’s not the world I thought I would be living in when I was a kid.  I assumed things would be different.  The biggest problem is that other people don’t see how Connected everything is.  Everything we do has a direct impact on something else.”

“I know,” I say. “When I want the front of a jacket to fit someone better, I take in the back. Front and back are connected, as are left and right. You can’t take a bit out of one side of a circle without making the whole circle smaller.”

He grins. “That reminds me… my suit is now a tiny bit too tight! I didn’t want to mention it.”

“Bring it back!” I cry, as we say farewells.

I will feast on that conversation like a homemade pumpkin pie in the weeks ahead. He’s made me think. He’s made me feel. He’s reminded me how the most miraculous things are hidden right around us in the mundane, the ordinary, things so utterly accessible they become invisible.  His youth, his skill, his enthusiasm for knowledge in general and his passion for trees in particular inspire me.  My love of trees has no vocabulary. His does.  It’s fun to listen to him. In daylight, I smile with motherly fondness at his attempts to unify his painful disillusionment and his joyful, idealistic determination and mold them into a meaningful vocation for himself.  But at night, in the bleak wee hours of the morning, I am not so wise. The youngest part of me shares the ache he articulated so beautifully--of that Grief for the things that remain intangible, Unfinished.  There is nothing so painful on this earth as a tree or life or Love which has been denied its flourishing and exists merely in survival mode.  In a world torn apart by ignorance, we all share in the sorrow of things that “Shouldn’t Be” and sense the absence of the glory of things that “should.”

How can we fix this?

What is Love, truly, but the recognition of Connection?

EVERYTHING is connected. In a world constantly delivering both expectations and limitations, communication is only half the battle. Comprehension is the key.  We can communicate all we want, but if someone is capable of understanding, it’s just chaos—like the customer who dropped off a pair of pants with the attached note: “take out at the wast.”  I keep thinking of the phrase “to Know is to Love.” Loving and Knowing are as much in partnership as Loving and Serving.

I had another great conversation with a customer who is an electrical engineer.  “All energy derives from polarity,” says he.  Indeed—as profoundly evidenced by the state of our Nation! (From him I also learn that unplugging something is not the same thing as turning it off but that is a subject for a later date.) Our differences are both connective and explosive, useful or destructive, depending on how we harness that energy.

So how do we make the Connections? How do we ground the energy and use it productively? How do we use the beauty and mystery of existence as an endless source of vitality and renewal?

Gratitude.

Gratitude is the magic sauce that puts us in touch with the things that truly have value to us and helps us relinquish that which does not have that much value at all. We all find ourselves caught up in a frantic race for external recognition, relentless achievement, and Black Friday bargains, but the true essence of our lives is right here, right now. The sheer act of being alive is a miraculous gift. There is richness in each breath, each pulse, each experience, each precious moment of Connection. Sometimes we take things too seriously. 

Maybe for a sacred moment we can choose joy and amusement, rather than the  rat race spurred on by capitolism… Maybe on Friday, instead of rushing to the mall to clobber our fellow citizens who are competing for gimmicks and gadgets the way grass competes for micronutrients, we can rebel… we can claim our own Authenticity and look with clear eyes at the scars on a tree, a friendship, a country, or that weird uncle who isn’t going to vote the way you are in the upcoming election cycle. We can witness suffering and still find space for Gratitude.  We can appreciate the profound simplicity of being alive.

We are not just casual observers. We are pivotal and causal. We are an integral part of the ongoing voyage of discovery and expansion the entire universe is taking with itself.  Gratitude puts me in touch with Faith—faith that we can see this through, that there is always enough, if we share.  (I just found out one more is joining us for dinner tomorrow…)

Well… I’ve made this essay as long as possible in order to stave off the scrubbing of floors and potatoes. Alas, too long.  I hope you get a quiet moment to savor your own private Gratitude and the magnificent Work you do in Mending. I am thankful you are here.

With Sew Much Gratitude,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Casting Off

Greetings Dear Ones!

My life is so full of sparkles at this moment you’d think it was Prom Season.  It’s not.  It’s the dew in hard frost on the grass.  Some of it has blown like dust when you shake a carpet and landed in the sky.  The stars caught in the black blanket are so low, I see them through the tree trunks.  It’s cold and dark here in the Northeast of America—a splendid time for Hunkering.

“Pay the bills and say no to the invitations!” I announce to no one in particular.  It’s one of my favorite lines delivered by Rex Harrison as Henry Higgons in the movie version of “My Fair Lady.”  He says it to Mrs. Pearce, the housekeeper, with an air of crisp indifference as she tries to hand him the morning post.  For some reason, it has stuck with me for all these years.  It’s a throwaway line, hardly significant, but to me it represents the giddy heights of the “middle class” opulence he represents.  He can afford to pay his bills.  He can afford to say NO to invitations. It’s the stuff movies and dreams are made of.

I try to explain November to the sheep.

“No What?” asks Prim.

“No Cookies?” worry Festus, Fern, and Fergus—the spring lambs who have just discovered the joys of stale oatcakes.

“No, sillies!  November.  It’s November!” I laugh.

“What’s a Vember?” they want to know.

“Well, I’m not sure what a Vember is, but an EMBER is the part of the fire you sit next to late in the evening when you knit other people presents.  It’s nice and warm. It’s the end of the fire.”

“So November means the end of the fire?” they ask.

“No… I’m pretty sure November means nine, from the Latin novem, because it used to be the ninth month.  Now, it’s the eleventh month, but for me, it’s the beginning of the fire season… A few sticks of wood at a time keep my little house snug and cozy. I get up and light the wood stove in the morning and I bank it and fill it for the night before I go to bed, ending my days and beginning the mornings with embers and ash.”

“Our wool keeps us snug and cozy,” says little Flora smugly.   All the lambs have dense fleeces now, with what seems like extra up around their necks and cheeks. 

“I know,” I say. “It keeps me warm too.  I’ve been knitting your mamas’ wool from last year into beautiful shawls that keep my lap warm as I knit.”

“What happens to the fire when it turns to ash?” they want to know.

“I take the ashes out to the blueberry patch and spread them around the roots of the bushes.”

“To keep them warm?” asks Prim.

“No,” I say.  “To help them grow.  The wood ashes sweeten the soil and help the blueberries flourish.  Every ending helps something new to grow if you use it properly.”

“Sweet soil reminds me of cookies,” says Willoughby, snuffling through my pockets.

“Sweet soil is good for blueberries and anything else that likes lime and potassium.”

“I’m using this November to Say NO to as many things as I can—except paying bills, of course.  I’m saying No to all the things that do not bring me Joy (like obsessing over how those in politics are behaving) and instead trying to do small, good things each day.  I’m trying to do one comforting thing and one hard thing.”

“We only like comforting things,” say all the sheep together, “like eating as much of our supper as we can and lying down and taking a nap in the rest.”

“I think I could safely say the same thing about myself and a bowl of mashed potatoes,” I admit.  For weeks now, I have been digging up a day’s worth of poo-tatoes from my former manure pile, scrubbing them THOUROUGHLY, then making a comforting supper by roasting them and slathering them with butter, beans, cheese… They are the BEST!

“There are so many circles you tread,” observes Prim, who is the sharpest of the bunch.  “The circle of the old ashes to the new blueberry, the cow poo to the potato…”

“You’re right!” I say.  “And Circles look like the letter ‘O’—N’s O’s!  Nancy’s No’s.  I need to say no to a lot of things right now in order to say YES to the things that are important—like keeping these circles going.”

“We need time to rest,” says Molly, yawning.  “You can’t run the circles.  Maybe you could walk them.”

I agree and turn out their light. 

NO-vember is a great time to slow down.  Savor. Simmer.  It’s an exciting time to be Casting Off. Yesterday, I cast off on two different shawls I had been accidentally knitting concurrently.  I’d started one last year and misplaced it—thankfully not between the seat cushions of the couch where it could have damaged someone!  The other one I have been spinning and knitting almost non-stop for the past fortnight.  It “got into my head” and the only way to get it out was to put several hours a day into it.  I couldn’t wait to see what it looked like. 

Finishing it was such a joy!  Sometimes I like a project to last a long time.  It becomes a companion of sorts that I drag with me like a disgruntled spouse to places I don’t want to be—like waiting rooms, dull visits, long car journeys where someone else is driving.  Other times, it’s a rush to help something twist itself into being beneath my hurrying fingers.  Yesterday, I finished both sort of projects.  I ended two “relationships.”   There is deep Satisfaction in seeing something Completed. It’s a funny sort of drug that makes me start immediately another project whose fate is yet unknown.  Will it be a quick flame? Or a slow burn?  Will it get lost in the couch only to have me sit on it later?

If only we could finish all of our relationships in such neat and tidy stitches, with bound off edges and pleasing boundaries.  As I slip the loops across the needles and into their final resting places, I get lost in the reverie about what it means to “Cast Off.”  It has both pleasing and painful connotations.

In knitting, Casting Off is when one takes the stitches off the needle by looping each one over the next until only one loop is left.  Then you draw the end of the yarn through that last loop, snug it closed, and weave that bit of yarn into the edge where no one will see it.  Casting Off can be used as a falconry term—to send a bird of prey soaring.  Who knows where these shawls will go and what they will see from new vantage points?

Casting Off is also the discarding of something unwanted or undesirable.  It’s time to let go of the things we were trying to force into being that have not worked out.  It’s ok to hunker, to comfort, to work small stitches every day to envision ourselves in new ways.  No-vember is saying NO to the things to all that has temporarily defeated us.  It’s time to clear out the clutter that is occupying space we need. 

I had the pompous, middle-class audacity of Henry Higgons to say ‘No’ to several jobs this week and it felt amazing.  One was a leather job I literally could not do. I apologized politely and told the truth.  I could not put a new zipper in a pair of boots.  The boot would not fit under my sewing machine and the leather was too stiff for a regular sewing needle. Another outfit contacted me and wanted me to do bulk repairs at wholesale prices—which translates kind of as “do all the things you normally do but for way less money and we’d like priority service.”  No, thank you kindly. Ain’t nobody got time for that right now.

A friend asked me to make about 200 small bags for her.  I said yes, made a few and then regretted it, as they were a lot more work than they first appeared. I confessed to her that I could not match the price she had been paying someone else.  That other woman was probably seriously undervaluing her time, which may be why she stopped doing them… I told her I was not able to create these bags alone, in her desired time frame, within her desired budget.  BUT!  I was willing to work with her, collaboratively, and do them together.  She agreed.   So last night, her husband brought us pizza and salads and we worked together, cranking out forty completed bags and starting another forty.  We developed a great system of steps and utilized each other’s native skills (I was faster at pinning and sewing; she was good at cutting and measuring.)  And we had a blast!  We laughed and chatted.  We can’t wait to work together again.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how that “No” turned out.  

Casting Off also means to set a boat free from its moorings to begin a new journey.  I have set my shawls and myself free!  We are now at liberty to drift downstream on the currents, wherever Life sweeps us to be wrapped up around projects, or shoulders, and small creatures and Jack Russells seeking warmth.  Yes-es are No-s; No-s are yes-es. Ashes are sweeteners. Poo-tatoes taste Great.  In the quiet, sparkling darkness, great Magic is happening.

Keep cycling and circling, collaborating and celebrating, Dear Ones! Happy No-Vember! “Pay the bills and say No to the invitations!” Go fabulously fallow for a bit and knit.  Great things will come of it! Thanks for all the Mending and the Good Work you do.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

The Mirror IS the Costume

Greetings Dear Ones!

“A pinch and a punch for the first of the month!  White rabbit! No returns!” and all that lovely nonsense.  Something silver is fluttering down from the sky so softly and slowly I can’t quite make out what it is—Regrets?  Discarded prayers? River Mist tightens its fists.  Dear God… it’s SNOW.  It’s Snow-vember in Vermont. It’s so faint—it’s more like cascading frost—Winter’s calling card. She’ll be back any minute. It’s time to gather in the pots of herbs and drain the garden hoses—not one of which I actually used during the rainiest summer Vermont has seen in seventy-five years.

Last night was Halloween—All Hallow’s Eve.  As a grownup (most of the time, anyway) who reads the news, I can tell you that the Dark is not what we need to fear; the scariest things are happening in broad daylight.  I sat by my fireside, peacefully working my way through a basket full of Sheltand roving on the spinning wheel and a nearby bowl of milk duds—you know, for all those trick-or-treaters who might wander up and down several dirt roads to my darkened dwelling in the forest.  The solitude was as sweet as the milk duds.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” asks Prudence when she sees this.

“I’m finding myself,” I mutter through teeth glued together with toffee. “This is what self-care looks like to me tonight.”

“Humph… It looks to me like you are losing yourself,” she huffs, “and when you return, you are going to find a whole lot more of yourself that nobody asked for.”

I awake this morning with the ancient stoic Marcus Arelius standing beside the bed again.   Prudence, the inner critic, is beside him, looking smug. She summoned him. He looks irritated.

“Get up,” he says curtly. “I’m here to remind you to be Noble.  You are going to die.  Everyone you know is going to die. Life is grossly unfair and you need to make the Best of this as if, simultaneously, None of it matters and All of it matters.” Behind Prudence, lurking in the shadows is a hot guy, gently flaring his nostrils and gazing into the distance in a bored way.  I have seen him before, albeit only from a distance. I’ve been desperate to get his number for years. 

“Get up!” announces Marcus. “Accept the things to which Fate binds you, and love the people with whom Fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

“Who’s your hot friend?” I whisper out of the side of mouth as I quickly stuff my feet into slippers and don a sweatshirt.  I take a sideways glance at Hot Guy’s rippling physique and hastily shuck the sweatshirt and grab for a pretty robe instead, trying to look as alluring as one who’s hair looks like a mass of cobwebs dumped out of a shop-Vac can possibly look.  

“Him? Oh, that’s Self Discipline. Everyone is always lusting after Self-Discipline. You might as well put that barn sweatshirt back on,” says Marcus. “You’re not his type. He’s got a partner already.”

“Who???” I ask breathlessly.

“Self-Love.”

Even Prudence looks disappointed.

“What?!” I say in disbelief. “Self-Love? Yikes.  I hear Self Love is pretty ugly.  Why is a hot guy like that going out with Self Love?”

“Self Love is not about looks—she’s all about Feels. Trust me, no one can make you feel quite like Self-Love,” says Marcus. “No one.  Self Love offers a Sweetness, a Kindness, an Acceptance of All Things with Grace and Humor that can hook any partner for life.  No one in a relationship with true Self Love will ever leave to seek another. She makes Self Discipline willing to do anything for her.”

“Our friend here doesn’t need Self-Love,” says Prudence eyeing me balefully. “She’s already eaten every last Milk dud in the house. She needs Self-Discipline.”

“It’s true,” I admit boldly. “I’ve been longing to make his acquaintance for years!  I have an attic to clean, a book to write, cattle to train, people to please…. I’m overwhelmed and I know he could help me.  If nothing else, he could help my jeans fit again. Please, introduce me.”

“He doesn’t go anywhere without his partner, Self-Love.  You will have to meet both together or not at all.” 

I peer into the shadows, searching, but Self Discipline is gone. 

So I get up, watch a bunch of crap on YouTube, Avoidantly knit half a skein of homespun yarn into a shawl, do NOT go for a run, or clean anything, or practice anything, or improve anything, or write anything. I briefly consider brushing the parts of my body that need it most, starting with hair and teeth, but can’t be bothered.  No amount of shameful glaring from Prudence makes my arse any less comfy so I don’t get off it.

Halloween is over but most of the people I know will keep wearing costumes, including me.  Briefly, I wonder what kind of costume Self Love wears when she goes out. And Why am I searching after Self Love and her hot boyfriend anyway, when I cannot even find my self these days.  I feel splatted—shattered into a thousand pieces lately—by news, by loss, by disgust with myself over how I have been showing up with those I care for and about.  Parts of me are stuck inside my own head in the coils of disparaging thought loops.  I am shaming myself for Failing, then for apologizing way too much until the other people involved have no responsibility to share in the mistakes we make together.  Poor attempts to smooth a situation over, to gulp down all the blame before others can taste their share, creates a very bad taste in my mouth over time—a taste NOT enhanced by Milk Duds.  

I’ve decided to live as a hermit.  I’m just not good at People.  

When I am around people “on the outside,” I tend to get lost—to absorb their energies, thoughts, feelings and forgo my own.  I lose sight of where someone else stops and where I begin.  It all gets mixed up. I know…it’s from wearing my costume too often. I’m like that five-year-old who wants to be Buzz Lightyear all year long.

What is my costume, you ask?  Simple.  It’s a mirror--A perfect metaphor for a seamstress, don’t you think? My costume has always been a mirror—showing others what they want to see.  I learned early in life, long before I could sew, that “My Best Self” is not really myself at all. It’s definitely Someone Else.  I suspect that most of us “Menders” masquerade as mirrors more often than we like to admit.  We use the mirrors elders and peers hold up around us so that we can be accepted, so that we can figure out what we hold to be true.  As children, we have absolutely no idea what we believe or think.  We try other peoples’ thoughts, dreams and values on for size like bargain thrift store finds—we look in their mirrors to see if WE fit, not the clothes.  I left home at seventeen not knowing exactly who I was, other than an actress who could wear the costumes, play the roles, recite the lines. (It turns out I can play almost any role except that of a decent Math student.)

Over time, as we grow, we become mirrors ourselves as people seek us out to give them comfort and Presence and a view of themselves that they can see is loveable, acceptable, worthy.  I wanted that so much for myself, that I dedicated my life’s efforts to being that for others. When I was younger, I wasn’t even sure there was anything behind the mirror I was holding up to the world.  I just wanted everyone to smile more.

But mirrors are Heavy.

Once, a very Good fellow mirror described her situation: “It’s a lonely gift. No one listens to you.  No one cares who you are. No one checks in with you to see how you feel about things.  Those who spend their days helping others discover a deep loneliness.  People don’t come to you to see YOU, they come to see themselves. There are days I feel I do not exist, because I don’t.  I need to cease existing in order to help others.  The minute they see me, I lose my effectiveness in showing them themselves. That’s how we get lost.”

Ooof.

I put my mirror down, lean it against the wall, and peer into it. There is something Ugly there.  I don’t want to see it. I squint my eyes.  I see a six-year-old, sitting outside the principal’s office at school. She is picking at a hangnail on her thumb as if, if she can just find the right start, she’ll be able to unravel herself like some bad knitting and just disappear.  Her teacher has told everyone she is a liar. She has no idea that in six months, this teacher will be in a mental institution for her abuse of children.  By then, the little girl will have been sent to Catholic School in the hopes that Good Discipline will help her stop “lying.”  There is another little girl who is new at school for the fifth time in eight years. She is confused because a crowd has gathered to watch her drink her milk at lunch time.  Unbeknownst to her, a “popular” girl has put garlic powder in it and summoned all the popular kids so that they can laugh at her as she takes a sip.  The little girl doesn’t know why they are laughing, why they are being mean, why she has no friends.  She refuses to cry, saving her tears for later.  She makes it her job to study People, to figure out their needs before they even know what those needs might be, so that maybe she can earn a place in their vicious tribe.  She knows she will never truly Belong and that “being of service” will be the best she can do.

Out they come, one by one, these shy, tiny, sensitive, sensitive girls.  The ones with haircuts so bad strangers sent them to the men’s room to pee. The ones not chosen for dodgeball.  The one who spent a whole summer training a horse and winning its trust only to have its owner sell it for meat.  Over and over they have been told to “toughen up,” but they can’t.  A priest who has been molesting her classmates tells a young girl she just has to “have Faith.”

These misfits form a line, standing behind each other in a row of ascending size, eyes clicked together at the same spot.  One set of eyes, staring up at me through the glass.  So much ugliness.  So much shame.  A tear drops onto the glass… a droplet that appears to be shared on both sides races itself to the bottom. The eyes look more beautiful now. They smile.  Behind them, I see Her.

She wraps her arms around them all, all those lost and frightened little girls, and holds them until they melt into her and disappear.  She looks steadily back at me through their eyes—a grown-up with chin hairs, scars and wildly unmanageable hair.  In her, the eyes of the children shine brightly. She is fiercely Kind.  She smiles at me in a way that feels like Summertime, when school’s out. I am stunned by her Beauty.

“They are all Loveable, Worthy, and Enough.  And so are you,” she says.  “Ok, so you fail occasionally.  WE ALL DO.  Sometimes we fail catastrophically.  Stand by these failures in order to recognize your successes.  You’ve been looking to reclaim yourself in the barn, in the fiddle, the thimble, the spinning wheel—through the Embodiment of Being in treasured tasks… As you collect yourself like a bunch of wild flowers, don’t forget to search amongst your failures. The prettiest roses are amongst the thorns.”

 “You can learn to trust,” she said. “Not everybody wants to love you. And that’s ok. Those who DO will want to do the work of understanding you.  To love, you must be vulnerable; you must agree to be seen.  You must look IN the Mirror, not out from behind it. That is a terrifying and exhilarating proposition. There is nothing quite like the feeling of being SEEN. To have someone come back for more because they love what they see is among the peak experiences of human existence. Halloween is Over. It’s time to drop the costume.”

“Hey there,” says Self Discipline, sneaking up behind me, tapping me on the shoulder and handing me a glass of water, “What do you say, you and me hit the gym today?”

Self Love winks at me and blows us both a kiss.

Keep Mending Dear Ones!

With Sew Much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy

Pumpkin Soup

“You will know you’ve found that place when you are aligned with a purpose that makes you come alive, when you feel Harmony between your Great Hunger and the needs of others.” –Dr. Tererai Trent, The Awakened Woman

Greetings Dear Ones!

Well, we’ve reached that blessed time of year in Vermont where we are free to wear our flannel pajamas underneath our clothes and no one knows the difference.   The days have been a mix of “jacket, no jacket, yes, jacket” and you might need a warm hat at one end or wool socks at the other but not both.  The tree colors seem a little subdued but still glorious.  There has been talk of a bear sighting in my neighborhood.  According to 2022 data, Vermont has the most black bears it’s had in five years.  Like me, they are eating all the summer leftovers they can get their paws on and getting ready for winter, though they have less firewood to stack.

Last weekend, I had the joyous and exhausting privilege of feeding 120-ish musicians for four days during the Boston States Fiddle Camp at their new home at Potash Hill in Marlboro, Vermont.  It was a good excuse to dig up seventy pounds of homegrown potatoes for home fries (that were genuinely from HOME) and to use a few of my rogue pumpkins in soups.  The pumpkins had sprouted from the compost pile, unplanned, unplanted, welcome but not invited—kind of like those people who show up to help you before you even know you need help and wind up being extremely useful.  I sliced them in half (the pumpkins, that is, not the people), stuffed them with cherry tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and fresh thyme from the garden and roasted them very slowly in the oven until I could scoop out the soft, creamy flesh and puree it into a soup base.  I added white beans that had soaked overnight and some spices and had a very nice vegan soup.  In every way, the rogue pumpkins were a nourishing bonus.

The summer weather was such that some of the things I planted and worked hard at drowned or died and things I never planted thrived. My tomatoes were a disaster.  I had a bumper crop of blueberries but couldn’t find the time to harvest them so the birds got them. There were pears but no apples or peaches due to untimely spring frosts.  Is it not so with Dreams?  As I look at back at past harvests in the Garden of Life, I see patterns of struggle that just led to disappointment, abundance that led to waste, and yet the places where “one thing led to another…then another…” became unexpected Blessings where my hungers were satisfied.  Suddenly, I find that cooking at a fiddle camp or running a tailoring shop are the best, most nourishing things I have ever done.   Why do otherwise sensible people hire me to cook for their music camps when I have no such training?  Why am I running a tailoring shop?  I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t part of my plan when I left college with an English degree, a passion for 18th century literature, and a desire to wear tweed every day.  But here I am. A rogue pumpkin seed.  I fell into a pile of shit and I bloomed.  Nourishing others has become my Hunger. (That, and making sure their pants don’t fall down.)

Blooming, as well you know, can make one look like a Blooming Idiot at times.  Such pain in the midst of “spiritual growth” is not insignificant.  My temperament does not come equipped with a lot of what I call “Decision juice.” I love to dream. I have great visions.  I can be people oriented OR task oriented but this requires a LOT of solitude or support in order to function around distractions.  Put me in busy kitchen for fifteen hours a day where I am constantly bombarded with questions, demands, and queries when all the time I am wondering where the hell I last saw the garlic and… well… let’s just admit that I am no longer operating at my Highest and Best. 

I was out of decision juice by 7:am when someone came in and dumped all the freshly brewed coffee and we could not locate more filters. Do I go to the store? Send someone else? Call the manager of the camp and see if they have any? Or just quietly go lie down in traffic? Only there isn’t any. It’s Vermont.  Luckily, I couldn’t decide so I just kept cooking and someone else figured it out. I normally have a vast Vat of Patience but even that was running dry by the time someone said “All the things on the buffet table say ‘vegan’ do you have anything for vegetarians?”

“To put it mildly, if your soul was a pizza, and sins were toppings, your dough would be buried in anchovies,” says Prudence, my inner critic.

Luckily, my house-sitter canceled on me so I was forced to commute home each night to do chores, which always helps reset my cogs.  (Everything is always working out for the highest and best!) Forty-five minutes of sitting in silence was unexpectedly healing.  I arrived home numb and calm, went in the house to tend to the dog then returned to the garage to head to the barn.

That’s when I saw them.

Bear tracks!  IN MY GARAGE!  Wet bear foot prints on the cardboard walkway leading to my door!  I was suddenly wide awake. I looked around the garage.  I could not see the bear but the tracks were unmistakable. I could see the heel, the toes, the claws very clearly. It seemed like a smallish bear—probably an adolescent. I panicked and ran to the barn.  Everything was calm there.  I fed and watered everyone and returned to the house. I peered inside the garage.  THERE WERE MORE TRACKS!  I gulped and shivered.  Where was my phone? Whom should I call? Everyone I knew who might be Useful was at camp. 

I bolted to the door, slammed it, and looked out the window at the tracks. There were even more now!  Heaven help me! What was I going to DO??? Wait… MORE tracks? I looked down at the running shoes I was wearing. From the top, they look like normal white trainers. I lifted a foot and checked the tread. Yep…  I’d found my “bear.”  These shoes, a gift from my ace marathon-running daughter, were fancy Barefoot shoes that left a trademark “foot print.”  Who knew?  Late at night, alone in my garage, I was living a scene straight out of Winnie The Pooh, when Pooh and Piglet find tracks in the woods and decide the heffalumps are after them.

So…This Bear…was a middle-aged woman with a high degree of imagination and very little Brain. 

“It’s too bad you didn’t have my vintage Winchester to hand—you could have shot yourself in the foot!” said my dad, later when he heard the tale.

The moral of that story is all too familiar: As Taylor Swift sings it, “It’s me—hi, I’m the problem, it’s me!”  I am the monster on the hill, slowly lurching towards your favorite city.  No wonder my Instagram algorithm fills my feed with images of feral menopausal women who grow lots of herbs, live in the woods, and alarm the townsfolk. The tracks that lead to my door—the footprints I leave in my wake—these are the tracks of a monster.  To turn and face them is to feel genuine terror.  And Relief.  And uncontrollable, side-splitting, chortle-snorting Glee.  Carl Jung and Prudence nod from the shadows.

It’s ME. I’m the problem. It’s ME. Whew… (And also, “Oh NO!”)

I think of my dear friend, now home from her ordeal of brain surgery, who tells me she can walk just fine if she uses her hands.
“Your hands?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says happily, as if this is a great new development. “All I have to do is make sure I have something to hold on to. I reach forward, touch what is solid, use a hand rail or a walker, and I am just fine.”

I tell her the story of my “bear tracks.”  She laughs. 

“It’s a mistake to look back too much,” she says. “Reach forward.  Stop running. Steady yourself. You’ll be fine too.”

On my last ride home from the camp, I think about all I have experienced and shared in the space of four enormously short days.  I go to the scenes that warmed my heart the most:  There’s little ginger-haired pixie, knee-high to a grasshopper, helping in the kitchen at the dish rack.  Her favorite thing to do is to follow her big sister and put things away.  The whole world is one fantastic Puzzle and she holds each piece carefully in her hands and she looks and looks until she finds out where it belongs.  When she cannot reach, someone helps her and she claps and beams, then dashes off to get another piece of the puzzle from the drying rack.  Soon, she will know where Everything Goes. (Someone should put her in charge of coffee filters next year!)

There is the gentle dispute I overhear between two young people in their twenties about whether a tune is Irish or Scottish, whether it requires ornaments on the down or up bows.  Traditions matter to them.  They want to get it right.  It is to these we pass The Torch and they are fully invested, right up to the full measure of adorable, petty, persnickety-ish-ness. I look at them and if I blur my vision just a little, I can see them when they are eighty.  Someone else will stir the soup then.   

There is the “dance” where more people are playing in the band than dancing in the hall. There is the joy, the Harmony, the laughter sparkling from every face.  And through it all…swelling and filling every heart and crevice…is the Music.  We are here to live and breathe and play and Serve the Music.  Gluten free, fat free, sugar free, dairy free, calorie free—it’s the ultimate Nourishment.

Hopefully, having such reverence for our own culture will give us the imagination and compassion to value everyone’s rights to such customs, music, dance, food and communal rituals of celebration.  It is in these precious circles that we find a Home amongst the Home fries—whether we be Unplanned Pumpkins or tearstained monsters in disguise.  We all belong.  We all have our special place in the tribe.  Ask the Ginger-haired girl.  It’s true.  

If we walk forward on our monster feet and use our outstretched hands—reaching, touching, cooking, sewing, writing, holding, dancing, playing music, grasping on to one another, we’ll be fine. I know we will.

And there will be soup for dinner!

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Reluctance

When to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

 –Robert Frost, “Reluctance”

Greetings Dear Ones!

All day long yesterday, I wanted to write to you but the day slithered out of its corner and dragged me around the pen a few times, like the big strong lambs I was trying to vaccinate.  First, there was an “emergency” wedding suit to alter for a man who is leaving town today, then the vet came and there were oxen toenails to trim, ram lambs to castrate before the colder nights made them feel too amorous towards their aunts and mothers, and the entire flock to vaccinate for rabies.   Just after lunch, there was a moving communal tribute, “a celebration of life,” to a beloved Boston Irish Music icon to attend via an online link with fellow mourners who could not attend in person.  At some point, I learned that my dearest shepherdess friend, whom I speak to daily, collapsed and had to be taken in to hospital for urgent brain surgery tomorrow.  They have discovered a tumor.

And of course, there is all ‘the world news’—the horrors of Ukraine and Isreal and our hobbled Congress  to fret over and worry about. 

From the little dog in my lap (who is in progressive congestive heart failure), to the ever-widening circles of home, family, community, world, there are endless opportunities to choose--fear or gratitude?  Pity or prayer?  Action or acceptance?  What can be changed? What cannot be changed? What is the difference?

At moments like this, my favorite thing to do is Nothing.  I can do Nothing with the best of them.  I also happen to have one of those amazingly comfortable bums, like Lori Chapman, who says: “I like nothing more in the world than sitting on my ass doing nothing. And it’s not my fault I have this attitude because I happen to have an amazingly comfortable ass.  It may not look like much, but if you could sit on this baby for two minutes, you’d realize that getting off this ass would be a crime against nature.”

But sitting on my bum gets pretty hard sometimes, especially when I hear a certain kind of knocking at the door.  I know exactly who it is, so I run. I do not want to answer that door.

I run to the field, which is littered with stones, and fill wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow with rocks the size of fists and drag them to the edge of the roadway.  I rake. I sweep. I shovel.  I go to war against the brambles.   I run to the barn and clean it.  I run to the shop and get swept up in deadlines and projects.  I run errands.  Then I just run…on a treadmill…in the basement…going nowhere as fast as I can…while lives and eras end above me.

I go to the sheep pen, finally, and sit (on my comfortable arse) near one of the recovering rams.  In the silence, we all hear the knocking, even louder now.

“Who’s knocking?” asks Prim.

“An old friend of mine,” I say. “She’s horrible.  I came here to hide from her. Don’t let her in.”

The older sheep nod and keep munching.

“Please,” says the friend, “let me in.”

“Who is she? What is her name?” the ewe lambs wonder.  They have never met her.

“I think I know who she is…she’s that vet, right?” says Fergus, shifting uncomfortably and laying his head on my leg.

“No, it’s not the vet,” I tell him, stroking his ears.

“Who is it then?”

“Grief.”

“Please,” she says, “Let me in.  You know I will just keep chasing you.  I always find you in the end.”

 In the presence of the lambs, I decide to let her in.

Gently, she sits down beside me.

“I don’t like our little visits,” I confess. “They are too sad.”

“I know,” she soothes, “you and your inner party girl don’t have time for this.”

“It’s just that I’m so happy until you show up—I’m excited about planting bulbs in the garden, harvesting pumpkins, all the changes around the farm in autumn—and then you ruin everything.  You remind me that we are all just struggle-trudging towards death.  Party-girl and I think you are a real stinker.”

Grief giggles, smiles at me fondly.

“I love you so much,” she says sincerely. “I’m here to give you the medicine you need to help you grow.”

“Have you seen my ass lately?” I ask petulantly. “I don’t need to grow anymore! My clothes don’t fit as it is.”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” she admonishes gently. “You know the drill.  Get on with it. You know you are always grateful in the end.”

She takes me in her arms and I let her. In the darkness behind eyes slammed shut, I feel something like angel wings enfold us both.   Then the eyelids begin to leak.  First, the salty drops trickle down my cheeks.  Then they seep into my soul—drip, drip, wash, flush.  A torrent cleanses away everything that is Not Important.  Away on the stream go thoughts of chores and petty grievances.  I release that woman who thinks she needs to get everything done yesterday.  I release all desire for material wealth and pleasure and bargain farm equipment on Craigslist. I release thoughts of food and panic about how many people my septic system can handle at Thanksgiving.  Prudence Thimbleton (my harsh inner critic), who has been nagging me about the daffodils, grabs a life preserves and gets swept away in the flood.  I notice, as she goes, that her tight hair bun is askew and her Victorian swimwear is making it hard for her to stay afloat.  I smile.  It feels good to clean out a soul’s closets.
“I am all the Love that is not finished yet,” says Grief, stroking my hair. “Feel that Love.  It’s never gone.  I am here to help you transform it.  That man in Boston, who died…he is not gone.  He lit a flame in all the hearts of those who knew him whose job it now is to keep the music going.   His energy returns in those who play, those who cherish, those who promote and teach and share as humbly and enthusiasticaly as he did.  He is not gone but merely transformed—splintered into the hearts of all those who loved him and what he did. As long as anyone remembers him, and even after, he will remain.  He has left a mark not easily removed.”

“But what if none of us is as good as he was?  There will never be another like him.”

“Celebrate that,” she says. “What a gift!  Honor that someone triumphed in that way.  And try to do a little better in your own life.  Become the Love that feels “missing.”

“But my friend…” I gurgle. I can’t speak any more, as I think of her in a hospital bed…alone…facing brain surgery.

“Your friend and you have shown each other dear and loving companionship and playful co-collaboration.  Your relationship will never end until you are both done being an influence on each other, until all you have taught each other is complete. Change is always changing but Love isn’t.”

“Does that go for my relationships that have failed as well?” I sob.  “Does it apply to those painful places where I still feel so ashamed, abandoned, and misunderstood? Where I have walked away and ended things because of overwhelming disappointment and fear?”

“Of course,” says Good Grief, “Of course.  Just keep looking, learning, softening, opening.  I will hollow you and help you carve out new capacities for compassion and understanding.  You will grow deeper, stronger, wiser.  You will do better next time.  Let what hurts hurt.  Get to know it fully.”

“But my little dog…” I sputter. “How can I ever be happy again without this dear little companion to keep home and shop with me? I can’t bear the thought of losing him…”

“Your dogs, all your animals, even you yourself… these are all just forms of Love.  Love will find you, again and again, in so many ways.  It always has.  That’s how he found you in the first place, when your last dog transitioned.  Love will choose a new form and come to you again.”

“I want the OLD LOVE.  I hate change! I don’t understand why there is so much suffering in this world!” I rage.  “I hate it.  Why do bad things happen to good people?”

She holds me gently until I am empty.  Until there is nothing here at all, except a big space, bigger than ever, to be filled with What Really Matters. 

I am fragile now—prone to choosing carefully.   I choose to keep Mending. I choose to keep Loving.  I choose to keep Hoping.  Party girl smiles shyly from the corner. She’s got her dancing shoes in hand.  At some point soon, we’ll get off this immensely comfortable arse and keep Living.  I hope you do too!
Wishing you Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S. If my friend Grief chooses to visit you soon, I hope you let her in.  She’s really ok.

Invisible

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” –Jonathan Swift

Greetings Dear Ones!

Ever since a pint-sized super hero in a Halloween costume came into my shop and asked me which I wanted more—“Do you wish you could fly? Or be Invisible?” I have been thinking about super powers in general and Invisibility in particular.

“Oh, I can fly already,” I inform him. “Flying is easy. Anyone can do it.  I’d like to be invisible.  Really Invisible.  That’s WAY harder.”

His brow furrows. His face becomes a soap bubble of swirling colors and emotions.

“People cannot fly!” he bursts suddenly, insisting uncertainly.

“Oh, sure we can,” I say calmly. “We have airplanes, helicopters, rockets, hang-gliders, not to mention the most important and easiest way to fly.”

“What’s that?” he asks with rounded eyes.

“Your Imagination!” I say.  He looks annoyed.

“But we don’t have wings,” he says sadly.  Another Icarus…

“No, but we have bright eyes and super powerful imaginations that can swoop us to the top of any tree or house or tower, up into the stars at night.  Anything we can see with our hearts we can fly to in our minds. Sometimes, I even go sit on the moon and eat some of the cheese there. It’s delicious. ”

He looks at me significantly, deciding (not for the first time) that some grownups probably shouldn’t be trusted.

He leaves with his mask, his sword, and his mother, who was getting some pants hemmed.  He is invisible to me now but his magic remains—enough that the part of me that is a faerie dusts off her wings and flits about the shop for a while.   She is immensely grateful for fourteen foot ceilings in the old mill building where we work.  Within a minute, she’s popped out through one of the nine-foot windows and into the Blue Beyond.  It’s a good time of year to remember we can fly—there are so many puffy white clouds that need to be bounced upon and so many turning maple trees on which to perch and survey the quilt of colors made by fields below.  And it’s lovely and poignant to join a V behind the geese and follow them for a while…

Flying is easy.

Being Invisible is hard.

Being invisible is not the same thing as not showing up.  Being Invisible is being so fully present that you go unrecognized, unseen, unfelt, unheard.   It takes incredible skill and persistence to go unnoticed—to be so good at doing something that bystanders are only conscious of the Art, not the Artist.

The best compliment I ever receive about my work is “Wow! I can’t see what you did.  It looks like you didn’t do anything.”

When I hear that, I feel like someone just gave me a huge bouquet of invisible flowers.

I love being invisible.   According to the MIT Technology Review, “To become invisible, an object must do two things: it has to be able to bend light around itself, so that it casts no shadow, and it must produce no reflection.”   I cannot exactly bend light around me but I can definitely step out of all the photos mothers take of their daughters in wedding gowns, making sure I am not even in the mirror with them.  

On a metaphysical level, I think about “casting no shadows and having no reflection…” This is the essence of any kind of Good Service that accepts and includes EVERYONE.   A “Sew-cialist” tailoring shop is no place for Shade!  Invisible diversity means we cannot tell by looking what level of education or experience someone has, whether they love to dance or draw, their marital status, religious beliefs, military service, sexual orientation or what their favorite foods are (unless it involves  mustard and it’s all down their shirt front). I can’t tell if you lost weight because you put yourself on a healthy meal plan avoiding “meats, wheats, and sweets” or instead binged on something regrettable from the back of the fridge (that should have gone to the compost pile) and gave yourself dysentery for a week.  All I know is that your pants don’t fit and I can help. When you come back, they will wrap around your waist like an invisible hug, like “nothing changed” except now it’s Better.  

One thing invisibility involves is the eyes.  Eyes are the things with light receptors.   Things that are invisible are imperceptible to the eyes but they can be felt with other senses—for example a good fiddle tune or the taste of Love baked into a home-cooked meal.

Yes, I enjoy being “Invisible.”  I’m especially glad that some of my customers cannot see what happens to their wedding dresses when they are inside out and chopped apart, looking like an out of control bubble bath all over the table.  Being Invisible can be safe and satisfying.   I didn’t think to tell the wee super hero this, but the Super Power I really want to have is to have the kind of goggles that enable me to SEE what is invisible.  Now, wouldn’t THAT be something?  To See, truly see, what others mean when they say confusing things, to see the notes passing by over head in an mad pub session where “I know, I know” the tune but cannot seem to “find” it with my fingers. 

A man called me this week and asked if I could tailor a suit for him.  He wanted to know if he should make an appointment.  I called back and told him yes, and explained how to use the website to book a time convenient for him.  Then he called again to ask if he should bring the suit with him to the appointment.   Wouldn’t it be marvelous if I didn’t have to say, “Yes, please! Unfortunately, my limited humanity prevents me from seeing the suit any other way.  I do not have the super powers required to see a suit that is not actually present with you in the dressing room.”

Sometimes we get so used to seeing things that we forget to see them at all—like green leaves on trees, a mess that needs to be cleaned up, flowers,  or a person holding up a cardboard and sharpie sign on a street corner saying “anything helps.”  I’m trying to get better at seeing what (or whom) is invisible.  I practice on simple artifacts like a sandwich I buy from the co-op at lunchtime.  I see the hands that assembled it and go on a “Little Red Hen” journey from there. Who grew the wheat? Who threshed the grain? Who ground the flour?  Who made the bread?  Who thought adding sauerkraut to a hummus sandwich was a good idea? (it really was!) There is a mind-boggling amount of “invisibility” all around us once we focus on it.  A sandwich could be just a sandwich or a portal to All that Is.

In the evening, as soon as I get home, I go to the hay loft alone to throw down another meal for my animal family.  Up there, I see easily the invisible hands of Norm, the 83-year-old farmer, touching every twine as he loads the bales one by one on the elevator for me to catch and stack in the mow. I picture him cutting his fields, raking and baling, scanning the sky for rain each time he swings the tractor on a wide turn.  His face is set in concentration but cracks like an egg into a wide smile at any excuse to be jolly.  I see my dear neice, children, and friends stacking those bales, helping with what I call “Operation Field Mouse” as we prepare the farm for winter.   Down below, Joe and Emma and MK are doing the summer clean out of the sheep fold, Roger is vacuuming up a shop-vac’s worth of cobwebs, and Former Me is neck deep in a pit, digging a new hole for the water pump.  In the Silence, they are invisible…but their energy is deeply and dearly present.  

At dusk, I wander the meadow edges and dance along the low stone walls with my eyes.  I can see the oxen teams of long ago, the workers wrestling with iron bars to get the boulders in place.  I can see the field hands in the apple trees, the housewife in her herb garden.  I wish I could hear their songs, their jokes, their stories.

 Time moves along like a fiddler doing scales with a metronome.  Showing up daily, doing all it takes to be Invisible is tough stuff.  Practice is all the hidden work we do so that our efforting becomes unseen—so that all that remains, if one has the super power to see it, is the Love that remains.

Be well, my darlings! Keep looking for Magic.  It’s in all the Right places.  May you be surrounded, always…

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy