Mirror, Mirror

“When something fits you, there’s no reason to consult the mirror.  You only need to look in the mirror when something does not fit.” –The Hermit of Hermit Hollow

 Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s still warm and bright out at the end of a work day in the shop--plenty of time to garden, exclaim over the beauty of the jonquils in bloom, roam the shipwreck of winter sticks strewn about the pastures and survey downed limbs and trees that need to be dragged up to the logging station by the blueberry patch and butchered into tidy packages to stack and serve as meals for the belly of the wood stove. Perhaps the ox-lings Gus and Otie, who will be age three soon, will be able to pull the logs. The bleeding heart has emerged from the soil by the garden spigot.  A frost threatens.  I’ve brought some prom gowns home to hem in the evening once twilight forces me indoors. The days and words and lists of chores are expanding outwards in every direction.  Nighttime retreats, deserting small embarrassed shadows who hide behind upright trees standing bravely in new light.

It’s Spring.  In Vermont, that means pretty much anything can happen.  Spring and Fall are verbs here.  They wear muddy boots on soggy mornings and make a lot of sweet and sweeping promises about preparing, repairing, recovering, collecting, tidying, transitioning so that we can give Change a great big hug when she arrives.  (There is endless raking to do.)  Lady Change is an imperial visitor here at the Land of Lost Plots.  Her carriage arrives without warning. Sometimes she brings treats.  Sometimes she doesn’t.  I am the resident tenant tending the manor; she is the Landlord—a temperamental transient whose arrival I prepare for warily.

In the paddock mud near the barn, Gus and Otie smile happily, their jaws grinding steadily.  There’s no grass to speak of so their mouths are full of fresh money.  The prom girls hand me grubby twenties, which I revive with the steam iron into crisp rectangles.  I store them in an envelope and hand them to a local farmer who delivers vast, round, white bales of haylage—the bovine version of sauerkraut made from orchard grass.   We are all part of the circle of glitter to grit—from nubile maidens with well-groomed eyebrows thirsting for Beauty and Experience (to be clear, it’s the maidens, not the eyebrows that are thirsting) unwittingly funding the fodder and follies of their exhausted, weather-weary elders who have had all the Experiences they can handle (and the ragged eyes and eyebrows to prove it).  Cash is the translation.  Some of these young ladies are the daughters of farmers. And so it goes…

A little dog trots by my side and I feel happier today than I have in a while.  My taxes are paid. I love my customers, my community, my country, despite its political divisions and cultural chaos.  There is a deep contentment I receive from my participation in the faithful circles of Hope and Crisis.  Humans keep humaning: a man has misplaced his pants; a woman has lost her purse; a bride is getting married Saturday and just bought her gown last night; a boy needs a suit for his uncle’s funeral.  For an entire afternoon, I evaluate my need for emotional support potatoes.  Eventually, I breathe and remind myself how lucky I am to shake hands with both prom girls and farmers—to live so close to the Mirror.

I plant a bed of spinach then begin the Seventh Year of this Blog! I told myself six years ago that if I stuck with this for seven years, I might learn a thing or two.  Here’s a summary thus far:

 Looking in the mirror is the circular process of transmitting and receiving.  Flaws and beauty are reflected and magnified.  Some people stand in front of it picking, picking, sighing and picking at their clothing, their skin, their spirits, awash in Dissatisfaction. Others are grateful, Delighted, smoothing rather than picking.  Some folks are pickers, some smoothers. There is always a choice to see in a mirror.

Writing is a form of mirror.  

ANYTHING can be a mirror.

Dreams DO come true…but in ways that make us realize that we need to keep on dreaming.  (Sometimes this just means we really need a nap!)

We have to keep looking in the mirror.

“Is this your dream life?” asks a loving friend who comes to visit, surveying the muddy cattle, the muddy field, the muddy mud.  She is smiling in a celebratory way.  She doesn’t see the mud.

“Yes…” I admit slowly.  “I just wish I had dreamed of a barn that wasn’t ten inches lower on one side and a roof that didn’t leak.  I wish I had dreamed of good fencing before cattle.  Having horned creatures weighing over a thousand pounds each who wish to visit you in your house is NOT a dream; it’s a Nightmare!  I definitely didn’t dream up all this MUD and I don’t believe I wished for quite so many brambles…” We laugh. Then I realize I am “picking.”  My inner Smoother looks again into the mirror around me.  There is a wheelbarrow overturned on a tidy mountain of dung.  Black and silver ashes mark the former site of the burn pile where recently stood a tower of brush and rotten logs and unusable wood scraps and broken furniture pieces left in the attic by the former owner.  Shit IS happening but we are dealing with it.  Happy animals are Home in a place where they are cherished and tended daily with the best that the farmer-prom-girl circle can provide.  Things are getting greener, cleaner, clearer.  The forest is starting to breathe.  Chlorophyll is coating the land with usable sugar.  Something (and Someone) here is Working…  

We are all Mending.

The Dream, I realize, is not about achieving a Great Good Thing or things, but being part of the process of transformation.   It’s in the Mending. It’s in taking What Is, accepting it, and then adding some muscle towards making it Better, whether it’s a ripped pair of jeans, a savage curry, or a heart.  It’s about being fierce when one is handling a bramble and tender when one is handling a teenager. (And being able to tell the difference!) 

We all think that Thing we dream is going to be THE BEST THING EVER.  And then we live into it as hard as we can.  And it is. But it isn’t.  Picking and Smoothing, we seek greater Satisfaction as seasons, blogs, farms, glitter,  gowns, wedding rings, and rainstorms… around and around they go—the wheels on Lady Change’s great carriage, taking us forward into the Next Dream we dare to Dream.

WHAT A BLESSING!

Keep mending, Dear Ones!  Thank you for the wonderful work you are doing. Thank you for becoming the hands and eyes, the touch and vision capable of making things better for others and yourself.  Thank you for your kindness to strangers. Thank you for having the courage to look into the Mirror and love all that you see. Carry on!

With Sew Much Love,

Nancy

Company

Greetings Dear Ones!

Well, it’s been a busy couple a weeks in Vermont!  Since I last wrote, we’ve had another Nor’ Easter dump a foot of snow, New England had a 4.8 earth quake, and there was this Thing happening with the moon… (Perhaps you have heard about it?) Oh, and Prom Season has started!  With five encrusted gowns on the rack, that slow choking death Death By Glitter—for sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, and seamstresses alike—has begun.

Everyone I know has been having Company. For a region with a strong streak of Hermit in it, it’s been an exciting and exhausting challenge.  I’ve gotten a pretty good view of the wider implications of the recent solar eclipse from inside my shop windows, from the few people who could make time to come in and pick up their completed garments.

“I’d love to come in, but I have company arriving any minute,” said one customer after another in the days preceding April 8th.  

“Traffic is going to be ridiculous,” advised a State Trooper whose uniform I mended.  “Leave the highways for the tourists.  Locals should stick to back roads.”  The back roads in Vermont are like the secret passageways in grand manor houses that allow the servants to be discreetly mobile without interfering with the gentry they serve.

“They’ve closed a lot of trails to keep both the people and the wildlife safe,” said the game warden, who is having me sew an enormous bug net for a research project.

The eclipse was a Really Big Deal here. The last time Vermont was in the path of totality was 1932.  Nearly 160,000 people traveled to the state to view this 2024 Eclipse.  An estimated 50,000 people went to “The People’s Republic of Burlington,” which normally has a population of 44,595.  Though accustomed to welcoming over 13 million tourists a year, we aren’t used to having 160,000 in a day! Friends were staying “with friends,” every bed and breakfast and air B&B was totally booked.  Even ski lodges that normally close for the season were open and filled. Vermont suddenly felt like that hostess (me) who doesn’t want to turn anyone away and yet panics about where everyone is going to sleep, what they are going to eat, and most importantly, where they are going to relieve themselves of the byproducts of the digestion of all that locally brewed craft beer and artisanal cheese.  “Please feel welcome to pee outside,” I tell my guests.   Vermont tops the national chart as the state with the most septic systems—more than 55 percent of households.   They don’t call it The Brave Little State for nothing!

As expected, Traffic was the biggest issue, which is inevitable in a tiny state with only two major highways and where more than 50 percent of the smaller roads are unpaved. (Have I mentioned it’s mud season and there is still snow on the ground?) Needless to say, the thousands of incoming people clogging the roadways deeply resented the other incoming thousands with whom they had chosen to “share” this momentous event.  The troopers who came in to have their trousers hemmed told me that the traffic was bumper to bumper down Rt 91 until well past two in the morning.  Folks ran out of gas.  Gas stations ran out of gas. People used the road shoulders as a restroom.

I had eight people staying with me for the Eclipse.  Since I live in southern Vermont and the path of totality was further north, they were on the road before dawn to get to a good viewing site.  It took them three hours to get there and more than five hours to get back.  They drove a total of eight hours for an experience that took less than four minutes.

“Was it worth it?” mutters Prudence in a way that indicates she doesn’t think so.  She decided that we should stay home, on the farm, to make sure that the chores got done and animals taken care of on time.  “A 97 percent eclipse is plenty,” she persuaded, “Someone needs to make dinner—for all Creatures great and small.” She thinks an awful lot about food for one who thinks we all should be fasting more. 

Some of my returning guests said that four minutes was the best four minutes of their lives. Others thought differently.  Rating life in four-minute chunks is not something I have done before so it is taking me a while to decide what my best four minutes have been. (I’ll get back to you on this.)

Last Monday afternoon, I spent a lot of minutes sitting quietly in the center of a golden moment, in shirt sleeves for the first time, enjoying the warmth of a day without glitter, peering occasionally through the cardboard safety glasses directly at the light bulb overhead.  My beloved fellow hermit was the only other human with me at the stone fairy tea table in the garden.  The sheep lay flopped around the pasture, cudding and snoozing.  On the other side of the driveway, the ox-lings lay in the sun.  My friend’s dog was locked in the barn, per her orders. “Please keep her confined for the entire eclipse,” she said. “I don’t want her to look at the sun and hurt her eyes.” 

I asked the sheep if they wanted to share my eclipse glasses.

“No way,” they said. “Yours is the only species dumb enough to stare directly at the sun.  We’re just going to keep our heads down and gobble green stuff like we always do.”

Not one of the animals looked up the entire time.  They just lazed around, chewing. Had I not had the special glasses to help me see the black circle slowly crossing the sun, I would have had no idea something was happening.  Meaning is something we find and assign through use of specialized vision.

The sky was blue and bright—only random wooly wisps of white here and there—as if someone up there were spinning and discarding sneds of fiber as she went.  After a while, the light changed. It wasn’t dramatic—more like the way one changes the filter on a photo taken with a cell phone.  The world went from “Lark” to “Gingham” then “Reyes.”  It felt exactly like a storm coming on, with darkness, a chill, a breeze and the hush of all the birds and insects.  And then, after a bit, it was warm and chirp-buzzing again.

My guests and friends were sending me photos of the scenes where they were—in crowds of people up mountain tops, some by water, some in fields… and I felt that initial rush of JOMO I usually feel when everyone else is doing something and I am not.   (If FOMO is the “fear of missing out,” JOMO is the JOY of missing out!) Being around the energy of a crowd feels exhausting to me.  But then niggling thoughts of missing out on Totality creep in. Should I have gone?  A “Once in a lifetime” experience was only a few hours away.  Why hadn’t I bothered? Why do I consistently settle for less than 100 percent of anything?

“You’ve experienced crowds of people before,” reminds Prudence. “And you will never know what you missed so it won’t matter.”

“Think of the animals,” says my inner Farmer, gazing fondly at her flock.

“But we aren’t getting something we might have really wanted,” pouts the inner child, feeling left out. “Everyone else is getting it. Why aren’t we?”

“Come on, how can you truly miss something you have never experienced?” says someone logical.

“People do it all the time, every day, with True Love,” murmurs the Angel within.  “They don’t know what they are missing but they know they are missing it, bless them.”

“You are Disconnected,” whispers the inner demon. “You don’t Belong and you never will.  You are Alone and ever more shall be so.”

“Rubbish!” I say, stroking the tiny, aged dog on my lap.

“Everyone looking at the sun right now is Together!” I announce. “Whether we climbed a mountain to see it or sat in our own front yard, or see it on a news screen from another part of the world.  Some of them know it, some of them don’t.  That doesn’t change a thing.  We are all experiencing it Together.”

“Honey, EVERYONE is together, whether they see the sun or not,” says the Angel. “Nothing is the Same and yet it is all One, whether you stayed home to tend the pot roast or climbed the hill in wet sneakers to get a better look at your nearest star.”

So it is with Faith and Life and Mending.  The Eclipse is just another Prom or Blog entry. We gather for “an Experience” and we each have one individually together.  We try to tell each other what we saw, what we felt, how we tore our pants and why there is still some toilet paper stuck to our shoe.  For some, our sense of isolation becomes heightened; for some our sense of connection is strengthened.  Presence is the gift of being able to see ourselves seeing.  Humans, like any other herd or pack animal, have a deep longing for connection—in our intimate relationships, in our communities, with strangers, and with some Deeper Truth about our existence.  Both the Faithful and the Cynical yearn for Meaning.  Every one of us is lonely and trying to put that loneliness into perspective.

Speaking of uniquely lonely yet communal…Today is the SIX year anniversary of this Blog! I gave myself a deadline of “seven years” weekly apprenticeship to this craft. I’m proving to myself I can stick with things (mostly).  It’s not going well. I have one more year to get my act together.  Writing is the hardest thing I have ever done—mainly because it’s impossible to notice improvement. (“You got that right,” yips Prudence.) Even the act of plowing the driveway with a tractor is less frustrating.  Success is measurable when one plows a driveway.  

All I really have learned is that this hellish little discipline is part of the best four minutes of my life each week and I cherish the connections it forges with all you dear, Dear Ones.  For me, there is a deep comfort in being able to share, to prove to myself that I am not looking at the sun or that prom gown alone.  We’re on this amazing, ridiculous celestial Ferris wheel together.  Thanks for keeping me company!

True Mending does not happen without the touch of the hands—whether by needle and thread, a gentle caress, the stirring of a spoon, or calloused fingertips dancing on a keyboard.  Percentages be damned: Whatever you are doing to remind yourself that Everything Matters—especially YOU, keep doing it! We aren’t alone. We ARE capable of making things Better.  Let the Mending Continue!

With Sew Much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy

Lamb cake

You can’t have your cake and eat it too!—English Proverb

Greetings Dear Ones!

I’m getting a late start on the blog because I had to rush to town early to gather enough handwork from the shop to keep me going through this storm.  (Apparently, Yester-Nancy thought it would be Sunshine ever more and didn’t plan ahead.) These “April Showers” are bringing a wintry mix of snow and hail, sleet and sheets of water like the Big Dog in the sky is shaking his fur after a trip through the garden hose.  And later, to cap it all, there might be as much as fourteen inches of let’s-wreck-the-driveway-again to plow with the tractor.

I apologize to the tulips, working like athletes to get their slender torsos out of the mud.  They are the little miracles I have been seeking in the garden each morning, thanks to poet Mary Oliver.  I have been cheering them on, coaxing and inviting them. Now, these guests are arriving too soon to the spring picnic and will have to stand around awkwardly with nothing to do, while their slacker of a hostess panics. Nearby daffodil blossoms bow their heads and keep their mouths closed. I rush by with a tarp and twine. I’m embarrassed.  “I thought we would be ready for you by now,” I say hastily, tossing a light cover of moldy hay around their shoulders to keep them warm.  Everywhere, green fingertips reach…seeking…reaching upwards through the darkness, feeling for the Light, only to be burned by ice.  I curl my hands within my gloves and hurry.

I’ve battened the hatches and covered the enormous round bales of hay with the tarp.  The pasture snack shack is closed.  The sheep retreat to the barn, grumbling.

“We hail from the Shetland Isles,” they moan. “What is wind and rain to us?”

“When you are out, you beg to come in. When you are in, you beg to go out. There’s no dealing with you,” I say.

“But the Ox-lings are allowed in and out whenever they want…why not us?” they cry.

“One reason,” I say. “Coyotes.  You look like delicious mutton morsels to them. Who doesn’t want hot shepherd’s pie on a grizzly day like this?” They shudder.

Otis, the stouter of the steers, swaggers up to his door and hangs his head into the aisle to listen.  His nosiness goes beyond polite sociability.  He wants to know if we are going to work today.

“Not today,” I say.  He hangs his head.  I’ve managed to get him and Gus hitched and pulling three times in the last few weeks.  Now he thinks it should be every day.  He’s a jock desperate to grow his muscles at the gym.  Meanwhile, Gus loiters at the all-you-can-eat hay buffet, smiling—desperate to grow his belly not his biceps.

“Tell us something Good,” say the sheep. “We need some cheering up!”

I snuggle into a corner of their pen and they immediately crowd around me, looking for treats.  I don’t want to tell them there is the lamb cake from Easter up in the house that I brought back with me from Pennsylvania and forgot to give them.  It tasted so awful, everyone agreed I should take it home and feed it to the sheep and chickens instead of humans. It’s basically a stale, dry pound cake in the shape of my grandmother’s lamb mold with out-of-date unsweetened coconut fur that has all the desiccated delicacy of a bag of toenail clippings.  I added extra flour in order to help the batter support the dowel that is baked into the neck to hold up the head.  Be extremely careful attempting to chew the ear of this lamb! There’s a toothpick in it.  

One of our most cherished family Easter traditions is to make an ugly, unpleasant-tasting cake in the shape of a lamb and then grouch because no one wants to eat it.  It’s Tradition. The end result was just as awful as it always is; which satisfies those who believe Things Can Never Change and disappoints those who always hope otherwise.  It’s enough to make some of us believe Certain People have dowels baked into their necks too.

“Easter was good,” I tell the sheep.  “My family laughs a lot, at each other, at ourselves, at The Situation (there’s ALWAYS a Situation) and especially at the raisins the grandchildren have piled near the rear end of the lamb cake.” Even now, I giggle.

“What’s a lamb cake?” they all want to know.  I roll my eyes. I forgot I wasn’t going to tell them about the lamb cake.

“It’s a cake in the shape of a Lamb,” I tell them. “Lambs are a very special theme at Eastertide.   They symbolize New Life, Innocence, Obedience.”

“Obedience???? WHAT???” They are aghast.

“I know, I don’t get it either. I’ve never met an obedient lamb in my life.  Perhaps Obedient means Trusting.”

“I don’t trust Nobody,” says Waterlily, muscling her way to the manger and bashing her own daughter out of the way.

“Well, I think we can all agree that lambs are beautiful.  Christians use the Lamb to symbolize Christ as both sacrificial and triumphant. He is called ‘The Lamb of God.”

“We are ALL Lambs of God,” says Prim primly.

“Yes, YOU are,” I say, indicating all the sheep with a sweep of my hand. “It goes without saying.”

“The rest of us have to do a bit of sacrificing,” says Prudence (the inner critic in nun’s garb) elbowing me in the ribs.

“Is that where the cake comes in?” asks Willoughby.

“Ah, yes,” I nod. “It all makes sense now. Thank you.”

“What else do you do at Easter?” they want to know.

“Well, we go to church as a family.  We take up a whole pew, sometimes two. We pray. We sing. I try very hard not to get distracted by mismatched seams on men’s sports jackets a few seats in front of me. Then we go home and eat.  We eat like farmhands at a big table, as if we’ve been chopping wood or stacking hay for days.  We eat in total Silence, no conversation, just quiet smacking of lips, forks clicking plates, reverent satisfied gruntles of delight.  I tried to light a small conversation but it smoked out like a match on damp wood. They looked at me as if I was talking out loud at a concert. So I closed my mouth and chewed, letting the flavors become a melody. After everyone had finished, then we sat around the table and talked. I had forgotten how we do this.”

The sheep have flopped around me, quietly present, chewing thoughtfully, like family members.

“What did you talk about?” asked Prim.

“Some people griped about politics, others grumbled about the youth of today and how odd people can be.  My siblings work with a lot of interesting people and do very interesting things. I told a weird but true story with a happy ending about one of my dear customers.”

“Tell us the story!” shout the lambs. “We love weird stories with happy endings!”

“Well, a lady came in who had a beautiful coat that she had bought at a thrift store. She loved the coat but it didn’t fit her quite right and it was way too long.”

“So you mended it,” says Prim.

“Yes,” I say. “It took a couple of weeks for our schedules to align so that she could come in and try it on. When she did, she loved it. It was exactly what she wanted. She went home with her new coat and was happy.”

“This does NOT sound like a weird story,” interrupts Fergus, clearly getting bored.

“It gets weird later.  She starts to email me about something that confuses me.  She wants to know what I have done with the lining of her coat. I didn’t touch the lining of her coat except to hem it. (It looks damn weird when you hem the outer coat six inches and don’t hem the lining too.) Well, she wants those lining scraps back. She wants ALL the scraps back.  She feels like I have stolen something from her by removing the excess pieces of her coat. She says it’s like taking a ring to a jeweler and getting a fake stone back.”

“But if you don’t remove them, isn’t the coat way too lumpy?” asks Fern.

“Indeed! Well done, little Fern!” I praise. “So I agree to mail her all the scraps. ‘what have you done with my fabric?’ she demands in an email.  I don’t want to tell her I have thrown those “precious” scraps away, so I don’t answer that email. I dig all the scraps I can find out of the trash.  I have to wash some of them because I have dumped the floor sweepings in on top of them.  I send them to her in a priority envelope and she receives them in two days.”

“This is still a boring story,” says Fergus, yawning.

“Not to me,” I say, continuing. “THEN…then…the next thing I know, she’s leaving a one-star review on Google, saying how disappointed she is with my service.  She left a coat with a cashmere lining with me and when she got it back, I had removed the entire lining and replaced it with a cheap nylon one.”

“Is that TRUE?” asked Prim, horrified.

“Absolutely not. No Way. First of all, I would never do that, for any reason. I would never steal from anyone, never mind a dear customer! The last thing I stole was a bag of pennies from my next door neighbor when I was five years old.  My mother marched me over there and made me return them and apologize.  I cried so hard nearly vomited. So I have never stolen again.  But really, this woman’s assumed ambition for me is, well, frankly, it’s hilarious.  I am far too lazy to succumb to such a scheme, even if I hadn’t had good morals beaten into me early in life.  She has no idea how much work it is to take out a coat lining, deal with the inevitable blizzard of body dander hidden in the seams, then fashion a replica pattern, make it out of cheap nylon—presuming I have bought some cheap nylon… Good Heavens! It would take me most of a day to do all that.  For what? So I can have an old, purloined lining with no coat that goes to it? It’s marvelous. Simply Marvelous.  It’s the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time, bless her heart.  It actually filled me with a strange joy to know that I was so clearly right and she so clearly wrong. I actually didn’t care at all what lies she spread.”

“This is getting interesting,” admits Fergus. “What if people don’t like you? What if they believe her, not you?”

“Ain’t nuthin’ I can do about dat,” I say in my silliest cartoon voice.  “Sometimes, you just gotta take the hit!” The sheep stop looking like a coyote is at the gate and go back to cudding.  The sheep don’t like “hits” but it soothes them to think I can take it.  It soothes me to think they think I am a grown-up. Hits don’t seem to hurt Grown-ups.

“So then what happened?” asks Prim.

“Well, the Easter Message got through. I decided to receive fear with Love. I decided to turn the other cheek, and NO, Fergus, NOT a bum cheek. A real cheek. Real Love.  Just because someone wrongs us does not mean we are a victim. This poor lady was just plain wrong and obviously sad.  She was missing something I could not give her. I decided to be nice to her and to smile and remember that I had done Good Work for her. If she wants to sue me later, let her.  I’m clean.”

“And then, she did an AMAZING THING. She wrote and apologized! She took down the bad review! She admitted that it had taken us both so long to get her coat back to her she had forgotten what she had bought at the thrift store. It was not the lining she remembered. I’m so excited by this change! I admire her courage.  It takes a lot to admit we are wrong.  I feel the Hope that those who bake the Lamb Cakes feel—This Time It Will Be Better. The tulips cannot be stopped by snow.  This lovely woman restores my faith and hope, which are the rewards for Love.  Not all of us are baked with a stick in our necks.  Some people can be reasoned with. And even while they are Unreasonable, they can still be loved.  I’m profoundly grateful for this customer and this lesson.  

Keep Mending, Dear Ones! Let’s keep disappointing those who think Things Can Never Change. Thank you for your Good Work filled with Love that is Sacrificial AND Triumphant.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy

P.S. Thanks for Sharing this and getting others to subscribe via the website www.secretlifeofaseamstress.com  I am no longer on Facebook.

Do it Anyway

“In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” Do it Anyway —Mother Theresa

Greetings Dear Ones!

Normally, if I want to embrace Humility, I just sit down with my fiddle and attempt to play tunes in the key of F major without actually knowing ahead of time that they are in F major.  But this week I have had a variety of other ways to supplement my spiritual growth.  Humility—that which returns us to the hummus—(you know, that yummy stuff made of chick peas, tahini, and guilt) or maybe Latin for “earth.”  It’s a return to the ground, a fall of sorts.  My inner Snacker, who loves hummus, pauses with the loaded carrots half way to her lips.

“Wait,” she says uncomprehendingly, “We’re falling?”

“Yep!” shouts Prudence, petticoats tumbling as she goes arse over tea kettle, “Someone thinks she can handle a bunch of stuff she can’t handle.”

Things I thought I could handle this week:

a.)    Using the front bucket of the tractor to plow the driveway after we got over 12 inches of heavy snow.  (In addition to having several temper tantrums over my inability to know “up” from “down” on the tractor levers, because the subsurface was soft March mud, I have unintentionally relocated much of the surface of my driveway into the front pasture.) 

b.)    Spending $1800 on car repairs only to discover that my vehicle it is still not road-worthy. (Apparently driving it twenty miles to the repair shop with the front tires pointing in opposite directions means I am now required to purchase four new tires.)

c.)     At a “Celtic Bells” school show, standing up in front of 175 Boston-area kindergarteners and singing “Charlie on the MTA.”  (I completely blanked, couldn’t source the first note, word, or chord, while it dawned on me that the guitar was in Drop-D tuning instead of standard.  Thankfully, my brilliant music partner saved the day with a blistering fiddle solo that had all the kids clapping and cheering while I frantically re-tuned to Standard and concentrated on not doing a tiny poo in my pants.)

“Don’t forget to mention the scamming,” says Prudence, from her jumble of tangled undergarments. “That’s the best of them all.”

Indeed.

So!  Last week, I attempted to post my blog on Facebook, as I usually do, only to discover that I was locked out.  I tried multiple times to log in, only to receive the reply that my account had been deleted for illegal activity.  I was so confused.  What illegal activity???

“You are such a natural criminal,” says Prudence with authority, “You do bad stuff you don’t even know is bad.”

“But I hardly post on Facebook these days!” I protest, “It’s just blogs.”

“It doesn’t matter. They KNOW.  They know how naughty you are. It was inevitable,” sighs Prudence. “Besides, those blogs are awful. Except when you slack off and don’t do them at all, which is also bad.” 

Of all the darling internal characters I deal with, not one of them is handy with technology.  Party girl thought we should just take the night off and not worry about it. The inner Librarian just wanted to read some new books a friend sent.  Hermit Granny wanted to knit.  But some earnest (UN humble) lesser staff member decided she could “Fix” everything with a few clicks of her mouse.  She googled “fix deleted Facebook account.”  Right away several sites popped up.  She clicked on one that looked official and boasted “speak to a representatives” 24/7.  It only took three rings before “a representatives” answered, which was the first clue something was amiss.  (Everyone else on the planet, apart from MY naively ambitious inner techie, knows you can’t just call FB reps!) Let’s just say that things went swiftly from bad to worse and I wound up having to file disputes and crime reports through my bank, in addition to having to change every flipping password I have ever had on every device I own.  (I didn’t remember any of them anyway so it took two days to do all this.) It’s been a nightmare.

And I am permanently locked out of Facebook.  Facebook has yet to realize this yet, but it is permanently locked out of ME too!  I won’t be back.  I am appalled at the lack of help available to us innocent hermit grannies with no techno skills who are left vulnerable to the likes of these scammers.  If there IS genuine help available from their organization, it is not readily identifiable…nor the least bit “helpful.” 

So! I have eaten my share of dirt sans tahini this week. (Sady, not quite enough to recoat the driveway though!)

I’m feeling low. 

On the bright side, I know that if I go down hard enough, I usually bounce.  And on the way up, I focus on what’s really important.  These things are just tests.  I realize that true Love is the only way to go. 

I gather all the beloved and not so beloved parts of myself together for a group hug.

“I’m sorry I gave that scammer all the information I shouldn’t have,” weeps the incompetent techie-wanna-be.

“We love you anyway,” we say.

“I need to practice more,” admits the slacker musician.

“We love you anyway,” we say.

“I wish I was good at things right away,” says the person who mauled the driveway.

“We forgive you,” we say. “You’ve never plowed deep snow over mud before.”

“I wish we didn’t make so many expensive mistakes,” says the inner accountant.

“It’s ok,” we say. “Let there be Learning. Let there be laughter. What is money but a useful translation for energy.  You have plenty of energy. Our beloved and talented seamstress can turn that back into money with a bit more work.”

And there’ PLENTY of work—for both the fingers and the soul. There are jackets needing zippers, prom gowns needing hems, and customers needing compassion and forgiveness too (like the one who insisted I send some discarded trimmings and fabric scraps back, insinuating that I had somehow stolen them!).   I let my inner crybaby have a darn good cry, put myself to bed early, and got on with things.  And I got a lovely visit from Mother Theresa through the gift of her poem “Do it Anyway.”  

“She’s really made a mess of things!” Prudence, acting as Mother Superior, rushes to inform Mother Theresa.

“Love her anyway,” says Mother Theresa.

“I’m too trusting,” I cry. “I helped the scammers scam.”

“Trust anyway,” she says kindly.

“Her communication style gets her into trouble. She’s actually TOO honest,” accuses Prudence, “as if there is such a thing.  She just doesn’t need to say all the things she says, especially to certain people.”

“Be honest anyway,” says Mother T, smiling directly at me.

“Sometimes my kindness gets rebuffed or misinterpreted,” I say, thinking of the male customers who return to ask me if I am single.

“Be kind anyway.”

“My writing…” I start to say

“Write anyway,” she interrupts. “Give the best you have and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.  The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.” 

On the BRIGHT side, there is a new day, a fresh start, available to us all, any time we want.  Sure, some weeks really test us.  Along with our nourishing servings of dirt, we get some tasty Grace gravy.  It’s a relief to know I don’t have to BE the best, I just need to DO my best.  That’s enough.  

As we watch the cold, uncertain light of March fall on the faces of those we love, we know that Loss awaits us and we love all the more defiantly for it. We trace tenderly the thinness of skin or fur or wool that separates us from hidden bright bones beneath, knowing each moment is a GIFT and that nothing really can protect us from Living except knowing who we are, knowing whom we love, and getting our priorities straight.  And still, the inevitable scars and scrapes of us bumping into each other, ourselves, or a perhaps a substrate collapsing under melting heaves of frost give us opportunities for humility and Grace.  We may get bogged down, spinning our balding heads and tires.  We lose our money, our sleep, our tears, our faith… 

And then… the Good News! We can rise from the mud we have bitten.  We can MEND, Dear Ones!  Let there be Mending.   Sometimes our Good Work doesn’t feel good at all. Let’s Do It Anyway.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy  

P.S. This blog is currently only available by searching directly for the website online or subscribing. Thanks for Subscribing!  Thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing!  

Remembering

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. –Margaret Mead

Happy Equinox Dear Ones!

Yay! Let there be more light!!

Whew!  I’m not quite sure what happened.  One moment I was unwrapping a brand new, perfectly good, fresh-out-of-the-box February.  The next thing I know, it’s in hundred pieces I still need to clean up and March has already left without me.  Usually February is one of the longest little months of the year but this time, even with an extra day, it shot by faster than poop through a goose.  February’s menu mostly consists of the Pure Dead Brilliant Fiddle Camp and the insane rush I get from cooking for 165 people with a horde of fabulous volunteers, some of whom know how to chop an onion, some of whom don’t.  An average February consists of the week I spend getting ready for fiddle camp, the week I am AT fiddle camp, and the weeks I spend recovering from fiddle camp (which can be anywhere from one to fifty, depending on how the onion chopping goes). 

This year was one of the best onion-chopping years ever!  But I still found plenty of things to weep about afterwards when the wise wee Being posing as my dog got perilously sick and nearly died, something crucial under the front end of the car broke while trying to get down my road axel deep in mud, I came down with a jolly good case of Covid, and lost my computer cable for two weeks.  I thoroughly enjoyed the Covid, as it gave me a good excuse to lie still and consider the onions for four days.  The wee Being’s doing better, though still on a downward trajectory of congestive heart failure.  We were both grateful to spend the time cuddling by the wood fire—each with our own respiratory issues.  The car is still in the shop—Vermont mighty mud for the win, pocketbook for the loss.  Despite all, the most vexing issue was trying to locate the computer cable!

“Looking for things I have misplaced” ranks right up there among the top ten things I HATE to do, along with sneezing with food in my mouth and shortening jacket sleeves from the shoulder.

“Apparently you also hate dusting, and putting away anything clean,” sniffs Prudence, surveying the dishes in the rack by the sink and the basket of laundry at the foot of the stairs.

“Yes,” I admit, “but not with the same ferocity as the top ten.  In fact, the top five are: looking for my keys, looking for my wallet, looking for my phone, looking for the computer, looking for its charger, looking for any kind of charger, looking for my glasses, and reaching for scissors that aren’t there…”

“That’s not five,” she says.

“I don’t care.  I’m tired of keeping track of things that vex me.  I’m in the business of keeping track of JOYS. Joys are what Remembering is all about. When I remember where I left my crap and then go find it, I feel immense joy.”

“Lucky you, then,” she huffs. “With the way you misplace things, you must be in a constant state of bliss.”

Remembering… it’s more than just locating one’s car keys or recalling that damn password you swore you would never forget. To “remember,” as I see it, is to Re (again) + Member, from the Latin membrum, meaning limb.  To Remember is literally to find the amputated parts of myself and re-limb, reconnect, restore the wholeness of the organization of “me.”  This federation has a variety of “members” who belong, without whom I am just not “myself.” There is the me that sews, that sings, that dances, that knits, that takes long walks with oxen, and the me that lies awake fretting after 3:am.  There’s one here who loves to cook with others in the kitchen, whose love language is food.  There’s another who finds ironing one of the most satisfying pleasures on the planet. There’s one who loves to read, one who loves to listen.  “And by God, there’s one who love to TALK!” says Prudence Thimbleton, the one who loves to criticize.

For the most part, this is a harmonious group that is fairly well-integrated and cooperative. There are a few trouble makers.  I used to think some of the members needed to be kicked out—like Party Girl and her sad drunk pal in the corner, and that weird little nerd from middle school who never seems to have any friends. But I have learned we cannot sever the parts of ourselves.  They just come back with a vengeance.  Re-membering restores them to us in ways that range from painful to delightful. They need to find their homes in our hearts, their share of missing love, and their “job” in the business of being “Us.”

We all have these disparate parts--some are to help us Do The Things That Must Be Done. Some are here to make that chore way more fun. The rest just need to be loved.

Sadly, the past six weeks have introduced a new character to Nancyland—The News Anchor.  And boy is she an anchor! She binge-obsesses on the same exact story on multiple networks at a time.  She is constantly checking her phone for updates.  She subscribes to multiple podcasts discussing things that have no relevance to her actual Life or Spirit. She’s a drain on time and energy. She’s irritated when she has to do other things. She gives The Worrier plenty to worry about, which prevents us all from getting sleep, which makes even Party Girl crabby.  We finally had to have a meeting and say “This is NOT who we are!” She has wrecked our productivity.  The Fiddler hasn’t fiddled; the Writer hasn’t written. (Though Hermit Granny, who is in cahoots with the News Anchor, has managed to knit about 45 hats while listening to morbid stories about how the world is going to Hades in a hand basket, something our resident Basket Case Lady considers the waste of a good basket.)

We need to Re-Balance, we need to Re-Member.   

What brings us Joy? What helps others? How can we Connect? What should we Protect? When we feel lost, empty, sad… what comforts and connects us?  For me, it’s looking around and seeing myself in the swirl of a homestead in transition, in a county, in a state, in a region, in a country in the process of trying to find itself and call itself Home.  We all—as citizens and individuals—are in an intense struggle of trying to remember who we really are—propelled not by what terrifies us, but what inspires us.

In Vermont right now, everything is the color of mud or mushrooms. There are a few blushing buds on branch tips but the leaves are still a secret. The sun has a little heat which, with the smallest gust of a giggle, the wind removes.  It is a time of layering and peeling off layers as the days start to get rounder and more golden.  It’s easy to swing from hopeful and excited to depressed and anxious—especially as the hay and firewood dwindle in their piles and mud season and the News Anchor blares constant Unpleasantness.  It’s easy to feel a sense of Lack.

Then, I remember.  Dreary Bleakness is also a time of great sweetness.  The sap is moving in the sugar maples.  The sugar shack I pass daily on my way to work is filled with steam rising through its chimney, returning the water back to the sky.  We too, we filter, we distill. We keep boiling off what is unnecessary and diluting.

Again and again, we come back to ourselves as the seasons pass. We remember.  We remember the scent of dirt as it thaws and it becomes part of us again.  We remember the smiles and the laughter of those we have lost or not seen for a while, and they become part of us again. We don’t just forgive—which is an act of releasing; we Reconcile, which is an integrating act of remembrance.  Some of our friends are going through dark and harrowing times.  Let us help remember who they are.  Remembering is not just about the past; it’s about the Future too.

Keep mending Dear Ones! Even if all you do today is hug yourself, do it! We need your good work now more than ever.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

In the Bleak Mid-Winter...

In the bleak midwinter/Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron/Water like a stone
Snow had fallen/Snow on snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter/Long, long ago

Greetings Dear Ones

Ordinarily, there is nothing I like quite so much as a Bleak Mid-Winter.  That carol, “in the bleak mid-winter….” often plays in my head as I trudge the grey and bluish circles to the barn and shop.  I confess it soothes my inner hermitess to have snow days and be cut off from civilization and be “forced” to sit by the fire with a good book, a new fiddle tune, or some yarn. The subtle luxuries of ‘snow on snow’ cannot be underestimated. I have lived in places where people gritch about the weather.  Here, we embrace it with relief.  We love wool. We love lumbering around as androgynous mammals. We are invigorated by air that feels like a paring knife.  Our willingness to be slightly uncomfortable occasionally makes every comfort sweeter and opens us up to thrilling opportunities those that want to live at a steady seventy degrees farenheit must decline.

Best of all is the deep quiet of a slumbering Spring beneath the grungy blanket of white.  It’s too early to wake her, shhhhh….  Prune the blueberry bushes as quietly as you can.  Don’t think of hot, full birds and berries. Just use this time to snip away all that is dead. Let the rest slumber.  The Bleak is as precious as anything is that is Temporary.

But this year, my normally deliciously bleak mid-winter is being interrupted by loud pronouncements of something truly Bleak—that it’s going to be a whole bleak YEAR—that ten months of an election cycle will become twenty five (or at least feel that way) and that we are all only living for one day, a certain Tuesday in November. Exhausting prognostications are heavier to bear than layers of quilted overalls under a Carhartt. The rest of our days don’t seem to matter much—the constant out-gassing of the punditry puts us in a paralyzing fog.  We need true Rest, Deep Sleep, A Long Winter’s Nap.  We need a cup of Joy with our daily broccoli.  Instead, we are anxiously anesthetized.   Like most of you, I have been reading, listening, fretting, obsessing…  It’s making not just winter but Life feel bleak.  And it doesn’t feel temporary. 

“When you can’t get out of it, get into it!” is one of my mantras so recently, I read an outstanding book for anyone feeling bleak. It’s “The Diary of a Man in Despair,” by Freidrick Reck, the journal of a German nobleman in Bavaria in the 1930’s.  In it, Reck talks a lot about how his fellow citizens are “losing their sense of humor” and replacing it with fears, suspicions, paranoia and distrust.  He traces the emotional decline of a country where neighbors used to joke with each other and treat each other with gentleness and tolerance, with generous laughter at each other’s quirks, and gradually become the tortured souls who report each other to the authorities for acts of unsanctioned kindness. To say Germany “lost its sense of humor” in the 1930’s is an understatement indeed.  (Reck was later sent to Dauchau and died there for “embarrassing the fatherland” with his writing.)

Just as when one begins to lose one’s hearing, it’s hard to know when we are losing our sense of humor.  We can’t tell what’s missing. What used to be funny that isn’t any more? Yesterday, I micro-waved broccoli as a part of a healthy lunch and it made a healthy smell which wafted all throughout the north end of the building.

“She means the shop smelled like a port-a-potty,” says Prudence.

Several customers came by to collect their finished items and wrinkled their noses.  Do I show them the broccoli and advocate for myself earnestly as if I am on trial, or say nothing, shrug, and let them think I’ve been eating bean burritos for a week?  What’s funnier?

“Neither,” says P.

Mistakes are a perfect time to decide if something is funny or not. Also yesterday, I chopped the sleeves off a man’s expensive dinner jacket in order to shorten them from the shoulder.  (It had working buttonholes at the wrist so it was impossible to shorten from the bottom.)  Carefully, I marked all the seams and relevant joining spots with colored thread so that I would know exactly how to align the sleeve on the jacket again.  Normally, I do one sleeve at a time, but I was tempted to try a new shortcut I had seen online, so I did both sleeves at once. Cleverly, I used different colored threads for each sleeve so that I could tell left from right at a glance: Red for right, bright blue for left (naturally). All was going great until I realized that in trimming the excess length from the top of the sleeve, I had accidentally also cut off all my thread markings, which went into the bin with the fabric I had just trimmed  (doink! Pause for sound of hand slapping head).  Do we think this is FUNNY?  Do we chortle aloud knowing that we DO have the skills needed to tell a right sleeve from a left without the benefit of color coding? (We do.) Or do we panic, flap our arms, do a tiny poop in our pants and blame the smell on the lingering broccoli?

A sense of humor is a choice. 

Humor is horror that includes Love.  Do you forgive me? Do you love me even when I do dumb things? Or do you think I should be reported to the tailoring police?

“At the very least, you should be reported to the broccoli police,” mutters Prudence into the vintage hanky clamped over her nose.

Finding things funny implies forgiveness; it implies safety.  It means I can mess up and still fix things.  Humor implies Faith that all shall be well. It means we are going to be ok in the end, even if we wear jeans that give us seamstress crack (a close cousin to plumber’s crack) when we crawl on all fours attempting to mark a hem on bridal gown with a three acre train.

Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves; we shall never cease to be amused.   If I can laugh at myself, I can laugh with you too at your dumb things without judging you.  Shared Laughter creates community. It helps a lot with Mending.

When my sense of humor is depleted to the point that my inner fifth grader is too tired to roll on the floor giggling because the whole shop smells like one gigantic fart,  I know it’s time to go on a Joy Safari and fill our spirit cup. We’re empty.  I look around for things that make me happy. I look at the giant rack of thread spools on the wall and think of the visiting five-year-old who informed me “that’s NOT a rainbow, but it’s trying to be.” I smile.  I see my button collection and remember the customer who told me his favorite color was “beige.” I grin.  I gaze out the enormous windows to the north and see homes and trees, and tendrils of river mist rising like smoke. Behind them all, as ancient and steady as a prayer mound, rises Mt. Watasticut—pristine, glittering, white. All of Nature is a wedding dress. I inhale the Beauty and the Promises.

Bleak mid-winter is a wonderful time to go on a Joy safari. Joy can be hard to spot on a summer’s day when her plumage blends so naturally with the swing of a hammock, an outdoor bath under the stars, and the taste of sun-warmed blueberries and fresh sweet corn twenty minutes from the stalk.  Pretty much anything can feel like Joy then.  

Against the backdrop of mud ruts in the snow and intermittent sub zero Bleakness, Joy looks a little different. She’s easily missed.  Sometimes, you just have to have a party and invite her and see if she shows up.  I did this past Sunday.  I went to the barn, cranked the tunes up to volume 11 and grabbed a pitchfork and a wheel barrow and mucked out the cow shed.  Joy and I danced in our thermal welly boots and sang at the top of our voices to songs we didn’t know all the words to. The Beloved Hermit of Hermit Hollow appeared in the doorway and said, “Wow! Sounds like a party going on in here!”

“Yep!” I panted as I charged past him with a load of frosted dung. “Every party has a pooper and this party happens to have TWO! Lucky us!! Two great big poopers pooping everywhere.” Gus and Otie, the ox-lings, mooed their affirmatives from the paddock.  Gus smiled and cocked his tail to drop even more.

There is Joy in hard work. There is Joy in seeking the comfort of those you love. There is Joy in witnessing their pleasure.  It was a Joy to replace filth with clean fresh shavings.  I made a large pile in each stall and then hung on the open gate and watched the Moo Crew charge in and do battle with their bedding.  They snorted and tossed it everywhere with their horns. They had a ball, smiling, pawing the ground and playing with the wood chips. Occasionally, each one would pause and regard me with bright, interested eyes and bovine gratitude.  Everything “new” is a game they want to play and Fresh bedding is especially exciting for them. 

“Why don’t YOU ever trample your bed on all fours, snorting and tossing your clean sheets over your head?” asks Joy.  I don’t know.  How many things in my life am I doing without a sense of celebration or pleasure? At feeding time, everyone I live with either wiggles, hops, barks, or bahs with joy.  Do I? Do I wiggle with glee at my broccoli and carrots? Or slump and meow that it’s not French fries?

“Life is supposed to be Bleak,” insists Prudence. “It’s inappropriate and hedonistic to revel.”

Joy disagrees.

“How can we be given anything and refuse to take delight in it?” she asks.

Just for today, as an antidote to terminal Bleakness, I choose Joy.  I am going to moo and wiggle and stomp my feet when I get fed. I’m going to make a riot of my clean bed. Joy is not in getting “more” or different but in celebrating what we get.  I get a LOT.  And I am deeply, joyously Grateful.

Life is not so Bleak.   Don’t let the pundits tell you otherwise.  Heaven forbid we lose our sense of humor, Dear Ones.  Keep mending. Thank you for doing your Good Work!  As always, thank you for commenting, sharing and subscribing.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

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