“I will not hate and I will not fear;

In our darkest hour, Hope lingers here”

—chorus to my current favorite hand-washing song, by Lissa Schneckenberger

Greetings My Dear Ones,

Well, I’ve had to indefinitely suspend my ambitions to get rich quick through the sale of Monogrammed Turd Rags because I have switched to producing cloth face masks to donate to health care facilities. Several people have approached me (and anyone who sews) to help bridge the gap in the availability of appropriate facial protection until domestic factories can ramp up supply. The “good” N95 masks are being reserved for serious cases and threats of Covid-19, while places like nursing homes, other hospital units, and community health-care facilities are suffering shortages first. A labor and delivery nurse friend of mine said that she and her co-workers were advised to “wear scarves” around their faces if needed. I was shocked.

This totally appalling state of what is purported to be the “Premier Health System” in a “First World” nation has become a wonderful opportunity for my inner cow-horned Heroine to swing from the nearest balcony down onto the stage and start belting show tunes. She spreads wide her feet, clears the phlegm from her throat, and prepares to bellow “Mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi,” up the scales (translated narcissistically as “me, me, me…”) “This is a dream come true!” brays this egoic Monster, “Seamsters are going to Save The World!!! Our Big Moment has arrived!” as she brandishes a seam-ripper and coils a measuring tape like a bull whip.

She tears into our stash and begins to dump and scratch around, flinging bolts of fabric everywhere, like she’s a Rodent of Unusual Size building a rather messy nest. She is willing to part with Anything for the cause, that fabric with cartooned sheep dancing on it, the acres of quilt backing she was saving in case anyone ever wanted to slip-cover New Jersey, even the remnants of the dresses she made for her little girl when she was small. Please, no! I beg, Not the sheep fabric… not yet! “To those whom much has been given, much will be expected,” admonishes Prudence with biblical authority.

A lady never discusses the size of her stash. But… Let’s just say my little addiction is coming in quite handy at this time when supplies are limited in the outer world and I don’t want to have to go shopping. This is the moment I can tell all my former self “honey, to hell with Marie Condo, and her minimalism; it’s a damn good thing you bought out all the end bolts of that place that was going out of business. You are hereby vindicated, you clever girl!” Of course, ever after, I may have to live with unchecked impulses to over-buy (fabric, that is, not guns or toilet paper) in the ways that my post-WWII grandparents used to collect everything from string to milk cartons.

This crisis has brought some drastic changes to my world. For one thing, my hands are now so rough from constant washing that I could probably card lambs wool without the use of steel-tined carders. And I have had to encounter deep philosophical questions about the Meaning of Life—like why the hell I didn’t stockpile Ben ‘n Jerry’s the way others were hoarding Advil and ammo. All we have in any abundance at Hermit Hollow are mason jars filled with what looks like dead beetles. “Yum,” I mutter listlessly, “Not what I want to go out on if the end is nigh…”

I am also learning quite a bit. For instance: In every endeavor, no matter what one chooses to do, there will be those who say “Well Done!”, those who say “That’s not something that needs to be done,” and those who say, “Wait? You’re doing something?”

I am overjoyed that there is something we can do “if we can sew.” I am tickled by the idea, after the way Art & Music programs have had to scrap and scrabble for funding in our school systems, that it’s the artists, poets, musicians, and seamstresses who are giving us so much comfort in this time of crisis.

Besides… I was getting really intimidated by all the people who are using this time to Better Themselves. (Though Prudence heartily Approves!) They are over-achieving their little hearts out—writing novels, songs, poetry, and tunes. They are learning languages and making things of exquisite beauty out of fibre, metal, string, or fabric. They are reading great literature, watching epic films, slow-cooking fabulous meals, and doing “See 20 Do 20” fitness challenges. Some are doing online yoga and making facial scrubs out of things they find in the fridge. One friend actually posted about how “hot” we were all going to look when we emerged from our dens. I panicked. Not me. I’m a slacker. While they are positively Glowing in their homes, I’m in my pajamas for the ninth day, dimly snuffling in the shadows for any overlooked oatcakes crumbs I could not find when I checked ten minutes ago. What if I’m the one that’s not hotter—just bigger, grayer, with much flabbier thighs and morals when this is over? What if I have to be cut out of these pajamas? Or worse, what if firemen have to come cut a hole in the side of Hermit Hollow to get me out after I work my way through all these dead beetles and rice? (I should not be sheltering so close to where the food is stored.)

So I’m relieved to have something to do. It is appalling that our healthcare professionals are at risk however, it’s a privilege to try to help. It’s gratifying how robust the response from home sewers has been. Newspapers call it “unprecedented,” as if it is a surprise. Everyone I know with a sewing machine is sewing her/his heart out. It makes me weep with grateful pride. Finally, they SEE us. This is Who We Are. Artists and craftspeople are infinitely loyal, patriotic, generous, tenacious, and we CARE. Deeply. FINALLY, we can turn to our mates and say, “SEE? You should have let me buy more fabric!”

Admittedly, these masks might not do much for anyone except those of us who make them, who, by our co-operation and dedication, can participate in something that feels worthwhile for a moment, in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. It helps tremendously to “help,” even if we are, as John Adams once was during a stormy passage across the Atlantic, pulling all night with all our might on a rope that does nothing. It gives us purpose. Purpose gives us hope. We sew on… despite the arched eyebrows and snarky comments from those who say we should be making these out of vacuum cleaner bags or gortex or whatever they used for Spiderman’s codpiece.

As my son has often pointed out to me, I’m not here to be THE best, just my best. My best is small, despite what my horn-helmeted inner Opera Star wants to believe. My best is not up to the likes of Covid-19. My best is nothing to what is being required from the exhausted doctors and nurses who have to deal with terrified people coughing up blood on them. I’m nowhere near the front lines. I get that. But I’m happy to get just a few feet off the couch where I was getting pretty damned depressed.

Each day that we work on these masks, we receive comments and reports that “They won’t work,” “They will need to be sterilized,” “They will be redundant the moment the factories start churning out a million a day of the N95 masks.” I know that a good deal of these hours we are putting in might be pointless.

To all of it, I say HOORAY! I hope the factories beat us. I hope that our precious front-line personnel get the Very Best in the nick of time. Getting elastic to stay in place while you sew it is a pain in the buttocks. I certainly do NOT think that a cloth mask that was supposed to be someone else’s summer petticoat but got cut up in the heat of battle is the dream solution. I hope that I wind up staring at a pile of unneeded pleated rectangles with elastic loops on them. In the mean time, I need to keep sewing. For SO many reasons… Most of all, I want the doctors and nurses to know how very much we love and value them—how grateful we are to them for living lives of danger and service, not just now, but every damn day.

And they are not the only heroes. The farmers keep raising food and truckers keep hauling it. In Brattleboro, the school bus drivers are continuing their routes, despite the fact that schools are closed, to deliver needed food to children who depended on the school breakfast and lunch programs. The musicians are hosting on-line concerts to keep spirits up. Humorists are creating clever memes to elicit smiles. People are clicking and smiling then hitting “share” so that others can click and smile too. Teachers are connecting with their students on-line. Our local co-op and supermarket workers are staying after hours to sanitize all surfaces and restock shelves, many of them are teenagers. These are not people losing big on Wall Street. These, usually considered “the little people,” on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, are doing a myriad of tiny things to keep us all safe and fed. And the overall effect is HUGE.

As this virus spreads with the perniciousness of glitter on a work table during prom season, I continue to think and write a lot about our need to be “valued.” This crisis, for all its horrors, might just be the thing that teaches us all that every single one of us matters. So…How do we feel about defunding the Arts now? How do we feel about nurses strikes now? How do we feel about the need to bring back domestic production for our basic necessities now? What do you think about teacher salaries now, all ye forced to homeschool?

Our present state of things is the result of our past decisions. The future is yet to be won. It is not fixed. There are no assigned roles—our future consists of waves of grim potentials and agonizing probabilities. Yet, within those probabilities, we get to co-create our reality in every moment. We don’t get to choose the force of the wind, but we can pull together and adjust our sails. Our latitude comes to us in our levels of consciousness around our intentions and our willingness to cooperate, to see each other as a “human Family,” not a human “race,” which implies there is something to be won in competing with each other. There isn’t. None of us is “special.” This virus does not discriminate. Yet there is no such thing as an “expendable,” either. Each and every one of us matters, whether what we contribute is large or small.

Years ago, our choir provided the music for the funeral of a six-year-old girl. It was the most moving funeral I have ever attended in my life. This little girl had never driven a car, passed an exam, negotiated financing for a large corporate deal, or discovered the cure for Cancer. She owned nothing. She didn’t even know how to tie her shoes. Yet over a thousand weeping people thronged the church that day, teaching me then that our value in this lifetime has very little to do with what we have or achieve and everything to do with how we love and are loved in return.

Everything has its preordained “time.” That flannel with pictures of tiny sheep dancing on it that I bought seven winters ago to turn into ankle-length nightgowns (but never did), who knew it would one day be used as an inner liner on a mask stopping cough-droplets from spraying over others in a nursing home? Or that cotton I always thought was destined to be a baby quilt (the Baby is now nearly twenty…), who knew I would be tearing it into six-inch strips and piling it into stacks I will soon cut with a rotary cutter? We Stashers truly do not know the day or the hour…

We are, each of us, like the precious fabric in a Divine Stash of excellent things. We have been Chosen. We have been Saved. We are each Precious and needed for something specific and special, though we might be surprised to find out it might not be how we ever thought it would be. Some are being called to act; some are being called to sit it out. Some are being called to sing; some are being called to remain silent. Some are being called to grieve and pray; others to charge on without time for such spiritual luxuries. Some are being tempted to murder the children they are supposed to be homeschooling and taking deep cleansing breaths instead. It’s all worthy and necessary and Good. Some of us will be called to be the hearts, some will be hands; some will be lungs, and some will be brains—We are One Body in the end. You each know what to do and you do it!!!

Sew on, my darlings—each in your own way, according to your means and Will—sew on!

I thank and love you each so much!!!

Yours aye,

Nancy