“It is better to take many small steps forward in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”—Louis Sachar

Greetings Dear Ones,

Well, it’s all Peace and Serenity here at Hermit Hollow. No one does Social Distancing with Style quite like us Hermits. We are making Excellent meals out of two ingredients or less; when we play tunes, we are absolutely in tune and even remember their names; the Jack Russells are behaving like adorable, narcoleptic kittens; and when we make our Excellent movie choices, we always remember to mention that a horse dies in this one, or a bunny gets its head blown off in that one, or a that a ten-year-old’s mother gets hanged by the Nazis—lest someone winds up on the couch sobbing her eyes out…

APRIL FOOLS!

Truth: We can’t remember tune names. Hell, some days, we can’t even remember our own names. With dismaying regularity, the resident Jack Russells have to have their bloody disputes settled by depositing the snarling mass into the sink and spraying it with the hose until one spits the other out. We’re pretty sure that one is a Democrat and one is a Republican, so deep is their dedication to not getting along. It’s impossible to tell which one is which though, since they are each the very picture of self-serving avarice trying to win public approval. After three disaster “movie nights” in a row, where at least one person went to bed crying, I forced everyone to watch Disney’s 1959 version of “Darby O’Gill and the Little People,” starring Sean Connery, Janet Munro, and Albert Sharpe, as revenge. The scariest thing about that movie was the way Darby held the Stradivarius (so badly) and pretended to play it in the hall of the Mountain King. Even so, we all slept so much better! We’ve also limited watching the news excessively and now stick to cheerier documentaries about the Plague, Syphilis during the Civil War, the Great Hunger in Ireland, or the Pandemic of 1918.

Finally, after at least thirty-nine days of March, it is April First—my mother’s most cherished holiday. She is a decent, church-going, God-fearing woman with a prayer life as elaborate as her technique for perfecting Yorkshire pudding but her FAVORITE day of the year is the day she gets to call friends and family and LIE to them, then giggle helplessly in the moments they digest information such as “Are you home? I’ve got a truckload of ducks headed to you and the driver can’t find your street.” Once, she even took elaborate pains to smuggle a donkey to a friend’s farm, wet it down, put it in the stall with his prized broodmare, then told his son to summon his father and say she had foaled. (What horse-women do for fun, eh?) It was not a nice thing to do to a man with a heart condition. There were a lot of undergarments soiled in the name of a good joke that day.

I smile as I think of these by-gone pranks. It does not seem like a time for them now, given the circumstances. I am sewing cloth masks—attempting to churn out as many as fifty a day as I vacillate grimly between delusions of grandeur and delusions of insignificance. I made a hundred and seventy six over the weekend and realized that I may have lost my balance with this. (And by may I totally mean girl-gone-bonkers…)

Making masks has become my way of Bargaining, of staving off a nameless Grief—the loss of something invisible, intangible, yet palpable—even as it is very much a necessary stage of that process of accepting the Inevitable. The other hermits note that I have stopped bathing, exercising, or playing music. Frantic anxiety motivates me to do more masks, even as I tell myself this is a hopeless waste of time. Everything exhausts me—especially all the verbal “processing” of sorrow and information that I have to do with loved ones over the phone. Times are tough. It seems treasonous to do anything but sew, even as I talk. I hang up, slump over my sewing machine, glare balefully at the stack of fabric cut out in front of me, close my gritty eyes and feel the fur on my teeth… If not for a good mentor and the ban on unnecessary travel, I would be at the nearest market loading up hard liquor and Swiss Cake Rolls by now. Someone asks if I want to take a break to play some music. My arms hurt too much. “Don’t bother me!” I snap, “I’m busy making myself the next victim of Covid-19!”

I realize that one thing I am genuinely afraid of, among SO many fears, is that I don’t want to do this anymore, that I will Quit. “Is it that I really don’t want to do this or is it just hard?” I wonder. God knows, this is HARD. Sewing 6 x 9 squares together and trying to get the damn elastic to stay put is simultaneously irritatingly Fussy and ludicrously Boring. My heart goes out to factory workers who have to make hundreds of the same thing each day. Piece workers in sweat shops—How do they stay sane? (Personally, I will never look at mass-produced blouse again without thinking of the poor wretch who had to sit there stitching for hours without the benefit of YouTube videos on the plague and occasional dogfights for diversion.) I imagine a lot of us are asking ourselves that question these days, as our lives shrink to fit the menial and mundane—how to we stay the course? We know we must keep doing what we are doing—how do we summon the patience of oxen to continue? How to we find contentment in staying small? (Especially since social-distancing from the Fridge has not been easy!)

We hear a lot of talk about “hope,” as each news cycle has us lurching between the poles of optimism and despair. Ironically, our sense of our own mortality is the wellspring of our Meaning. We balance the heavy weight of our fragility with Hope, hoping that it is the center point between cynicism and naivete, knowing that both blind optimism and blind pessimism are lazy choices. It’s a uniquely human paradox of trying to make our choices count, of trying to make our lives more empowered in circumstances where we are our most vulnerable. It’s so easy to lose our way and give in to momentary panic. To paraphrase Erich Fromm, the price we pay for our consciousness is insecurity; the reward we have for insecurity is consciousness. What makes us different from other species, perhaps, is that we are not just vulnerable; we know we are vulnerable. (The birds in South American rainforests have no idea how vulnerable they are!) And yet Hope gives us the belief that our choices can change our chances.

Welcome to “Oh no, NOT AGAIN!” says Prudence, as I swirl around and around in these complexities. Exhausting myself with the initial blaze of fresh passions then slumping and wanting to quit is an old, embarrassing pattern for me. I only share it here because I think others might be finding this true for themselves. Crafty people are often the most giving and the worst at saying “no” to those who find uses for their skills. We over-commit, over-do, and let fear and the need to “do something” throw us off balance. I humbly admit my enormous and fragile ego often gets involved as well. I, in my tragic attempt at Magnificence, must do “more of or better than…” As part of me sprints around each 24-hour track, I notice other parts in the bleachers watching me. One, of course is Prudence. I cannot run fast enough for her. The other is a newcomer, a healthy part of me that elbows Prudence in the ribs and says “What the hell does she think she is doing down there???”

“Why not use this as a wonderful opportunity to try to do things differently?” he barks through his megaphone. Panting, I slow up and consider--How do I step back, yet not quit? How do I take a breath, and stop Reacting? I start by reaching out to my fellow sewing friends. “How long do these take you? How many are you making each day? What is reasonable to expect of ourselves?” These are healthier people than I am. I find out that average, not tragic or magnificent—would still be Acceptable, Worthy, and actually far more Useful eventually. I am not alone, either. One tells me “Honey, we’re all in the same boat. If you keep going that way, your production is going to look like a Covid curve—the bad one that spikes high and drops sharply. Who the hell cares if you make 90 in one day and can’t function the next? You’ve got to flatten your own curve, girl! We’re in this for the long haul. Soon, people are going to wake up and realize we ALL should be wearing masks. You’re going to be making these for months. Choose a quota that feels good to you and then don’t do more. Just do it every day.”

This advice feels amazing. The relief of Common Sense is as liberating as realizing one is NOT getting a surprise shipment of ducks to your front door. I cannot stop laughing. I have been praying for expansion—to extend either my speed or my capacity. How silly! What I need is Clarity and a healthy Boundary. Each of us needs to honor our energy, honor our talents AND the limits of those talents. This is not a sprint, sadly; it’s a marathon. This race will be run by the Enduring and Resilient, not the people who flame out after a week or two. We are Tortoise—on we Plod! Let’s stop thinking we should run like hares when any limp, hop, or wobble in the right direction works. (Unless of course you are the one making ventilators or vaccines! Then, by all means, please make haste! Make Haste!)

Hint: Homeschoolers—it’s not necessary to do twenty-seven chapters a day in every subject! Or ANY subject. Your kids might actually get way smarter if you just snuggle up together and read good poetry aloud and discuss it. Or watch Darby O’Gill and the Little People as a family (just be sure to cover their eyes during the fiddle scenes!) Don’t tell those wonderful teachers who are doing the best they can to ensure your children get all their appropriate mental vitamins and minerals via the internet, but it’s true!

As seamstresses, we take two-dimensional fabric and shape it to fit three-dimensional bodies. To do this, we use a number of techniques, one of which is employing darts. Darts are tapered tucks stitched in the fabric to accommodate curves, particularly at the arm, bust, waist, and hip area. When a garment has too many curves, we usually amend this by removing or lessening the number of darts in it. The word ‘Dart’ has another definition: “An act of running somewhere suddenly and rapidly.” It strikes me as a proper metaphor for our social distancing. To reduce the curve of the pandemic, we need to eliminate all those times we “dart” about in society—just to the store for a pint of milk, just a quick errand, just a quick visit—all these things we used to do to “round out our days.” No more. Flatten! Stay home. We also need to think of Slowing Way Down—in our cooking, in our resting, especially in what we expect of ourselves during a crisis. Fear weakens our endurance and makes us cuckoo. We need to allow space for the fact that we may be too drained to achieve otherwise “normal” capacities.

Be gentle on yourselves Dear Ones. We will triumph—not in a day, not in a single pile, not in a great hurry, but gently, persistently, with steadfast hope and tenacious faith. Doing Less for much, much longer is going to have a way better effect that doing a lot then suddenly quitting. When youcan’t do enough, try doing a little.

That’s my message to myself. There is a person I am desperate to grow into beneath these scars of “trying too hard” –a person with the capacity to do small things with great love over long periods of time. No more, no less. I hope it helps or comforts those of you who might be going through parallel challenges, whether it’s home-schooling, sewing, or cleaning the garage. Whatever you are doing, your work now has too much value to blast through it all at once. Save some, and yourselves, for Tomorrow. We can do this. Now go have a stretch, a nap, or a shower. Don’t neglect your own Mending!!!

With so much love,

Nancy