“The temple of truth has never suffered so much from woodpeckers on the outside

as from termites within.” —Vance Havner

Greetings Dear Ones!

For a while, I thought Spring had been cancelled, along with all other pre-pandemic activities. I cannot imagine how the tree frogs are managing to sing so sweetly without sweaters on. It’s cold! No lawnmowers can be heard yet over the sound of chainsaws of locals already at work on next winter’s wood piles but one Spring sound in particular has taken me by surprise. The first time I heard it, I was jolted from sleep thinking we were being strafed by Gatling guns. Then I realized someone was knocking on the door and needed to be let in. So I threw on an assortment of mismatched clothes hastily snagged from the laundry pile, added some Wellie boots on the wrong feet, and clambered downstairs to open the door. The stars were fading and dawn was just throwing a first leg over the hill. I blinked sleepily. Why in Heaven’s name would someone be visiting at this hour of the morning? I peered at the empty driveway for a moment and turned to go back inside when I heard it again, echoing through the valley. I was Right. It WAS an aerial assault—by Woodpeckers! Woodpeckers were pecking on the metal roof of the house. What were they thinking? You can’t get bugs out of metal! As I watched, a woodpecker slammed himself into the side of the house and bounced off a window. He shook his little red head and then flew at the house again. This time, he landed on the gable and began to peck us all deaf.

Each morning since then, as many as three or four at a time will be pecking on the metal roof with the first light of dawn. The disgruntled and sleep-deprived hermits admit this happens every year for a few weeks in April and May then they forget about it until the next year. It’s mating season for these guys (the wood peckers, not the hermits). I guess whoever makes the loudest pecks is (metaphorically, of course) “the biggest pecker.” In This Is Spinal Tap terms, they need amplifiers that go up to eleven. Who needs Tinder when you have Tin-roof? (At least female woodpeckers don’t have to look at pictures of dudes riding big motorcycles, or proudly displaying dead fish…) Like many lonely males, they assume their lady friends want to hear from them at odd hours so they start hitting the roof with Morse code for “Hey baby…what up?” as soon as they can see straight to dial in the morning.

Being awakened before dawn by lust-wracked woodpeckers makes for interesting starts to days which get even stranger, as we try to assess the risks of opening for business again. People have started contacting me and wondering if I will be able to be able to do fittings by Skype or Zoom, where they get a co-contained one to pin or measure them, then they send me the work and I send it back. This week, I actually met an amazingly optimistic young woman in a parking lot so I could assess her sweater damage from a distance of six feet. (Yup, looks like a sweater. Nope, I have no idea what that fiber is, no matter how many times you stroke it and tell me it’s soft.) I cannot imagine how many funny stories might result from this. After all, What could possibly go Wrong??? (Prudence is rolling her eyes and heading for the aspirin.)

A woman emails and wants to know if I still have her wedding dress. I dropped it off at the cleaner’s for her nine weeks ago. It’s had the same mud and wine stains on it for more than twenty six years but she wants to wear it to her daughter’s wedding, which has been post-poned until autumn now. Before we could alter it to fit her, we needed to have it professionally cleaned to see if the fabric could survive. She thinks this is a fun idea—wearing her own wedding dress to her child’s nuptials. “You know, it’s such sentimental day,” she said effervescently when we first discussed this project over the phone, “I’d love to be able to wear this dress as part of all that.” I’ll admit I was tempted (as perhaps you are too) to judge her. How Awkward would that be—to invite your mother to your wedding and have her turn up in a patched up version of her own wedding gown??? Prudence, who never waits for more information, thought the notion was Absurd. Immediately, she thought someone who got married in the nineties must have glided down the aisle in a dress the size of a float in the Rose Bowl parade, with as many frills and flowers. Mercifully, this woman did not.

When I met her nine weeks ago and saw the dress in person, I instantly saw that this project was totally possible and that the dress was well-suited to the scheme. It’s a very simple sheath in a pale color (not white) that almost still fits her but not quite. I can see that she hasn’t really changed that much in weight, but shape. Her rib cage has expanded, along with her hips, in the bearing of her children. She is softer and more womanly than the girl who wore this long ago. Her breasts are fuller and she does not like how low the front of the dress goes now. She no longer wants her arms to show either. We will shorten the straps, cannibalize the wide, flowing sash and make short sleeves out of it, and hem it all up to something mid-calf in length, which will also serve to cut off most of the mud and wine stains. It will actually work and look adorable, without making her look like a competing “bride.”

As she turned to look at herself in the mirror, I could see that other young woman of long ago, sparkling with Joy. She still radiates happiness in this dress she never once in twenty-six years thought of cleaning. She beams. “This dress still makes you look beautiful,” I can’t help admitting out loud. “I can see why you want to wear it.”

“It was the best day of my life,” she says. “We had so much fun. This was not the dress anyone thought I should wear but I loved it. I wanted something simple—not too Bridey. I like simple. I wanted to look like ME, not like all those brides in mounds of poof and circumstance. I just wanted to have fun. And we did.” Prudence archly takes notice of the mud and wine and can’t help sniffing, “Indeed. It’s clear you enjoyed yourself thoroughly—um dancing barefoot in a field, while people lobbed cheap plonk at the bride like she was a prize in a carnival, was it? I’m pretty sure Regrettable Music, turned up to eleven, was involved…” I shush Prudence and turn from looking at the dress to this woman’s eyes. They are bright green and shine with magic. The laugh lines around her happy face tell me that she has been having fun ever since. She’s still married to the same man and still enjoying the Simple Things. Even Prudence melts a little.

“People might think I’m crazy to wear my own wedding dress to my daughter’s wedding but guess what? I don’t give a rip. I never have. I wanted to wear this dress, even though it wasn’t traditional then, and it’s not traditional now. I still want to wear it. It’s a dress that makes me feel free to move and be who I am. I don’t DO formal.” Can I just tell you how much I LOVE this woman? I think about how lucky her children are to have her model this kind of Self acceptance.

Not everyone gets to have a Mother this free and feral and wise. A young friend of mine calls me on Mother’s Day. She is feeling sad that she cannot call her mother from whom she is estranged. “Am I a terrible person?” she wants to know. “Shall I call her, even though one of us, probably me, will wind up getting hurt? What is the Right thing to do?”

My thoughts turn to a joyful, green-eyed bride, ankle deep in mud. “What does your own inner Wisdom tell you is Right?” I ask my young fellow traveler.

“I don’t know,” she says. “That’s why I’m asking you!” We both laugh.

“Your inner wisdom DOES know,” I say. “Absolutely. The problem is that most of us are taught—often by our well-intentioned, conventional, and domesticated mothers—to ignore our inner wisdom for the sake of others. We are taught not just to serve to but serve at our own expense. It makes a huge difference when we get to choose what makes us truly Happy, without feeling guilty about that.”

“I hear too many things inside,” my young friend laments, “and none of them make me feel happy. How am I supposed to know which one is the right voice?” I think of Prudence and I understand. It’s hard to live with a harsh inner voice. It took me a long time to figure out which the right voice was. I answer slowly.

“It’s the voice inside that says something that makes you feel more aligned, more whole, more free, more connected to your Source. A voice that comes from Love, will always lead you towards greater Love—even if that makes you do hard things. Maybe you have to be still for a really long time before you can feel it. Keep listening, it’s a very soft voice…”

As a nation, we just celebrated Mother’s Day and all the hard work and self-sacrifice that Mothers do. Perhaps the hardest thing any parent must do is teach its child Right from Wrong, Safe from Unsafe, and the importance of integrating heart and mind in our thoughts and actions. The outside world can be like woodpeckers on our roofs—rattling us with their own imperative, short-lived, cheap, sexy agendas, jolting us from sleep and making us run out to the driveway looking unprepared and ratty.

It’s vital that we learn to listen to people who listen to their Authentic selves. Happy people are not narcissists. You can tell the difference by whom they are attempting to please and whether or not they are concerned with their “ratings.” Refusing to abandon themselves does not make them selfish. These are the ones who are strong and resilient, no matter how the events of their lives may change their waist or bust lines. They don’t give a damn about conventions when they are led by Love and Joy. Simple is good enough for them—though Simple, as we know, is not always the same as Easy.

There is something profoundly moving to me about a woman who would choose the same dress, the same man, the same Life, and the same Self all over again and celebrate the fulfillment of all that implies on the day her daughter begins her own journey as a lifelong partner to another soul. No, I don’t think she is “lucky.” I think she chooses well and was raised to have confidence in her choices because they were hers. It frightens me to think we live in a world where our young ones don’t know how to access their inner wisdom in order to make their own choices. Too many of us parents would make our children’s choices for them, based on our own fears. This is robbery.

Each day, there are endless decisions to be made about how we treat each other and ourselves. There IS a true North inside each one of us, leading us home, leading us to greater connection to each other, to our planet, to ourselves. How do we teach Courage and Discernment if we never say it’s OK to depart from the Norm—(does anybody remember what “normal” looks like anymore?)—in order to have fidelity to what is True. We know it’s True because it makes us more Kind, less connected to the physical/material and more connected to the Spiritual. It helps us break the cycles churning between offenses and retaliations. It makes us pause and think, “hey, is what I am doing leading me to Shine or Shame?” If I do this, will I reap Serenity or Sorrow? Peace or Pain?

Our old lives aren’t waiting for us to pick them up where we left off. They are already gone. Our clothes may hide unchanged for twenty-six years in a closet full of old mud and wine stains, but we can’t. We change shape. We expand. We grow. Our boobs sag, our wrinkles deepen, our hearts fill up with Life. Ever and always, as we breathe, we are getting new choices, new opportunities. In this time of waiting to emerge, we must ask ourselves, would we choose the same again? If not, what needs to be changed to fit us now that we have Grown? How and what will we celebrate? We’ll know we are making the right choices if we fall more in love than ever. It’s as simple as that. If we wish to create a New Golden Age, we’re going to have to adhere to old Golden Rules.

Keep well, my Darlings! May the Mending Continue! Thanks, ever, for your Good Work.

Yours aye,

Nancy