Greetings Dear Ones!

I am getting up at the same time each morning but the night is lasting longer and longer, until it is dark now, when I rise. Things with sharp teeth and claws are still on the prowl then so I don’t let the sheep out until later. They have taken to sleeping in, glancing at me with perturbed annoyance when I bounce into the barn, shout good morning, and find them all still lying down.

The sheep and I have not been getting along so well lately. Those wooly little robbers broke into the garage where I had stored the apple and pear harvests in large plastic tubs and took one little munch out of every blessed thing they could reach. “The first bite is the best” is their operating principle and almost every piece of fruit is now missing its first bite, leaving us with, well… NOT the best. (This is almost as bad as the time they ate my entire crop of garlic and then burped and farted like ancient Roman gladiators for a week.)

“Who cares about your plans for cider, pies, and goodies?” they cried, “fruit is for eating NOW.” Such is the way with creatures who live Immediately, whose only “plan” at any given moment is to die Spontaneously, Tragically, or of a Large Tummy-ache—all three if they can manage it. “Live in the moment! Eat it all fresh! Eat it all now! Eat until someone needs to put a halter on you and drag you away and force feed you olive oil and pepto bismol!” are their mottos.

I was happy to leave my greedy band of criminals on Saturday to attend a pop-up outdoor fibre festival at the Green Mountain Spinnery, where I reveled in every kind of knitwear and inspiration and reminded myself of all the homespun reasons I put up with these darling delinquents.

There I met a lovely woman who told me a story about the most beautiful hat. It was a story that filled my heart with peace, as well as tears, and made me love sheep and people so much more than I have been doing recently. I needed a story like that. Perhaps you do too, so I’ll share it now. We need such fodder in times where life seems to pit us against one another, when it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and hard done by. We feel “robbed” of our abundance, forgetting that the abundance itself was a gift to us in the first place.

The woman, who had the kind of magic, sparkly blue eyes I could fall into like a river, said that she had designed the hat for her best friend, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She spun the yarn from her own Shetland sheep and her friend’s angora rabbits. The result was something that, when knitted up, feels softer than cashmere. She knew her friend would be losing her hair during the chemo treatments and that this hat would feel so comforting on her bare scalp.

Not long after she finished the hat, she got a call. It was her friend, crying. “My hair is falling out,” she said. “It’s happening.”

“There, there,” said the knitter with sparkly eyes, “You’re gonna be ok. It’s just hair.”

“I know…” sniffed the cancer patient. “I know… but it’s harder to lose than I thought… I look so different, like I’m losing who I am…”

“I’ll be right over,” said the knitter who had just finished the special hat. “I have a gift I’ve been saving for this very moment.” She hung up the phone and shouted for her daughter to get the shearing clippers.

“What do you want with these shears?” asked the daughter, puzzled because it was not time to shear the sheep.

“I want you to shave my head,” said her mother.

“What??? NO!” the daughter was appalled. Her mother had shimmering waves of thick, glossy hair that went nearly to her waist.

“It’s just hair,” insisted the mother. “Shave it! Quick!”

So she did.

Then she put another one of her knitted hats on her own head and went over to the friend’s house. She arrived and gave the balding cancer patient her gift. She opened the hat and put it on immediately and agreed she looked a bit more like herself. They hugged and had a good cry. Then the knitter with the sparkly eyes stood back and said, “I have another gift for you.” And with that, she took off her hat and showed her own bald head.

The cancer patient was stunned. Her whole family came in and started crying. Then they started laughing.

“You don’t have to go through all this alone,” said the knitter. “We’re right here with you.”

“But your hair….it was so gorgeous…”

“When I told you ‘it’s just hair,’ I really meant it. It’s just hair means it’s just hair. Now, let’s see who can grow it back faster!”

I stood, hat in hand, tears in eyes as the knitter with sparkly eyes finished her story, not daring to ask...

“Yes,” she answered my eyes, “we both grew it back together. She’s been five years and counting cancer-free.” She paused, shrugged and smiled. “These are just the things we do for our peeps, right?”

I’ve been warming my little heart cockles over that story ever since. The wounded inner children among us may hear it and wonder “who would ever do such a thing for me? Who loves me that much?” and the sparkly-eyed knitters/Menders/healers among us will be thinking “who can I do that for?”

Before we all go shaving our heads (trust me, some days the impulse overwhelms me, but for other, purely selfish reasons…) I think we need to ask some different questions. When we truly love another, we ask “How can I help you keep being YOU—you are so dear to me. What is it you need to sustain yourself? Where is that Well-from-which-you-drink that nourishes your spirit and brings your light of love into our world? When you are weak, or sick, how can we continue to bring you that water? What do I need to protect or defend or procure for you so that you can continue to evolve and blossom? How can I be a part of co-creating all the blessed potential I see within you without trying to “fix” you or “change” you in any way? What will help make you strong when you feel small and fearful? How can I help you be brave? Most of all, how can I help you truly Live while you are alive?

One by one, I go through each of my loves, my business relationships, family members and personal friendships—even down to every last miscreant sheep, earthworm and toadstool in the Land of Lost Plots—Pondering… Where are the places I can help with the mending? How many hats do I need to knit? When I am exhausted or defeated, how might I need to care for myself as one of these similarly precious beings?

Answers and mysteries continue to ravel and unravel like a ball of homespun yarn. For now, I go into the empty orchard and stand in the last of the summer gold. I take the peaches I have been hoarding in the cellar and break them each into three segments with my bare hands and let the juice dribble to my elbows. There is a piece for me and a piece for each young steer, just so I can share and witness and giggle at the look of eye-rolling bliss that passes over his face as he tastes the perfection of a ripe peach for the first time. The sheep are right. Let’s eat the fruit Now. And that look…that look of pure pleasure on a young bull’s face is sweeter and better than any jam I could ever hope to make.

As for the sheep, who might as well be Jack Russells in sticky, apple-scented wool coats, they know that come June they too will be shorn. From my lost apple and pear crop will come good wool for hats (and perhaps a little diarrhea). We are each a cog in the Great Cycle as harvest abundance and bad diagnoses take their turns on the Wheel. Wool or hair, short or long, we are each still ourselves inside—still loving, still greedy, still ready to die at a moment’s notice in order to Live (ok, maybe the sheep are better at that last one).

The peaches, the apples, the wool, the hair…They all grow back. And if they don't, at least we have soft hats made by loving hands. Sometimes it's we who must do the growing. Ugh… at least we can do it together. Keep Mending, Dear Ones! Thank you for your Good Work!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy