Greetings my Dear Ones!

In honor of International Women’s Day, here are some random thoughts about hands-on, knitting gritty “Women’s Work.” (hint: These hands don’t just rock cradles… )

I spent Sunday afternoon in the barn teaching two young women how to use power tools, while my son—the boyfriend of one and the brother of the other, was in the house doing the breakfast dishes and his laundry, scrubbing frozen raspberry stains off the kitchen floor, and building a fire to warm us when we came back in. In his spare time, he practiced music, did some personal grooming, and planned supper. Meanwhile, we worked six hours in cold that turned our hands to stumps incapable of holding nails, or even hammers, by nightfall. We stumbled numb-thumbed into the kitchen, chilled to our arteries, grateful for bread and warmth. I stared at the pink, silent paws in my lap and thought of all the things our hands had taught our brains that day. I have been reading Frank R. Wilson’s book The Hand—how it shapes the brain, language, and human culture lately and I am convinced that doing anything with our hands is bound to make us smarter. We smartened ourselves up enough to be almost dangerous.

We were building lambing jugs—think of a series of little cribs made out of repurposed wooden pallets—for the baby lambs the March Lion is supposed to be bringing. My daughter, who is a very auditory learner, called each thing by the sound it made—“Do we need the Bzzzzz Bzzzz or the Duhduh-duhduh?” she would say, impersonating them the way one might do a bird call. “Let’s use the hin-dih-dih for now,” I would answer. They learned to use a chop saw, a skill saw, a saws-all, and the various drills, drivers, hammers, even a cat’s paw to pull out all the old nails. They also learned how to drill deep and screw up—two of the most important things anyone can learn anywhere ever.

“We are free here!” I scream over the blare of Scottish fiddle music and a drill, “This is a SAFE SPACE to screw up as much as we want. If we make any mistakes, we will just fix what we can and take pride in the rest. Just go slow and be safe! Afterwards, we can hang a big sign that says Real Girls Built This Shit.” We all cheer. It’s wonderful to feel we can do Anything. This barn is like the creaking galley of an old ship that might go Anywhere.

We love having the power to make what we want. The Empress in me loves not being questioned, queried, or interrogated about “why” I want things the way I want them. We don’t have to be sneaky here—we can boldly state out loud things like—“I think we should move the entire hay mow to the other side of the building.” And it is Done.

We build an interior wall from wood we found in the loft, then cover the inside of two exterior walls with shiplap. My math skills are improving so much lately, we only have an extra eight feet of board leftover, not counting a wheel barrow full of trimmings that are now kindling. We anchor a floor-to-rafter post and hang a gate on it. Then we subdivide the space with the pallet maze to create a make-shift maternity ward for the sheep. Lambing jugs are small, usually portable pens that give each ewe her own cubby in which to bond with her lambs. Where my ewes are all first-timers, they might need two or three days with their own “family” to figure out who they are supposed to nurse and who they are not supposed to sit upon, trample or squash. Shetlands are a remarkably hardy and wiley breed so they usually figure things out quickly.

As we work, I keep a keen eye on my young cohorts. They are as cute as oxen and just as determined. They figure out how to do things without a lot of instruction. Instead, we babble joyfully about the lambs coming and plans for “the nursery” like we are at a baby shower sipping tea and watching someone with swollen ankles open bibs and onesies. Instinctively, these ladies work as a team—juggling boards and levels, carrying long pieces of wood, measuring (twice!) and using a T-square. They don’t know how to do these things without each other’s extra hands yet. They proceeded with an abundance of caution, steadying each other. I knew what we were doing was very dangerous (I could hear my father’s voice in my head “A saw does not care what it bites!”) But there is a big difference between respecting a tool and fearing it. I’m not exactly sure who said this quote but I know it applies to everyone from pre-schoolers learning to tie their own shoes to fifty-somethings trying to finish off a pint of coffee ice cream right out of a container without the use of a spoon: “Never help a person do a task at which she feels she could succeed” or “Never do for someone what he is able to do for himself.” Having tools at our disposal is only part of the success story—Knowing how to use them is where the real power lies.

It feels good to move, to create, to DO. The ladies do an amazing job of being safe and learning how to let the tools do the work for them. They learn how to use a skill saw so that it does not bounce along the board. They learn the right angles and pressure to keep the driver well-set in the screws so they don’t strip the screw heads. In carpentry as in sewing, concrete objects lead to abstract concepts, particularly in math and language arts. (Ever try to spend a day working with people who have no idea what the tools are called?) These magnificent women aren’t just building lambing jugs—they are building Themselves—beauty, brawn, brain and the Spirit of “We can.” It’s Magnificent.

Of course, a skilled craftsman would put us to shame—their brains and hands being so much more connected over much more time. There are people so adept at using backhoes, they can use one to strike a match. We don’t care. The objective standard of the day is to create a safe place for lambs as well as women trying new skills. Our goal is not to put carpenters out of business. Not by a long shot. But knowing how to do the basics, even in our crude, six-year-old-making-a-wobbly-scarf-entirely-of-garter-stitch kind of way, makes us appreciate a true craftsperson so much more.

It concerns me deeply that children today play video games instead of doing handwork or building tree forts. These are the true “Mind Crafts.” When the point of education becomes the pursuit of credentials, rather than the cultivation of actual Knowledge (which is driven by Experience), we ask our children to forfeit their innate drive Explore, to Do, to Know. The hand-brain connection atrophies. We foster weakness and rob them of vintage delights we once enjoyed. They begin to think that music comes out of a radio instead of an instrument played by a human. We buy into the rot that singing songs, dancing, and making things are only for licensed “professionals” to do. Being able to do something “real” and meaningful to alter our own conditions is profoundly enabling, not to mention genuinely pleasurable.

In other news, some of you may know that it is a secret, girlish dream of mine to raise and train a team of oxen. Recently, I made what I thought was an innocent inquiry on a social media site devoted to “all things oxen.” Within moments, a person with a traditionally male-sounding name, replied with what felt to me, in my vulnerable state, like an unnecessarily sharp cut. Clearly, to my injured pride, (he?) wanted to impress on me the miserable state of my understanding and the exalted state of his. I had wrongly used a term I thought I understood. I would not have felt so hurt if he had gone on kindly to inform me what the customary terms were but he did not. He simply made it clear that I was embarrassingly “wrong” and left it at that, while others indicated by adding “laugh” emojis to his comment that I was the butt of a great joke. This is a typical, if somewhat savage way some “educators” have of separating a potential student from her ego, crushing it, then recruiting her pride to the love of knowledge only [he] can provide. I posted a polite but disheartened “thanks” and he replied “Your [sic] welcome.”

Then, I’m not proud of this… The little Bitch in me retaliated. I replied again. “Thank you for helping me to see that I must research the proper terms more thoroughly. I appreciate your dedication to Precision in language. It is of great importance to me also. P.S. that’s why I’m pretty sure you meant to say ‘you’re.’” (SNAP. Take that, arrogant foe; English major for the win!)

I let my reply sit for about half an hour then deleted it. I don’t want to build a world where we shame each other over technicalities. What good comes of that? I’d much rather have a strong woman call a saw a “Duhduh-duhduh” and actually know how to use it than get into a piddling match over vocabulary or spelling. Meanwhile, two amazing and generous women reached out through private messsaging to offer mentorship. They were unbelievably warm, knowledgeable, and kind. As much as our hands reveal our minds, our words reveal our hearts. While one man took his laughs at my expense in a public forum, two women privately stepped up to welcome me to their group. What does that tell you about the state of Women today? One said she is excited to get more women involved in this sport, that there is a sisterhood around oxen that is as forgiving as it is welcoming. (Are not Forgiving and Welcoming close cousins?)

I am delighted there is an international festival dedicated to celebrating Women and their achievements. (For the record, I want it clear that I also adore men, especially those who have the laundry done and delicious baked goods waiting for us when we clomp in the door covered in mud, sweat, and sawdust, tingling with Empowerment.) I want to celebrate all the time any gender or orientation embraces tools to make this world a better place.

If you want to know how to give People (especially female people) more agency in this world, hear this: I personally never came to own a single skill by watching someone else do it on T.V. Hand us good tools (and safety goggles!) and get out of our way. Let us make a mess. Cheer us as we try again. Honor the effort, not just the result.

For Heaven’s sake, DON’T shame us for wanting to learn. Give us the words we seek. Teach us we can and we will. Maybe things won’t be perfect at first, or even for a long while. It takes miles of stitching to teach a new hand how to sew neatly. It’s not a hand thing; it’s a brain thing. We literally have to grow a lot of brain connections to be good at stuff. Be welcoming. Create safe spaces to try new things. Let’s keep our hands busy and our hearts open.

DIY. TIY. And for all our dear sakes, Keep Mending.

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S. I went out to the barn this morning and the gate actually works and none of the walls have fallen down. Wooooooo!